Eyeborg: Filmmaker developing eye-socket video camera

"Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths," wrote Jean Baudrillard, "to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void."

Maybe, but Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence is considering making the playback happen in this life: Having lost an eye at age 13, he's planning on putting a wireless video camera in his eye socket. But getting a wireless camera -- lens, power supply, circuitry and all -- inside a sealed capsule that can fit into an eyeball-sized hole is proving challenging. But,

Assuming the size, weight and water-tightness issues can be solved, Spence has a vague idea of how he thinks it can work. A camera module will have to be connected to a transmitter inside the prosthetic eye that can broadcast the captured video footage. To boost the signal, he says he can wear another transmitter on his belt. A receiver attached to a hard drive in a backpack could capture that information and then send it to another device that uploads everything to a web site in real time.

On his blog, Spence says he won't be "lifecasting" -- 24/7 live videofeed of his life -- but he'll "use the eye-cam the same way I use a video camera now -- or the same way any filmmaker would use a camera enabled cell phone." He's making a documentary on the project, which likely will include some grisly footage (available at Wired.com) of his eyeball-removal surgery.

Via tumblelikeyougiveadamn. Photo by Steve Mann.