Seeing
Research Collaborations

The Exploratorium’s new preview of it’s collection on the topic of Seeing, previewing on June 29, 2002 and running through January 2003, includes cutting-edge research gathered through collaborations with individuals and research institutions from the Bay Area and across the globe. These research associations broadened the Exploratorium’s own expert knowledge and expanded its resources. Among the areas of new research that has found its way into specific Seeing exhibits are:

Basketball, Daniel Simons, Associate Professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, IL as of fall 2002). Simons is well known for his research in the area of visual attention and memory. After viewing his effective experiment of how one’s attention controls what we see, the Exploratorium was eager to replicate the experience for visitors. Simons complied and provided Basketball, a video that runs a segment of a basketball game with a set of specific instructions for watching it to illustrate how visual attention can affect what we see. Without giving away the shocking impact of experiencing this phenomenon, it does offer a different take on the adage "keep your eyes on the ball."

Bright Black, Alan Gilchrist, Professor, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ. The birth of Bright Black is ascribed to Gilchrist’s study of color perception. He pursues the answer to how humans and computers assign black, gray, and white color values to surfaces. Variations of several factors, such as lighting conditions and background surface, play a role in the perception of color. Employing Gilchrist’s methods, the new exhibit Bright Black at the Exploratorium allows visitors to sequentially view examples of white – and as they are viewed against each other – discover that what they once perceived as white has suddenly become gray and/or black.

Baby Vision, Claes von Hofsten, Professor, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. On the forefront of sight development, von Hofsten reveals what an infant sees by how the infant acts, moves, and what it knows about the laws of physics. His research is in the field of infant vision. Infants demonstrate their level of perception and cognition via their actions: looking, reaching/manipulation, and locomotion. Claes von Hofsten provided video documentation of his research for use in the development of our exhibit Baby Vision. On videotape, viewers observe an infant tracking an object rotating around its head. When the approaching object is suddenly stopped out of the infant’s eyesight, the infant reaches for the object (despite its being out of sight) and looks for the object where it would have been had its motion continued.

Change Blindness, Ronald Rensink, (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC), Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Psychology on sabbatical at Basic Research, Nissan Research and Development, Cambridge, MA. Rensink used "flicker" conditions in his experiments on studying the importance of attention in detecting a change in a scene. The flickering nulls the automatic drawing of attention, creating a case of "change blindness." Expanding upon Rensink’s research, the Exploratorium’s exhibit, Change Blindness, challenges visitors to detect changes that occur in a blinking picture of a storefront. While distracting observers with the blinking, the scene gradually transforms itself into a whole new picture. Unbelievers use buttons to toggle between the two pictures and identify the changes they have been unable to perceive taking place.

Additional collaborators for the new exhibits in the Seeing collection include:

Historical Concepts of the Eye, Nicholas Wade, Professor, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK.

Isoluminant Window, Patrick Cavanagh, Professor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA and Donald MacLeod, Professor, University of California at San Diego, CA.