Did You See This?

The Beholder

Can this uncanny eyeball installation watch you watching?

This eye-opening—and -rolling, and -crossing—video from Helsinki-based artist Lucas Zanotto shows just how much you can say with a single black, 2-D orb inside a larger white one. The eyes have it, indeed.

Zanotto reveals the simple mechanism behind each eyeball installation that moves its “irises” in some way or other. It’s doesn’t make a lot of sense until we see things from the front, and then we see how clever, and surprisingly expressive, Zanotto’s googly eyeballs really are.