Filmmaker to use eye camera for documentary

Big Brother is watching you - and so is Little Brother.

Toronto filmmaker Rob Spence says he is getting a tiny video camera put inside a prosthetic eye to allow him to secretly film his subjects.

Spence says his goal is twofold: to raise awareness of constant surveillance in society and to get people talking unself-consciously.

"When you bring a camera, people change," said Spence, who lost his right eye as a young teen in a shooting accident on his grandfather's farm. "I wouldn't be disarming at all. I would just be some dude. It's a much truer conversation."

He hopes to have a prototype eye cam by February.

"As opposed to Big Brother watching from above, there (will be) Little Brother checking things out from below," he said of his project.

Spence, who has been writing about it on his blog "Eyeborg," plans to use the device for a documentary that will touch on his concerns about surveillance. His subjects won't know they will be on camera.

"People won't be aware of it at all. There's ethical issues with that, but I am a filmmaker," he said. "If you're averse to it, that's fine, don't sign the release form. I won't put you in the documentary."

Spence, 36, likens the idea to HBO's TV show "Taxicab Confessions," where participants can sign a release to have their cab conversations - recorded by hidden cameras - made public.

He's getting help with the project from the University of Toronto's Steve Mann, an expert on wearable computing and cyborgs (organisms that have artificial and natural systems). Mann also has expressed concerns about surveillance in society and how it needs to be counterbalanced by ordinary citizens.

Spence said he believes the tech-savvy will be the modern keepers of civil liberties.

"The more techno-geek you become, probably the safer we will all be."

Spence starred in the 2007 documentary "Let's All Hate Toronto," which aired on CBC-TV. His work has also appeared on Discovery, Vision and Space TV.

He's not alone in his quest for an eye camera. San Francisco artist Tanya Vlach wants a camera implant in her prosthetic eye and has put out a call on her blog for engineers to build her an eye cam, which could let her shoot video from her perspective or "lifecast" events.

Spence said he isn't going to focus on "lifecasting," or broadcasting his life 24-7 on the Internet.

He also isn't going to swap the eye cam, which won't restore vision, for his regular prosthetic eye on a permanent basis.

The video camera will be embedded in a prosthetic eye shell being made by Toronto ocularist Phil Bowen, who said he's not looking at the project from the "whole Big Brother thing."

"I am looking at it as the first step in taking a prosthetic eye that people might be able to see out of," Bowen said, adding that he is hoping a doctor will be able to take the research forward.

He described the camera as about the size of a pea and said people shouldn't notice Spence's camera eye. "It would look slightly lazy, but you shouldn't be able to tell."

The eye cam could be similar to a tiny medical camera used in such procedures as colonoscopies.

Digital commentator Carmi Levy said Spence's eye camera documentary should make people think about how they can move from convenience store to gas station to office to bank and home under the view of surveillance cameras.

Levy said Spence is taking back control.

"It's a Little Brother to the Big Brother presence," said Levy of Toronto's AR Communications Inc. "You are pointing the camera at the world instead of the other way around."

What do you guys think of this idea? would you be open to being recorded by the camera? would you be willing to appear in the documentary? or does the idea of being recorded by someone you don't even know sort of freak you out? post your thoughts...