This was a significant breakthrough in the science of visual perception – the results of Yarbus’ extensive research and development of eyeball- or gaze-tracking technology that enabled him to discover how we actually see. At last we could dispense with the mechanistic metaphor (current since the 19th century) that the eye is like a camera. (The perceptual psychologist Ralph Haber has called this ‘one of the most potent though misguided metaphors in psychology’ (quoted in Morton Hunt: The Story of Psychology 2009.)

I have suggested elsewhere in Inspiritorium that Yarbus’ discoveries are a retrospective justification for the revolution of Cubism in the early 20th century. And since gaze-tracking has entered the digital age, and has become an essential tool for ergonomists and user-interface designers, we now have sophisticated, low-cost technologies for exploring the phenomenon of saccadic vision.

“All the records … show conclusively that the character of the eye movement is either completely independent of or only very slightly dependent on the material of the picture and how it was made, provided that it is flat or nearly flat.” The cyclical pattern in the examination of pictures “is dependent not only on what is shown on the picture, but also on the problem facing the observer and the information that he hopes to gain from the picture.”

The insights of Yarbus and other perceptual psychologists have become an important aspect of human-computer interface design, where gaze-direction-tracking has become an important control mechanism in technologies like VR, head-up displays, monoscopic head-mounted displays, games interfaces, cockpit-design (etc).

see

Alfred Yarbus: Eye Movements and Vision 1967

Mike Horsley (ed): Current Trends in Eye Tracking Research 2013.

This was for me (and for millions of others) a signature moment of the emerging late 1960s culture – a kind of public, global announcement that pop-music wasn’t anything to do with Tin-Pan Alley or the  establishment Music Business any more. It was 5 or 6 minutes of a cultural-pop-history that carried the hippie Peace message writ large as All You Need is Love. And it definitely wasn’t a corny commercial Eurovision Song Contest song either – it was an anthem for us all, compounded of Lennon’s counter-culture opposition to War (specifically the East-West Cold War, the Vietnam War), George’s Hinduism, the band’s position at the heart of all that was cool (and successful) in British culture, Paul’s musical talent and leanings towards the avant garde, John and Ringo’s sardonic Liverpool dry humour.. And it was supported by the aristocracy of British counter culture – the Stones, Donovan, Marianne Faithful – and George Martin’s full orchestra.. It was several minutes of revelatory bliss. It shouted loud – the message of world peace and love; a several minute commercial of Britain’s ascendancy in style, cool, technology, art, – and being the hippest place to be in the whole world. We loved it.

And my generation were  lucky enough to have a reprise of this fabulous feeling (amplified by the massive charity donations (£100 million!) raised for Ethopia) some 20 years or so later in Bob Geldof’s Live Aid concert (1986). So, twice in a lifetime, we were able to harness music creative talent, world-around communications and broadcasting media, and combine them into a message that as Barry Miles put it in 1967 (paraphrased from Plato): When the Mode of the Music Changes, the Walls of the City Shake. We hoped and believed…

 

Well, this was drop-dead cool – Dylan’s  Subterranean Homesick Blues with its pithy, sardonic critique of ‘straight’ culture – opens Pennebaker’s embedded-journalistic documentary of Dylan’s 1966 UK tour. It was electric – “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, I’m on the pavement, Thinking about the government” the staccato lyrics, the message was a brilliant mish-mash of counter-cultural tropes – reinforced by the casual appearance of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Dylan’s dead-pan physical delivery of his lyrics – held up as key phrases hand-drawn on A3 white cartridge – reinforces the introduction and establishes the film’s main theme – the interaction of this phenomenal poetic talent and the new counter culture acid-rock music with the British establishment and the straight press, and with British fellow-traveler’s – and with fans. It’s still a real treat – if you haven’t seen it go direct to Youtube.