Fixed Gaze

2023

Uniform Connectedness

'Uniform Connectedness" makes use of multiple principles that enrich and enhance visual designs. The first being "simultaneous contrast," a visual phenomenon where a color's perception is altered by the hues, values, and saturations of its neighboring colors, making it appear more vibrant or shifting its own hue and brightness. Miller also uses the Gestalt principle of "closure;" this law plays on the human brain's tendency to perceive incomplete visual elements as complete shapes by filling in the missing information. For example, in "Uniform Connectedness" we understand there to be large green circles within the composition when in reality they aren't really there. We perceive them to be circles because our brains are able to assume the missing pieces to bring us to the intended conclusion. This is just one of the many ways our brains subconsciously simplify information in order to make our sensory experiences more predictable and bearable.

Go and Eye Will Follow (The Whirligig)

The creation of "The Whirligig"—alongside her grandfather, Bill Forbes (a retired mechanical engineer)—first began to come to fruition when Miller had mentioned wanting to build sculptures activated by motion sensor. She had been reading about our perception of moving objects and found particular interest in the almost involuntary act of following the path of that object’s motion with our eyes. As the pattern spins around and around the eyes will dart back and forth attempting to get the most still and clear retinal image of that object to send to the brain. The motion sensor activation requires a person’s physical presence in order for the piece to kick on, prompting viewers' awareness of themselves to become heightened while also emphasizing their necessity as part of the artwork.

Thank you to Midbrook LLC in Jackson, Michigan for fabricating the steel speed control box

Eyes Perceive Numeric Value

It is a commonly known fact that the eye responds to light by dilating or contracting the pupil. In 2021, scientists in Italy discovered that the pupil also shifts in size depending on how many objects we are observing. The more objects in a scene, the bigger the pupil grows, as if to better accommodate everything that it has to look at. This "perceived numerosity" is a simple and automatic reflex based in the need for survival, allowing us to better interpret our surroundings. "Eyes Perceive Numeric Value" is a diptych painting illustrating this function and again the viewers' eye movements become critical to the full realization of the piece. As their gaze alternates between the two paintings their pupils are dilating and contracting giving the artist direct control over this physiological phenomenon.

Read the publication here