Tomasz Dobiszewski

Fixations
exhibition view of the Fixations show curated by Waclaw Kuczma, Municipal Gallery bwa, Bydgoszcz 2012

People are programmed to what they know and what they expect; looking, they usually do not reflect on the sheer act of viewing. This statement provoked Tomasz Dobiszewski to carry out specific studies. The exhibition at the Municipal Gallery bwa presents their results - visualisation of those elements of image interpretation that are beyond our perception.

The basis for the Fixation exhibition was transfer of the technique used in marketing research (*eye-tracking) into the sphere of art. The artist asked to participate in the research a group of dozens of people, who were presented with the visual stimuli in the form of films, photographs and illustrations. The aim of the project was to show other possibilities to decipher the reality, to expand the consciousness of perception of the recipients and to provoke them to consider perception. The studies were conducted in collaboration with the School of Form in Poznan.

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*eye-tracking, involving the registration of eye movements in real time and determining the direction of the line of sight in relation to the viewed scene. These tests can accurately determine at what exactly and for how long the person looked

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01. Object
site specific object, 500x500x350 cm, pcv + video, 2012

During the experiment, test takers were showed the spaces of the Municipal Gallery bwa in Bydgoszcz. The results were used to build an object representing the path of view on a three-dimensional space. Spheres correspond to fixations, that is the points on which the viewers’ eyes rested, and the connections are called saccades, that is the lines illustrating the movement of the eye from one point to another.

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02. Models
5 models 40x50x34 cm, pcv, styrofoam + 5 videos, 2012

Based on the selected photographs, three-dimensional models were created. Animations included in the models represent the perception of several participants.

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03. Punctum
6 pages from Roland Barthes’ book Camera Lucida + 6 prints, 14x20 cm, 24x30 cm with frame, 2012

Photographs torn out of the Roland Barthes’ book Camera Lucida were analysed to determine if the image’s punctum is precisely at the point that the author pointed out. The heat maps affixed to the photographs indicate which part of the image was watched the most and the longest by the subjects.

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04. Theory of Vision
6 xerox pages from Władysław Strzemiński’s book “Theory of Vision” + 4 videos
(Saskia, Return of the prodigal son, Mother at the cradle, The music lesson), 2012

The viewers were showed painting reproductions described in the Władysław Strzemiński’s book Theory of Vision. The aim of this study was to determine whether the perception of the image coincides with the way the author wrote about.

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05. Art
video, 2:13, 2012

The subjects were shown selected works from the canon of fine arts. As a result, the films were made with affixed heat maps that indicate the perception of specific works of art by modern man. The scale of the intensity of the colour corresponds to the length of time people looked at a given part of the image.

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06. Drawing (a chair, a house, a pendulum)
63 prints (21 chairs, 21 houses, 21 pendulums) 21x29,7 cm, 30x40 cm with frame, 2012

The research participants were asked to draw simple objects with their sight. The end result is graphs showing the interpretations of objects from the memory of the participants. Some of the graphs indicate a very archetypal memory of objects, while others give hope that not all of us perceive reality in the same way.

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7. Connect the dots
63 prints (21 leafs, 21 cats, 21 birds) 21x29,7 cm, 21x29,7 cm with frame, 2012

A leaf, a cat, a bird.

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8. Movemental
Movemental 01, 03, 06, 07, 09, pigment prints on photopaper, dibond, plexiglas, 100x100 cm, 2009
+ 5 videos, 2012

Videos showing the perception of the works of the Movemental cycle, in which the photographed objects in the room were moved. An effort is required to rearrange back and make a picture of the whole. Imagined movements that we make in our minds are the reflection of our knowledge of the world, and the result of our experience in watching images.

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9. Palingenesis
Palingenesis 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, pinhole photography, silver gelatin contact prints,
13x18 cm, 24x30 cm with frame, 2004 + 5 videos, 2012

A pinhole camera placed at the ceiling of the room records the spaces of the rooms on the walls of which small furniture was placed. In this way, the various scales of photographed objects are confronted, creating illusionary penetration of the real with the staged.
It turned out that it is very difficult for the testers to recognize the spaces. It is attested by the fact that quite often the viewer’s eye returns to the centre of the image and starts reading the photograph again.

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10. Films
2-channel video, 10:00, 2012

Video shows the visual activity of the subjects, broken down by gender. Through these films we can find out what is happening to our perception system when, observing the monotonous sequences of reality (water, sky, fire), our thoughts are poles apart from the image we look at.

The left image shows the perception of women, the right one - of man.


Realized with the support of a Scholarship of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage