Drawing conclusions in the lab

By: Jonathan Stright
Date: November 12, 2007

A small, windowless room is tucked away in the basement of a historic building on Duke Street in downtown Halifax. The floor is concrete. The sound of powerful saws penetrates the thin walls. A paper sign taped to the wooden door identifies the room simply: Drawing Lab.

It’s a room in which Bryan Maycock has spent countless hours. He and a group of academics from diverse fields have just finished recording hundreds of thousands of tiny eye movements in this room.
The data are part of a three-year investigation of artists’ sight patterns as they begin to draw a three-dimensional scene.

Maycock hopes to analyze the way beginning artists look at a scene and compare it to the way experienced artists approach the same scene. To collect the data, he uses a device called the Eyelink 2. It’s a helmet with protruding cameras that capture every movement a person’s eyes make. His findings may someday help art instructors teach students how to approach a drawing more effectively.

Maycock is chair of foundation studies at NSCAD University. He has been teaching art for almost 40 years, but he says the scientific method is far from his typical way of thinking and working.

That’s why he teamed up with Raymond Klein, a professor in the psychology department at Dalhousie University. He’s been involved with the project since it began nearly 15 years ago.

Maycock and Klein represent the two different departments working on the research. They each lead a team from their respective institutions. The more subjective approach of the artists stands in stark contrast to the objective observations of the psychologists. The two groups come from different institutions. They come from different backgrounds. They come with different strengths.

“I need people working with us here who can look at data and make some sense of it. They need people around them who can look at the artistic process and anticipate, perhaps, what might happen and then interpret what has happened,” says Maycock.

Maycock and Klein applied to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding in 2005. One of the council’s main goals is to “foster and develop vigorous collaborative, multidisciplinary research activities,” according to its website. They received almost $100,000, much of it used to set up and maintain the lab.
The lab, hidden away behind the elevator and nestled beside a workshop, looks stark and uninviting except for the jars of assorted candy spread down the centre of the table. The lab has become more than just a room. It’s become a forum for communicating information between what Klein sees as two different cultures. “We’re bringing together two very different communities here,” says Maycock.

“It’s not possible to do this kind of research without pretty much both communities,” says Klein.

There’s still a great deal of work to be done on this project. Massive amounts of data must be analyzed and interpreted before the team can draw any conclusions from the study. But even after two and a half years working together, Klein and Maycock are open to the possibility further of collaborations.

“I would be hopeful that we might be looking for something else to do .... It may be that there’s a new generation of technology sitting out there that would make things even easier or make new things possible.”