"I See You": A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT EXPLORING PRESENCE
"If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with content, we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves, but in our cultures." - Nicholas Carr
In the Northern Natal regions of South Africa, Zulu tribes traditionally acknowledge other human beings at the start of every encounter by gazing into each others eyes. They do this in silence for about 10 seconds, until the elder of the two says “Sawu bona” meaning “I see you”, to which the younger replies, “Sikhona” or “I am here.”
This simple act of acknowledgement is the most important aspect of their daily interaction. For this indigenous group, until they are seen in this way every day, they do not exist.
Our ability to really connect with one another is a huge part of what makes us human. Eye contact plays such a crucial role in our innate ability to understand each other beyond words. While we say thing, we're able to interpret something else. At times, no words at all need to be exchanged to communicate or convey our emotions. This ultimately fuels our capacity to empathise, and as a result, our ability to connect to one another on a deeper level.
In today's Western cultures, real "Zulu-esque" eye contact is nearing extinction. Never before in history has our species been as prone to distraction or had such a lack of presence in their immediate surroundings. And it's technology that plays a huge role in this evolution; smartphones have come to replace the real intimacy of face-to-face connection with the mere exchange of pixels on a screen.
"When you let down all the pretences and your ego drops away, you recognise in other people your own vulnerability, your own higher self... all the good qualities in fact because that’s what you are actually connecting with... you’re not frightened anymore, you’re not running from them. You are looking at a reflection of your own inner state."
- Devon Buchanan, "I See you" participant
Art has always played a huge role in highlighting significant cultural struggles or political points of view, from pollution, to racism to gender equality. Although not quite as severe in terms of the suffering caused, it was only a matter of time before artists began to depict the power of eye contact and presence through their work, often in an attempt to highlight the lack of it in today's 'digital society'. In 2010, artist Marina Abramovic spent 3 months in silence, looking into the eyes of strangers in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in an artistic experiment she called "The Artist Is Present". Abramovic invited museum visitors to come and gaze into her eyes for as long as they wished, bringing many of them to tears.
The sheer act of looking into someones eyes- "the gateway to the soul" - uninterrupted, undistracted... to be acknowledged in such a way, breaking down the barriers and being seen for who you really are, is an all-too-rare experience, accompanied by a feeling many describe as that of "relief". Could it be that this feeling of relief is an indication that this is how we're supposed to interact, but we've been so distracted that we've forgotten?
Human connection is a subject matter very close to our hearts at VINAYA. We're particularly interested in the role that technology plays in our ability to really connect with one another, which is why we continually conduct social experiments in our attempt to understand more about human connection and presence in the modern world. We hired a team of social anthropologists and neuroscientists to study the interactions between people and their technology, especially in group settings, and have developed a number of social hypotheses which we continue to test, alongside data on screen time, email usage and social media presence. We're looking into how the brain is affected by such activities and hope these studies will provide additional insight into the role that technology plays in the development of the human psyche, which will in turn help steer the development of our products, designed to help people reset this digital-physical balance.
Recognising the impact that Marina's artistic experiment had in terms of generating a conversation around this topic, we conducted our own creative presence experiment in the hope it will enable us to communicate our message with a wider audience.
As part of our ongoing research into modern human connection, we asked 10 people to gaze into the eyes of a stranger for 5 minutes while being filmed. Strategically placing three cameras, the result is a beautiful depiction of raw human emotion. The footage moved us so much that we decided to create a short film off the back of it in collaboration with Sofia Ochoa Neven DuMont, directed by Gregory Kirchhoff, with music by Dave Palmer (of Big Deal Music). How might you react in this social experiment?