Abstract
"Utopia" is a novel artistic representation with an interactive visual experience. It consists of a painting that depicts an imaginary neighborhood in which all residents are living together, happily, and peacefully. The aim of "Utopia" is to provide a viewer an interactive experience of appreciating a painting that is technically and semantically designed to represent an equal and borderless world. In order to create such an experience, in addition to conveying the Utopia's concept by illustrations such as people of all ages and descents, etc., we aspired to design and created a structure that induces the viewer's eyes on the whole painting ceaselessly and in a uniform manner. Thus, every painted element has an equal chance to be seen. For the first step, we applied artists' conventional eye-guiding techniques and painted and arranged the visual elements and cues considering the proposed affordable guidance method. Secondly, we designed an interface that displays a painting on a monitor connected to an eye camera that allows the viewer to interact, zoom and move the painting within the frame only by eyesight flow. The interface also provides a loop structure in all directions to realize borderless world, that helps the viewer to observe the painting without any interruptions. To reinforce the ceaseless interaction and guidance, we added animation and auditory effects that induce corresponding eye movements. Finally, the afford of applied visual elements and cues to guide the viewer's eye and the feasibility of the designed system, for the proposed concept of equality was examined and evaluated by experiments. The results of the experiments show that the implemented features of the system and the designed eye navigation, generated a uniform distribution of the gaze in the painting and the viewers could have a comprehensive experience of appreciating a painting while every element of the painting has been visited.
