Monday, August 23, 2010

Eyeborg: Direct Cinema to the Extreme

What's a documentarian who lost his eye to do? Well, how about a prosthetic eye that doubles as a video camera! Rob Spence of Toronto is planning to use his video eye to shoot a documentary about, what else, the global spread of surveillance cameras. Imagine being interviewed by someone who does not appear to have a video camera, and then be told that the camera was his EYE?! It brings a whole new dimension to ethical debates about hidden cameras.

The idea of cyborgs (half human, half machine) has been around in sci-fi for some time, and the Six Million Dollar Man had augmented vision...but now it appears that reality is catching up to fantasy.

Read more at his blog, or watch the videos on his Vimeo channel. If you're not too squeamish, the Eye In and Out video is classic!