Eyeborg

December 13, 2008 10:06 AM

"If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?"

Canadian Filmmaker Rob Spence plans to place a tiny camera in his false eye to film a documentary on the topic of surveillance. Local news feature on him. His blog. [Last link automatically plays footage of his eye surgery. May want to turn off.]

posted by piratebowling (38 comments total)

Good career move. He'll never go without work so long as Dateline and 20/20 stay in business and need hidden camera shots.
posted by billysumday at 10:12 AM on December 13, 2008

Reminds me of the Bill Gaston novel The Cameraman, if just for the way that he's weaving art and work and life into one.
posted by seagull.apollo at 10:21 AM on December 13, 2008

I've wanted this since I was, like, five.

Not sure about the wireless radiation being transmitted right through my head though. I'd almost prefer some kind of wire through the nasal cavity to a Keanu-style port behind my ear.
posted by rokusan at 10:30 AM on December 13, 2008

I imagine many, many hours of tedious live internet video of countless release forms being signed...
posted by Brockles at 10:42 AM on December 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Bill Gaston novel The Cameraman
And also DG Compton's 1973 The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe (a.k.a. The Unsleeping Eye, filmed as La Mort en direct a.k.a Death Watch) which features a cameraman eavesdropping on a dying subject via a camera implant in one eye.
posted by raygirvan at 10:43 AM on December 13, 2008

I must be lowbrow, because I was reminded of Psyclops.
posted by Donnie VandenBos at 10:50 AM on December 13, 2008

(Performance art from Brockles at no extra charge.)
posted by rokusan at 11:03 AM on December 13, 2008

"If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?"

Or a PEZ dispenser.
posted by StickyCarpet at 11:07 AM on December 13, 2008 [11 favorites]

I'm looking forward to the day when we can all record everything in our lives. Microsoft was working on something like this a few years back, no idea how far they got. Hey, there's a more recent New Yorker article about the concept too.

Imagine having a perfect record of your life, every conversation and moment saved.
posted by exhilaration at 11:07 AM on December 13, 2008

Imagine having a perfect record of your life, every conversation and moment saved.

I think I'd kill myself. Ugh.
posted by Justinian at 11:09 AM on December 13, 2008 [10 favorites]

From the comments: Tanya Vlach is ... up for something similar. But bigger. She wants an eye with USB, Firewire, A/V out, a Mini SD slot, & Bluetooth. (Both the size of that, & having those connectors exposed, sound incredibly unpleasant to me.)

Spence strikes me as being more realistic & plausible.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:16 AM on December 13, 2008

StickyCarpet: ""If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?"

Or a PEZ dispenser."

Tracheotomy?
posted by geekyguy at 11:24 AM on December 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

Yes, I can imagine that societally pervasive recording capability, and I can imagine it growing to be a more and more standard subpoena until your car insurer will not pay out without a recording of the incident, to where guilt is effectively assumed if your recording, and then to it being illegal to delete the data as soon as the first big scare came along.

I would also guess that it would lead to a change in attitudes to relationships as people demanded their partner share all tapes to prove their fidelity. I think that would be quite an interesting effect, and I wouldn't be surprised if a higher level of repression meant that use of prostitues and mistresses went down but divorces went up heavily as release valves for pressure were removed. I'd also anticipate less anti-governemntal organising as any member of the group would have perfect proof of all other members being involved easily...or the police could merely check who else had deleted footage at the same time. If this was linked to GPS/futuristic location it would be fairly simple to find people's routes of travel, and track deviations drom the norm in a data mining style...how panopticonish.

Other ideas someone would doubtlessly have:
Welfare recipients agree to share footage as a condition of receipt of payment;
Sharing workime footage with your employer;
Social norm of sharing it with your evangelical leader; and
Parents browsing through the records of their children.

As the famous idiocy goes, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, right?
posted by jaduncan at 11:28 AM on December 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

But then corruption would also go down, since there would always be a record of any illegal government or corporate activity. In fact I'm willing to bet we would see a steep decline in crime, in general.

Civil behavior would probably increase, again since there would always be a record of anyone acting like a jerk.

I bet patronage of high brow entertainment would increase dramatically. Viewing porn would almost certainly all but disappear.
posted by oddman at 11:46 AM on December 13, 2008

My childhood dream if I ever lost an eye was to pop a laser pointer in there so I could go around like Arnold. Fortunately, I still have both eyes and didn't have to end up like this guy.
posted by niles at 11:49 AM on December 13, 2008

But then corruption would also go down, since there would always be a record of any illegal government or corporate activity. In fact I'm willing to bet we would see a steep decline in crime, in general.

That depends on who owns the master recordings. I imagine it going something like this:

Nixon: Get me Johnson down at The Vault

Johnson: Yes, Mr. President?

Nixon: I want all the tapes from my eye in the last 24 hours wiped. You got that? And when you are done I want to see the tape from your eye of you wiping my tape? You got that? And then I want you to wipe THAT tape. Got it?

Johnson: Yes, Sir, Mr. President, Sir!
posted by spicynuts at 12:01 PM on December 13, 2008 [4 favorites]

I was disappointed to see he pointed it outward.
posted by aubilenon at 12:08 PM on December 13, 2008

I must be really really lowbrow, because the first thing I thought of was the camerahead cenobite from Hellraiser 3.
posted by dead cousin ted at 12:23 PM on December 13, 2008

He should build in a delay so that he can watch himself completing tasks from moments ago.
posted by spacely_sprocket at 12:38 PM on December 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

In Martin Caidin's novel Cyborg, which went on to greater fame in television as The Six Million Dollar Man, the Steve Austin character did not have a super duper telescoping eye as he did on TV, but rather a camera hidden in an unseeing eye as discussed here.

/old nerd
posted by bowline at 1:14 PM on December 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

I'd be happy with a little motorized tentacle, to wave at the kiddies on halloween.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:59 PM on December 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

But then corruption would also go down, since there would always be a record of any illegal government or corporate activity. In fact I'm willing to bet we would see a steep decline in crime, in general.

Civil behavior would probably increase, again since there would always be a record of anyone acting like a jerk.

I bet patronage of high brow entertainment would increase dramatically. Viewing porn would almost certainly all but disappear.

Hope someone will keep them from fitting me with a cybernetic head after I grow sick of the rising tide of moral fascism and blow my brains out.
posted by hermitosis at 2:16 PM on December 13, 2008 [5 favorites]

Nice. I've been waiting for someone to post this for weeks. I've worked with Rob in the past and he is an awesome guy.

I'm glad to see all the press he's been getting for this. He is serious about it and has been working on it for years.

I'll give him the heads up about this thread, see if he wants to swing by and talk about it.
posted by yellowbinder at 2:23 PM on December 13, 2008

It's a great, and really scary idea that I too have wanted to do (well, I wanted sunglasses that recorded stuff I aimed my eyes at). As a filmmaker, picture the ease of taking notes. "ah, this setting and light here would be great for scene Y in script Z" or for writing films, as he sees something unfold on the street.
posted by dabitch at 3:09 PM on December 13, 2008

This would be an awesome way to bootleg Broadway shows.

And as they say here and elsewhere - suck it, haters.
posted by tzikeh at 3:19 PM on December 13, 2008

Storage options for the footage from the eyecam
posted by lukemeister at 3:20 PM on December 13, 2008

everyone here seems to be forgetting that this eye cam is still subject to darkness via an eyelid. is there going to be a new law against winking? i mean, porn viewed with one eye closed is still good fun.
posted by spicynuts at 3:27 PM on December 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Imagine going back to an awkward situation and scanning everyone's faces over and over again, finding whole new levels of shame. What about going back to when you had told a funny joke, and living it all over again: their heads thrown back, mouths open. It would be kind of weird, I guess.
posted by seagull.apollo at 3:44 PM on December 13, 2008

HAre's hoping he'll stick a wire up his nose and into his ear and put some rivets on his forehead, for the full WH40K look.
posted by Artw at 3:59 PM on December 13, 2008

oddman writes "Viewing porn would almost certainly all but disappear."

That seems unlikely in the extreme. Rather I imagine a serious upsurge in the availability of amateur POV porn.
posted by Mitheral at 5:12 PM on December 13, 2008

Yeah but who wants it on record that they view amateur POV porn?
posted by oddman at 5:25 PM on December 13, 2008

One could always just remove the camera in those moments, most people probably don't watch in the company of others.
posted by Mitheral at 5:30 PM on December 13, 2008

This is really going to interfere with his porn viewing habits.
posted by bwg at 5:51 PM on December 13, 2008

Imagine having a perfect record of your life, every conversation and moment saved.

I think I'd kill myself. Ugh.

I already take large does of alcohol to forget the shit I said in High School. Having a complete record of everything I've done or said would be grounds for dosing my belongings in kerosene and moving to Alaska.

Oh, shit, is that what everyone does?
posted by The Whelk at 5:55 PM on December 13, 2008

patronage of high brow entertainment

(raises one)
posted by flabdablet at 5:34 AM on December 14, 2008

In fact I'm willing to bet we would see a steep decline in crime, in general.

On the contrary, I would bet on a steep increase in crime that goes for the eyes first.
posted by ghost of a past number at 6:36 AM on December 14, 2008

This is really going to interfere with his porn viewing habits.

Yeah, but on the upside, he'll be in a unique position to CREATE a lot of porn. I don't know if I'd consent to having my every move videotaped in bed from a camera in someone's eye, but I bet it's a turn-on for *someone.*
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:06 AM on December 14, 2008

Late to the thread, but this is totally fuckin awesome and something I've wanted my whole cyclops life.

he'll be in a unique position to CREATE a lot of porn

The ultimate gonzo. Move over, Seymore Butts!
posted by goo at 7:05 PM on December 15, 2008