The Active Eye

The Active Eye is a software application designed as a teaching tool in the area of visual perception. I developed it during my years at NYU. The software is a database containing over 50 demonstrations, experiments and tutorials covering a range of perceptual phenomena most on the topics of motion and space perception. It provides a medium for students and researchers to experience dynamic displays. Hence, it is intended to complement, not to supplant, traditional print materials in the area of visual perception.

While the Active Eye is designed primarily for university students in psychology, it will be of interest for those in the field of art, graphic design, architecture, computer graphics and machine vision. Finally, the demonstrations may also be used in high school science courses as well as in science museums.

The Active Eye comes with an extensive hardcopy guidebook. Each demo in the guidebook contains a Description section which discusses the theoretical importance of each unit and suggests things to do and notice. It also provides diagrams, a bibliography and a list of related units.

It's fair to say that my experience in creating the Active Eye led to Quicktime. It made me aware of the importance of dynamic data at the interface. Hence. the first project I initiated when I got to Apple Computer was Dynamic Documents.