Here's a shot Steve Mann took of me in the lab last night.
Steve is an ace photographer as well as a cyborg/scientist.
You can see one of the camera modules a company sent to us next to my prosthetic eye.
Cool hein?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tiny Camera oh my!
Here's a shot Steve Mann took of me in the lab last night.
Steve is an ace photographer as well as a cyborg/scientist.
You can see one of the camera modules a company sent to us next to my prosthetic eye.
Cool hein?
Sunday, November 23, 2008
NBC news does 6sight / bionic eye story
Watch news story video here.
The above link is to a news story by NBC Monterey, CA where the conference on the future of imaging was held. I was a speaker there talking about my eyecam project and fishing for tech partners.
In general I had a great outing at 6sight!
The 6sight blog is here.
It was like having fish in a barrel all those tiny camera and imaging experts in
one place.
After I spoke about the eyeborg project I was approached by
several high end companies to work with me and Steve Mann
to perfect the prototype we are already developing.
Which is totally great. Woo.
Stay tuned for a short video about the eye and my film shortly.....
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
ABC news Does a story on Bionic Duo
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=6284996&page=1
ABC news did a story on the eyeborg revolution.
Check it out.
ABC news did a story on the eyeborg revolution.
Check it out.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Eyeborg lives! Bonus - Eye removal operation video
Hi my name is Rob Spence and I am making a documentary about changing my prosthetic eye into a wireless webcamera. Bionic Style!
Who am I? Well I was Mr Toronto in my last my film - Let's All Hate Toronto for CBC Newsworld in Canada.
Here is a trailer of my last film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x5bA05xYAU
Notice the eyepatch I am wearing. Not a fake! Now you know.
Want proof?
Here is a cool video that takes a quick look at an old 6 million dollar man clip (Steve checks out his new eye) then you see what happens with modern prosthetic eyes. WARNING! This is not for the weak of heart! The eye gets removed. Its a bit gross. That's really me in there getting his eye removed.
How did I lose the eye?
Just like Ralphy from Christmas story I shot my eye out.
I was 11 years old in Ireland at my grandfather's farm and messing around with my grandfather's shotgun - trying to shoot a pile of cowshit. I hit the cowshit btw but the gun backfired and severely injured my eye. Years later I had my eye removed (you can see it in the video above) and voila.
I will be talking about a prosthetic eye camera that I am building at a conference this Thursday in Monterey California. http://blog.6sight.com/2008/11/building-the-bionic-eye.html
6sight is a future imaging conference that has all kinds of high end small camera nerds in the cell phone imaging, facial recognition and web imaging application business.
Who am I? Well I was Mr Toronto in my last my film - Let's All Hate Toronto for CBC Newsworld in Canada.
Here is a trailer of my last film. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x5bA05xYAU
Notice the eyepatch I am wearing. Not a fake! Now you know.
Want proof?
Here is a cool video that takes a quick look at an old 6 million dollar man clip (Steve checks out his new eye) then you see what happens with modern prosthetic eyes. WARNING! This is not for the weak of heart! The eye gets removed. Its a bit gross. That's really me in there getting his eye removed.
How did I lose the eye?
Just like Ralphy from Christmas story I shot my eye out.
I was 11 years old in Ireland at my grandfather's farm and messing around with my grandfather's shotgun - trying to shoot a pile of cowshit. I hit the cowshit btw but the gun backfired and severely injured my eye. Years later I had my eye removed (you can see it in the video above) and voila.
I will be talking about a prosthetic eye camera that I am building at a conference this Thursday in Monterey California. http://blog.6sight.com/2008/11/building-the-bionic-eye.html
6sight is a future imaging conference that has all kinds of high end small camera nerds in the cell phone imaging, facial recognition and web imaging application business.
Steve Mann is my partner on this project. He is an MIT grad, and an award winning cybernetics and electrical engineering professor at U of Toronto. His nickname? Cyberman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann
He is well known for his pro-cyborg yet anti-Big Brother stance. He wears an external eye camera as a response to all the surveillance cameras filming us and believes in “equiveillance” or our right to surveil those who surveil us. This project has become more than a film. Building this camera eye is a first-of-its-kind project that requires world class engineering skill and we hope that it raises awareness about surveillance issues in general. We are even planning a conference which is something Mann has done with great success before. Professor Mann is not only qualified to build my eye, he has been researching and self-experimenting with issues of surveillance and cyborgization for years.
THE FILM
I am making a film about the process and am in development with the National Film board of Canada. Channel 4 in Britain is just about to say yes and give me lots of money though. Are you reading this Sandra Whipham?
