023 // MDA1 // Weblink / Opto-Isolator
Opto-Isolator // Golan Levin with Greg Baltus / Standard Robot Company // 2007
http://www.flong.com/projects/optoisolator
Opto-Isolator inverts the condition of spectatorship by exploring the questions: “What if artworks could know how we were looking at them? And, given this knowledge, how might they respond to us?” The sculpture presents a solitary mechatronic blinking eye, at human scale, which responds to the gaze of visitors with a variety of psychosocial eye-contact behaviors that are at once familiar and unnerving. Among other forms of feedback, Opto-Isolator looks its viewer directly in the eye; appears to intently study its viewer’s face; looks away coyly if it is stared at for too long; and blinks precisely one second after its visitor blinks.
