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Short abstract

When gaze becomes traceable in creative collaboration, it can serve as a shared point of reference while remaining open to interpretation. The paper asks under what conditions such cues are trusted, ignored, or contested—and how this reshapes relevance and coordination in the moment.

Long abstract

In collaborative making, we rarely “see what others see”: in real-world situations, attention must be inferred from talk, gesture, and the choreography of bodies around a table. This paper asks what changes when looking leaves a trace—when attention becomes perceptible in the shared workspace.

While groups engage in collaborative material composition—working with a palette of wooden blocks, tiles, interlocking modules, and paper elements—we introduce an otherwise unavailable property of collaboration: participants’ gaze becomes mutually visible as dots and short traces that settle onto objects and surfaces. Color indicates whose gaze it is; size reflects how long attention lingers. These marks act as visual residues of looking, turning fleeting attention into something others can encounter and work with.

Rather than treating such cues as neutral representations, we frame them as inscriptions that reconfigure what becomes referable and accountable in practice (Latour, 1987). Once present in shared space, gaze traces can be taken up, aligned with, ignored, or contested, shifting how groups stabilize shared reference while negotiating design decisions. They are open enough to invite divergent readings, yet stable enough to organize joint action across perspectives.

Drawing on close observation of these sessions, we ask: How do gaze inscriptions reshape leading and following? Do they steady explanation (“they are with me”) or introduce new pressure and self-monitoring? How do they reconfigure pointing, hands, and other embodied ways of coordinating? How do such marks gain authority in creative practice over time?

Keywords: relational labor; shared reference; visibility; eye tracking; collaboration