The Looker (2015)

-Interactive Installation

This work tries to address the psychic distance between an artwork and spectator. I seek to minimize the psychic distance and build up a close connection between an artwork and a spectator and observe how psychic distance affects the spectator’s aesthetic experience.

Psychic distance is a kind of immaterial distance between two subjects or objects that cannot be measured and controlled. Edward Bulloughm, an English aesthetician and scholar of modern languages have stated that the Psychical Distance has strong affective in aesthetic experience with an artwork in the essay of “Psychical Distance as a factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle”.

This installation consisted of different eyes movement videos projection inside the metal storage locker. When spectator looks through the hole, sensors would be triggered and the eyes focus (projection) would be changed to the direction to the hole which creates eye contact with the spectator. The immediate response to the spectator with the eye contact in order to build up a tight connection to the spectator which decrease the psychic distance between an artwork and spectator. Moreover, it addresses the issue that spectator in the exhibition area is not the only subject in watching the works, they could also be the objects which are being observed.