BRUSSELS — A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras.
Canadian Rob Spence’s eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the disability into an advantage.
A fan of the 1970s television series “The Six Million Dollar Man,” Spence said he had an epiphany when looking at his cellphone camera and realizing something that small could fit into his empty eye socket.
With the camera tucked inside a prosthetic eye, he hopes to be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye, his muscles moving the camera eye just like his real one. His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter.
Spence said he plans to become a “human surveillance machine” to explore privacy issues and whether people are “sleepwalking into an Orwellian society.”
He said his subjects won’t know he’s filming until afterward, but he will have to receive permission from them before including them in his film.
