Le système oculométrique (« eye-tracking ») Pupil Labs

Laurence Delbarre, an engineer at the SCALab laboratory, tests the Pupil Labs eye-tracking system in front of the Mathieu Le Nain painting "The Denial of Saint Peter" (circa 1655). Eye-tracking is a technique for recording eye movements that involves detecting, in real-time and with high spatial and temporal accuracy, the position of the gaze using a video camera. Initially developed for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, this innovation is now being used by museums to better understand responses to artworks. This device is combined with a wristband that records heart rate and electrical activity in order to assess the degree of emotion felt by a visitor in front of an artwork. Pupil Labs was developed by MIT students and forms part of the VISUALL-tek project, a library of tools that enables the collective examination of images. These apps are the result of an interdisciplinary dialogue between social science researchers and computer scientists specialising in human-machine interaction.