“While drawing, he made a sequence of regular single fixations on selected details of the model’s face.  Each fixation lasted about 1 second and was repeated at a rate of about 12 fixations per minute.  When changing his gaze from picture to model, or model to picture, Humphrey’s fixations unhesitatingly found and ‘locked’ onto the minute detail he was targeting.  This behaviour was in sharp contrast to that of the non-artist subjects we tested.”  

 

But John and Chris were well aware that their findings were not restricted to the subject of portrait drawing.  A surgeon, particularly during minimal invasive surgery

or laparoscopic surgery (popularly referred as ‘key hole’ surgery) proceeds entirely from an image on a monitor screen using his/her eyes and hands to transform a starting image to another transformed image.  Eye-tracking technology for investigating the surgeon’s eye-hand coordination is today in the process of being introduced within the operating theatre and, as a result, the prospect of finding ways of improving safety and training methods could be immense.  An exhibition ‘How do you Look?’ demonstrated these procedures.  It was shown last at the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons in 2006.  Previously, it was displayed in Nottingham, Maidstone, Hull and Leeds.

 

it will end or how many lives will be saved in the process.  In fact, this same lack of finality applies to all my stories; even after a period of 10 years or so they continue to amaze and excite!

 

the years has been remarkable.

 

Let’s look at the art first.  As Heather and Dan explain, the ‘science’ of their grass photographs became a source of fascination for many gallery curators round the world.

 

“Mother and Child, our first artwork presented to the public using IGER’s staygreen seed was shown, in 1998, at Santa Barbara Museum of Arts.  The exhibition was called ‘Out of Sight: Imaging/Imagining Science’.  Subsequently, in 2001, an exhibition in Boston gave focus to the way the shorter destructive wavelengths of light bleach away sensitive pigments.  Here, alongside new grass artworks, the Santa Barbara Mother and Child was brought out of storage and exhibited within view of a freshly grown piece.”

 

 

 

 

For Creative Clusters, this is the key question.  If the answer wasn’t yes, I wouldn’t be here.

 

I should say, at the outset, that wealth generation was never in our minds when  

we came up with the idea of Sci-Art.  As I’ve mentioned, this event occurred over 10 years ago.  The group of scientists, artists and generalists who, together, during

the course of one year, hammered out the terms of reference for launching the Sci-Art competition were concerned to achieve, above all else, a meeting of minds between artists and scientists.  Submitted ideas must be able to demonstrate that the artists

and scientists concerned had worked as a true partnership with each penetrating

and engaging with the territory of the other – a criterion that remained intact throughout the 10 years of Sci-Art’s life, although during this period of time the initiative did move through a series of administrative changes.

 

In all four stories I’ve narrated, a Sci-Art Award kick-started partnerships into action.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This second stage united the skill of drawing with other fine-controlled skills – in particular, surgery.  How did this come about?

 

One principal finding from the eye-tracker study of portrait painter Humphrey Ocean at work was that his eye movements while drawing were different from his normal eye movements