Eyeborg: Rob Spence Has A Camera For An Eye

Rob Spence is a Canadian documentary film-maker who lost one eye in an accident when he was nine. In 2009, he had his prosthetic replaced with a camera. In 2011, he collaborated with the makers of science-fiction video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution to make The Eyeborg Documentary on the current state and future of cyborgs.

The past
“I was in Ireland visiting my grandfather. I was nine years old and was shooting a pile of cow dung with a 12-gauge shotgun, because I thought that would be a good idea. And I wasn’t holding it correctly. The accident did a lot of damage to my right eye. It was legally blind and traumatised but stuck around until six years ago.

“[By then] it had gone completely blind and I looked like Le Chiffre from Casino Royale. Cool, but it was starting to get painful and there was a potential to affect the other eye, because they’re so sympathetic.

“In the meantime I had become a documentary filmmaker so when it had to come out, I thought I would put a camera in there. It’s not unique, that if you lose an eye you want a camera. It’s like if you lose a hand you think about getting a hook. It’s an idea that’s prevalent in pop culture. I just went through it.

“Kosta Grammatis was 23 when he saw me on Wired [Spence was interviewed in 2008 saying he wanted to replace his eye with a camera]. He asked if I wanted any help. You get a lot of calls from people when you do articles like that, but he ended up moving into my spare bedroom. He built the first prototype on my coffee table.”

The present
“How did I end up trusting him to put explosive electronics into my face? I had been working with older guys. But young people have a lot more spare time, they want to get stuff done and they’re a bit too stupid to know if stuff is impossible.

“The older people were a bit more ‘I’m an expert so here’s why this can’t be done’. Kosta just said ‘let’s do it now’. We ordered stuff – there was never any budget. So the first prototype was really low-tech. But we did it. A proof of concept. From there, Kosta helped me find other people.

“Since then, there have been four significant iterations of the eye. It’s now quite a clear video image. The big technical problem was that, for a while, we had a great camera working but the minute you stuck it in my head, it’s like taking any transmitter and depositing it deep inside a ham and seeing if it works from there. It’s exactly the same RF tech as most wireless microphones but it carries just video.

“In my eye socket there is a pin that’s drilled into a ball of sea coral. The coral is porous, very compatible. The blood vessels in the muscles grow into the ball of sea coral. Then you’ve got a base that you can marry to the prosthetic eye. So the camera looks where I look.

“Professionally, I use the camera eye in conjunction with a regular video camera because people aren’t ready for a 100% eye film. My director of photography will use my head as a camera and tell me where to look. I can direct myself – wherever I look is what I’m getting.

“The guys behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution did a lot of research on cyborgs – it’s a realistic version of the way things might go. And during their research they found me – I’m one of the guys you find on the internet if you look up ‘cyborg’ or ‘camera eye’.

“They said ‘why don’t you join forces with us?’ I said ‘why don’t you let me do a documentary I’ve wanted to do for a while on where we are now with cyborg technology‘?”

The future
“[While making that], the guy I found most interesting was Miika in Finland. He was in a three-month trial to get a retinal chip in his eye. He has retinitis pigmentosa. This blind guy gets a tiny chip in his retina and he can read four-centimetre-high text, recognise bananas, trucks coming towards him! Take an iPhone, Miika’s retinal chip and my eyeball camera and crush those into one and you’ve got [lead Deus Ex character] Adam Jensen’s camera eye in 2027.

“What exactly the future looks like is up for grabs. One of the things that pushes technological development is science fiction and pop culture. Star Trek was an inspiration for engineers to figure out stuff.

“There’s also a demand there. Look at schoolkids – the technology is already undetachable from their bodies. People missing bits of their bodies are the pioneers for an option we will all have for biomechanical augmentation. The world is changing from prosthetic to augmentation. As opposed to a high-tech sticking plaster it’s going to turn into an improvement – better, faster, stronger.

“We’re becoming less sacred about our bodies and what we’re willing to do with them. Look at fake boobs or tanning or Botox. Those are just to look better. What are the possibilities that people will cut or change their bodies for better job performance?

“All the prosthetics now are external, kinetic. In the game, Adam Jensen has stuff jacked right into his nervous system. The guys I’ve spoken to have said that will become more possible when surgery is based more on artificial intelligence – robots.

“If I were to try and map my arm’s movements from my brain, that’s a completely different part of my brain from your brain.”

“Once we work out how to make a neural interface, the next big leap will be nanotechnology. Whatever happens, it looks very likely that either your children or grandchildren will live twice as long as you. At the very least – people living twice as long as you, that’s a very different human being. We lived twice as long as our cavemen ancestors, but that was on a slow curve. Things aren’t changing that much, they’re just changing more rapidly!

“And, of course, like in the game – there are military uses for all this technology too. The number one organisation in the world pushing this technology is the Pentagon. But it’s the same feeling you have when you get on a plane and fly to Hawaii.

“The military are the ones who pushed the development of jet engine technology. The military is always pushing technology it can use for war, but that’s not necessarily where it ends up. Somebody’s going to get blown up, but it also means you get to go to Hawaii!”