The luxury gaze
Where attention settles on an object of desire — and the places it quietly refuses to go.
- Field
- Attention
- Status
- In preparation
- Method
- Eye-tracking
An object of desire is not seen all at once. The eye arrives, hesitates, and chooses: a clasp before a face, a seam before a silhouette. Long before judgement is spoken, attention has already been spent.
This observation will follow that spending. With eye-tracking, we intend to record where the gaze first lands on an object presented as luxurious, how long it dwells, and in what order it assembles a whole from its parts.
We are as interested in refusal.
Every fixation is a small exclusion — to look here is to not look there. The map of what the eye declines may describe desire more precisely than the map of what it seeks.
What we will ask
Where does the first fixation land, and does it move when the object is named as luxurious?
Does the gaze return to the craft, or to the sign of craft?
What does the eye decline to look at, and is that refusal immediate or learned?
This observation is in preparation. No results are reported.