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concept
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A normal adult closes his eyes 24 times per minute.

A blink lasts only few milliseconds and this time may change according the individual mood. Under fatigue one can blink up to 40 times per minute.

Recent studies indicate that the brain "shut down" the eye in about 50 milliseconds before every single blink. This would be a way to save the eye, because during the blink action it can not delivery any visual information to the brain.

Adding the "shut down" time to the 24 blinks per minute we can conclude that one has 1,2 seconds of blindness per minute which, in a 70 years life, is approximately 21 days with no vision.

Unseen movie is an installation that aims to visualize what was unseen and broadcast those moments of blindness.

In front a monitor the user watches a movie. A camera on the top of the monitor is connected to a computer that tracks the eyes and detects when they blink. Every time the user blinks the image that appears at that moment is broadcasted in another monitor in real time.

This installation makes possible that other people watch what was missed. The unseen movie.

The movie used in this installation is : Pralinen zum Glück by Michael Prandstäter (click to see the trailler)

 

video
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images
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Detail of the Patcher.

Installation set up.

equipments
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01 computer mac with 2 videos outputs
01 webcam
2 tvs
cables

credits
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Ricardo Nascimento
ricardo [at] popkalab.com

I would like to thank Jean-Marc Pelletier for his generosity to share his studies in Computer Vision in MAX/MSP and IAMAS people that inspired me to do this work, specially Takawo.

 

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