Here is a synopsis of the film, its called Eye 4 an Eye:
Eye 4 an Eye is a quirky feature documentary that explores how we may be sleepwalking into a Big Brother, Orwellian surveillance society. By retrofitting my prosthetic eye into a wireless and web connected video camera I become a symbolic “Little Brother” media virus who goes on a cybernetic journey literally from my point of view. Similar to my last film Let’s All Hate Toronto, where Mr Toronto is a meta-character version of myself, I can manufacture dramatic arcs and character development in tandem with journalistic inquiry that has a healthy dose of satire.
In visual terms, like director Errol Morris, I too want direct eye contact but without an enormous distracting camera contraption. He uses something called an Interrotron that allows him to make eye contact with his interviewees. No need for me to use the bulky Interrotron!
(http://www.whiterabbitdesigncompany.com/Miscellaneous/images/Interrotron.html).
Many scenes and cuts in my film, the most important ones, will literally be direct eye contact. Including blinking and glancing to the side.
Many documentaries have used secret cameras to shoot with and blend that footage with a more conventional camera. My eye camera footage will tend to come in fleetingly to illustrate points or for times when a standard camera is not possible. It will also be a B-camera that can be edited into a sequence with the main A-camera.
I might eyecam record the mess that I see when I go to a 3D movie. Something that I will never be able to watch again. A retinal chip recipient (whose implant restores rudimentary vision) could put the loss of one eye into perspective by reminding me that I didn’t lose vision – just stereo vision. I could intercut what they see of me, swaths and patterns of light, with what I see of them through my eye camera.
The accident I had began a journey that would lead me to add technology to my body and ask hard questions about Big Brother. I will take a shotgun and go back to my grandfather’s farm in Ireland, where I first injured my eye. I will dramatically blast a pile of cow manure without shooting my eye out. I will have come full circle and will finish the job I started as a boy as a grown man. I’ll film it with my new video eye but also with three other cameras for a multi-rendition like they do in Van Damme movies when Van Damme does his “final strike”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann
He is well known for his pro-cyborg yet anti-Big Brother stance. He wears an external eye camera as a response to all the surveillance cameras filming us and believes in “equiveillance” or our right to surveil those who surveil us. This project has become more than a film. Building this camera eye is a first-of-its-kind project that requires world class engineering skill and we hope that it raises awareness about surveillance issues in general. We are even planning a conference which is something Mann has done with great success before. Professor Mann is not only qualified to build my eye, he has been researching and self-experimenting with issues of surveillance and cyborgization for years.
THE FILM
I am making a film about the process and am in development with the National Film board of Canada. Channel 4 in Britain is just about to say yes and give me lots of money though. Are you reading this Sandra Whipham?
Here is a synopsis of the film, its called Eye 4 an Eye:
Eye 4 an Eye is a quirky feature documentary that explores how we may be sleepwalking into a Big Brother, Orwellian surveillance society. By retrofitting my prosthetic eye into a wireless and web connected video camera I become a symbolic “Little Brother” media virus who goes on a cybernetic journey literally from my point of view. Similar to my last film Let’s All Hate Toronto, where Mr Toronto is a meta-character version of myself, I can manufacture dramatic arcs and character development in tandem with journalistic inquiry that has a healthy dose of satire.
In visual terms, like director Errol Morris, I too want direct eye contact but without an enormous distracting camera contraption. He uses something called an Interrotron that allows him to make eye contact with his interviewees. No need for me to use the bulky Interrotron!
(http://www.whiterabbitdesigncompany.com/Miscellaneous/images/Interrotron.html).
Many scenes and cuts in my film, the most important ones, will literally be direct eye contact. Including blinking and glancing to the side.
Many documentaries have used secret cameras to shoot with and blend that footage with a more conventional camera. My eye camera footage will tend to come in fleetingly to illustrate points or for times when a standard camera is not possible. It will also be a B-camera that can be edited into a sequence with the main A-camera.
I might eyecam record the mess that I see when I go to a 3D movie. Something that I will never be able to watch again. A retinal chip recipient (whose implant restores rudimentary vision) could put the loss of one eye into perspective by reminding me that I didn’t lose vision – just stereo vision. I could intercut what they see of me, swaths and patterns of light, with what I see of them through my eye camera.
The accident I had began a journey that would lead me to add technology to my body and ask hard questions about Big Brother. I will take a shotgun and go back to my grandfather’s farm in Ireland, where I first injured my eye. I will dramatically blast a pile of cow manure without shooting my eye out. I will have come full circle and will finish the job I started as a boy as a grown man. I’ll film it with my new video eye but also with three other cameras for a multi-rendition like they do in Van Damme movies when Van Damme does his “final strike”.
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