The Worlds Largest Eye-Contact Experiment

Posted by Taylor Neal in FringeBlog on October 19, 2015

When I spotted the cluster of contact-seekers and bystanders on the stairs in front of Place des Arts, I suddenly became conscious of the energy being radiated into the air by this spellbinding event.

Beginning at 5 p.m. last Thursday, 45,000 people across 50 cities worldwide gathered to share in what was to be the world’s largest eye contact experiment ever performed, aptly named as such. The invitation was addressed to every individual in the proximity of these cities, and it was no different when the event in Montreal disseminated across Facebook.

The idea was simple—sit across a complete stranger on the ground and share one minute of silent eye contact, in order to find the most basic, yet overlooked characteristic of humanity: connection.

The group was larger than I had expected due to the threatening clouds left over from the heavy rain that afternoon. I was intimidated. I found myself tugging at the ends of my hair as I stood amongst the outskirts with the other onlookers debating entering the circle.
I watched the participants sitting on the concrete, some chatting with their partner, some deathly still. I reached into my bag for my camera and pulled it out. I felt like an intruder with it in my hand, like I was invading the intimate innerness of these people being rarely released into the atmosphere around them. I put it away and continued to observe.

The back of someone in the center caught my eye. They wore a tan jacket, and the wavy auburn hair that hung down the center of it was a perfect match to the suede. Without seeing their face, I felt invited by the warm browns and decided to join this person. I debated my camera again; however, upon seeing his delicate face, I confirmed it to be unwelcome. I sat cross legged and held my hands in my lap. I looked up at him. He nodded, a smile cracking on the right side of his mouth. I followed suit.

I thought of nothing for a while, just sat there, looking in his eyes. I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to blink or not. He hadn’t yet.

A tear dripped down the crease of my left eye, I had to. Nothing happened, he remained still, staring directly into my soul.

Now I couldn’t stop blinking.

“I’m blinking a lot compared to you.”

He smiled again, larger this time, and sat as still as ever. “I didn’t even notice.”

I started to relax. I began to feel his stability, like it was holding me there with him, and it was one of the most comforting feelings I had ever experienced. He reminded me of a tree. I sat effortlessly now, almost as peacefully as he was, and the characteristics of the face in front of me came to the forefront of my consciousness.

His hair, his eyebrows and his beard were all different degrees of red-brown. It was sort of artistic, as if he had purposely composed them to grow in those shades himself. He was entirely organic though, and I knew the colours had happened themselves like the same red-brown does in the fall. He maintained the lightest grin I had ever seen; I wondered if I was grinning too.

I thought he must like music, the way he sat there so composed. We remained in a dream-like harmony for what felt like days.

“Can I ask you something?” His voice bounced off my eardrums before I had seen his lips move.

“Oh yeah, sure.”

“Do you play sports?”

“Oh, no. I dance, but definitely no sports,” I tried giggling to lighten the tone.

“Dance is a sport.” I’d never heard this from a man.

“I consider it more of an art.”

“Yeah, I guess. Do you like to hike?” He tilted his head for the first time since I had sat down, which caused me to shift as well.

“Yeah, I live near the woods. How did you know that?

“I don’t know, I just felt it somehow.”

I asked Francis if he was into music, and he told me he played guitar and did a lot of synth, and that his favorite season was fall. We continued to talk, and though I had only known him for five minutes, it was a type of intimacy I had never known with a stranger before. It was an entirely new feeling, and the way we had been able to feel things about one another has caused me to appreciate the uniqueness about people that can only be seen when trying. I said goodbye and stood after the conversation died down, and I took in my surroundings for the first time since I had sat.

Many more had arrived, and it had gotten darker. The vibrant colours created by the blue evening were breathtaking, and I had never appreciated the city lights with such serenity.

I began to walk around the group. I saw an empty spot that faced a building lit up entirely green, I sat back down.

A green haired boy sat in front of me. This time we talked first.

“Hello.” He nodded in a slightly uncomfortable manner.

“Hi,” I smiled politely.

He went on to ask me questions about myself, and I found out he went to college for drama and that he presently works at a Couche-Tard. I wish he had given me the chance to guess about him the way Francis had.

After brief conversation, I stopped answering. He understood, and he sat up completely straight, closed his eyes, and reopened them with the most intensity anyone had ever put into a stare. His head was tilted forward, and his fedora created a shadow over his eyes that, when paired with the green glow of his hair combined with the building behind him, formulated an distressing aura. I was uncomfortable.

After a violent extension of unpleasant time, he stood, thanked me, and walked away.

I wonder if he would remember my face the way I knew I would remember his.

I took a deep breath, and a girl sat down in the empty space he had left behind. I smiled at her, she smiled back. We began. I appreciated it when my partner let the connection come first.

The first thing I noticed about this girl was her eyebrows. They were thin, delicate, and they sat perfectly above her bare eyelids. Her black lashes seemed innocent and pure, I thought she must be a virgin.

She looked about my age, maybe a year or two older, and I got the feeling she would be good with kids. Her face looked softer than fresh bed sheets straight out of the dryer.

We didn’t speak, just sat. The silence was the most humbling sound I had ever heard. It wasn’t a matter of comfort or discomfort as my previous encounters had been, it was simple modesty. I felt drawn to the earth, held in my spot by magnetized concrete, and I felt that she was too.
She was a familiar face to look at. The type of familiar that you know you’ve never seen before, but you feel like you’ve come across a hundred times. There was nothing outstanding about her physical appearance, but her simplicity was beautiful.
I began to feel my body tipping in one direction, I couldn’t decide if it was happening or not. I twitched a little. She smiled, I smiled back. I looked slightly down, the eye contact was broken, and she got up and walked away.
I never got the chance to find out if I was right about her, I thought about it the entire way home.

In those moments with those complete strangers I had forgotten about the world around me, yet I will always remember the complete focus we shared.

It reminds me of a yarn activity from day camp. At the end of our two weeks, we would all stand in a circle, and the counsellor would give us a ball of yarn. The idea was to throw the yarn to someone that made a difference to you during camp. When you received it, you were to wrap it around your wrist a few times, and pass it on. By the end, everyone was attached by a giant web, and everyone would have a yarn bracelet to remind them of their time at camp. The bonds I made during that experiment gave me that same sense of connectedness. A giant world-wide web of yarn connected all 45,000 of us that day, and that is remarkable.

I realize how little effort is put towards using one of the most prominent characteristics we were given: the ability to connect with one another. It’s heartbreaking. A homeless man is begging on the street corner, and a woman who just lost her mother sits crying alone on the metro, and they are ignored as though they don’t exist, as though they’re not just as human as their passers-by. If someone put just one per cent of the effort it takes to sit silently on the ground with another person, into their everyday interactions, problems may be solved that would have had no hope before.

I am grateful to have been a part of Montreal’s contribution to this experiment.