“Where Do I Look?”

Artist: Timothy Wiebe
NeuroGrad Collaborator: Borna Mahmoudian

Abstract

My partners research is focused on the gaze of primates and how they react specifically to the face and the gaze of another primate. They use macaque monkeys in the lab, but the research is supposed to encompass primates as a whole and therefore potentially relates to humans as well. I plan to do two paintings in the form of a diptych to see which half the viewer plants their gaze on. I was inspired by zoom meetings since humans naturally want to make eye contact, but where do you look during a zoom call? At the person speaking? At the camera so they can see you’re looking at them? Zoom calls appear to have changed the way humans interact and maybe even where they look. Even if you try to make eye contact with the speaker, you aren’t truly doing so, and the same is true in a painting.