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Subverting the gaze: redefining the object role, gaze subversion helmet

Published: 07 September 2015 Publication History

Abstract

From the moment this gaze exists, I am already something other, in that I feel myself becoming an object for the gaze of others. But in this position, which is a reciprocal one, others also know that I am an object who knows himself to be seen.
Jacques Lacan
Why is there a tendency to associate visibility and transparency with truth, democracy and knowledge? Are there other forms of knowledge that come from the veil? How can we avoid the gaze, subvert it? Through the process of creating a device that draws awareness to the gaze, the Gaze Subversion Helmet, many fascinating questions arise. The form of the helmet lends it to be further objectified when the aperture becomes opaque. How does this heighten the experience and the awareness of the objectifying gaze? While this device does not address the digital realm of cyber-space, it focuses on the physical confrontations and a heightened awareness of the moment from which the gaze manifests. Its purpose is to react to this physical confrontation of real bodies and gazes.
We are a species that requires privacy, yet that privacy has been deprived of us through concepts of total visibility and the ever present gaze. How can we design using a play of nuances of visibility, allowing for the gaze to manifest at particular moments and denying it at others? What can we learn from these nuances that we would not learn from a society of total visibility or total veiling? Drawing on architectural and design precedents, this helmet explores these nuances. The implications of the helmet go beyond the theoretical applications. These concepts can further be applied medically, specifically to those with difficulty with eye contact and personal confrontation.

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References

[1]
Beatriz Colomina. "Sexuality & Space." Princeton Architectural Press. 1992
[2]
Jonathan Crary, "Subjective Vision and the Separation of the Senses", "Techniques of the Observer". Techniques of the Observer, On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. MIT Press, 1990.
[3]
Guy Debord, "The Society of the Spectacle"
[4]
Michel Foucault. "Las Meninas." Philosophers on Art from Kant to Post Modernism. Columbia University Press. 2010.
[5]
Michel Foucault, "Part One: Torture," in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
[6]
Michel Foucault, "Part Three: Discipline," in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
[7]
Donna J. Haraway. "The Cyborg Manifesto," Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, The Reinvention of Nature. Free Association Books. 1991.
[8]
Hoy, David Couzens. "Foucault: A Critical Reader." Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1986.
[9]
Jacques Lacan. "Of The Gaze as Objet Petit a" The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. W.W. Norton & Company. 1978. Pp. 67--123.
[10]
Christopher Kul-Want (ed.). "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the/ Of the Gaze as Object Petit a." {article by Lacan} Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Postmodernists: A Critical Reader. Colombia University Press. 1893.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
UbiComp/ISWC'15 Adjunct: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers
September 2015
1626 pages
ISBN:9781450335751
DOI:10.1145/2800835
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 September 2015

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Author Tags

  1. beatriz colomina
  2. body
  3. eye
  4. foucault
  5. gaze
  6. glass
  7. identity
  8. interface
  9. intruder
  10. lacan
  11. manipulation
  12. mirror stage
  13. narcissism
  14. object
  15. objectification
  16. objectivity
  17. perception
  18. power structures
  19. reflection
  20. social constructs
  21. society
  22. space
  23. spatial
  24. spectacle
  25. subject
  26. subjectivity
  27. subversion
  28. theater
  29. transparency
  30. veil
  31. vision
  32. voyeurism
  33. window

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UbiComp '15
Sponsor:
  • Yahoo! Japan
  • SIGMOBILE
  • FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc.
  • ACM
  • Rakuten Institute of Technology
  • Microsoft
  • Bell Labs
  • SIGCHI
  • Panasonic
  • Telefónica
  • ISTC-PC

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Overall Acceptance Rate 764 of 2,912 submissions, 26%

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