Filmmaker Places Camera in His Prosthetic Eye!
Posted on May 1, 2009 by admin Under Technology · 1 Comment
Renowned Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence showed his prosthetic eye at an interview in Brussels with the Associated Press, on Wednesday 4th of March, 2009. The famous one-eyed documentary maker is preparing himself to shoot a documentary film from a position never filmed before in history by placing a camera in his spare eye socket. He also hopes that it would get the results that only one eye contact could achieve. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
(AP) – A one eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing himself to shoot with a video camera that shall be concealed inside his prosthetic eye with a hope to record people for a project that would usually be commenting on all the global uses of the surveillance cameras.
Canadian Rob Spence had damaged one of his eyes in childhood while shooting and accident and the eye was removed around three years ago. Now, he is all set with the final stages of developing a camera to turn his handicap into an added advantage.
A great fan of the 70’s series “The Six Million Dollars Man,” Spence said that he was motivated when looking at this cell phone camera realizing at the very moment that something so small could also be fit into his eye socket.
With the camera installed in his prosthetic eye, he also hopes to record certain things that he can only see with his working eyes, with his muscles enabling his camera eyes to move just like the real one.
He is planning to become a live human surveillance machines as stated by Spence, with an aim to explore the intimacy and privacy of whether people do some sleep walking in the Orwellian society.
He also added that the people would mere notice that they are being filmed until later when they shall be told, but also added that he needed to take their permission before filming them.
The special equipment would simply consist of a camera that was originally designed for colonoscopies, a wireless transmitter and a battery. To fit everything inside the eye socket may be a little bit of challenging, but Spence has managed to seek the help of some of the top engineers including Steve Mann of the research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
California based Omni Vision Inc., Santa Clara provided the camera for the entire project. The company also specializes in miniature cameras that can be found in most of the cell phones, laptops and also in endoscopes.
Zafer Zamboglu who is a technical staff and product manager at the OmniVision, said that the success of the project will also accelerate the research work into using technology to help blind people restore their vision.
He also added that there was a great future in the prosthetic eye.
The team is also expecting the camera to start working by next month. Spence also jokingly calls himself as the eyeborg as stated by a number of reporters at a conference with media held at Brussels. As the camera is more closely related to reality so one could also capture a more realistic picture and natural conversations as compared to the bulky camera being used today.
He also added that as a documentary maker one is trying to get in contact with the person and the best way to make this connection would be through eye contact.
But Spence was very much concerned with privacy concerns of the people.
He also added that getting more closer to the people with a camera in his eye would make him feel more freaked out, as he was not sure that if people would still like to hang around him knowing that he might be filming them all the time.
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Now that’s something new. Nice article.