Installed as part of media art exhibition Kabukicho Art Site: The Challenge of Public Media Art in Shinjuku's notorious Kabukicho district, two-dimensional images can be seen when scanning eye movements are performed in front of a light source consisting of a 3m column of flickering LEDs.

This is our first attempt to exhibit the Saccade Display in an outdoor public place filled with all kinds of electric signage. In effect, the emitted images were embedded into the electric landscape, becoming difficult to detect. From a technical perspective, there was a need for robustness and for the system to power on and off automatically. From a social perspective, the area is 'home' to a diverse range of people: from entertainment seekers and trysting lovers, to solo wanderers and those who make the plaza their overnight dwelling.

The entire area of the plaza - along with the shipping containers presenting works of our fellow exhibition participants - became a 'Cabinet of Curiosities'. Our particular approach was to present objects and entities largely absent in this part of Shinjuku at night, such as babies, nature, and visual symbols of life and death. As the images were difficult to detect, we staged several performative actions where members of a 'control group' began waving the camera function of their mobile phones to capture the saccadic images (the cameras thus performing both scanning and capturing functions). This piqued the curiosity of passers-by who became interested in whatever it was the group was looking at. This behaviour then attracted people in further dribs and drabs, sometimes becoming a small crowd...