Eye-Eye-EYE! Only a couple of weeks ago, SFAM blogged about a San Francisco artist looking for a webcam implant for her artificial eye. Now a canucklehead [sic] is looking to follow suit.
Toronto-based producer/director Rob “Eyeborg” Spence lost his eye due to a gun accident and only had it replaced with a prosthetic three years ago. Now he wants to augment it with a wireless camera, not to restore his vision, but to become a literal camerahead, with the ability to record and store images of what he sees:
I am not restoring vision, I’m just modifying my prosthetic eye into a video camera with the same capabilities as a modern cell phone. I can stream the footage, save it to a hard-drive, or put it in my documentary film called Eye 4 an Eye.
Equiped for the job. In Rob’s case, such use for his camera-eye is obvious. As a professional filmmaker, he must have spent countless hours setting up shots, finding the right angles, and adjusting lighting whenever possible just to ‘get it right.’ With a built-in camera, all he needs to do is look and… ACTION! Stephen Speilberg probably would give up his own eyes to do what Rob is planning. I bet there are many photo-journalists who wish they could have such cameras when news breaks around them, and not waste time setting up cameras and cables when things go down in a split second.
The beginning of the Trend? Rob and Tina ought to get together and discuss their plans for their eye-cameras, maybe share notes and record their shared experiences. But could these two be just the beginning of the trend of voluntarily having such camcorders implanted into their eye sockets?
No doubt, there are going to be those who have lost an eye who would want such implants, including those who would want them connected to their brains. Then you may have those photo-journalists and movie-maker types who would willingly sacrifice a good eye for such a setup. Not to mention the possible security-surveillance applications…
When normal people with both eyes still working want to have one removed for an implant, that’s when we can say things have gotten out of hand. But it’s still better than what emos have been “implanting” themselves with…
