Eye Spy: Filmmaker Plans to Install Camera in His Eye Socket

Here is a bit from another interesting camera related story on the WIRED website.
Hmmm...If only they would make contact lenses that were cameras I would totally get one.

Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it's a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move.

The eye he's considering replacing is not a working one -- it's a prosthetic eye he's worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around.

"If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?" he asks.

Spence, who calls himself the "eyeborg guy," will not be restoring his vision. The camera won't connect to his brain. What it will do is allow him to be a bionic man where technology fuses with the human body to become inseparable. In effect, he will become a "little brother," someone who's watching and recording every move of those in his field of vision.

If successful, Spence will become one of a growing number of lifecasters. From early webcam pioneer Jennifer Kaye Ringley, who created JenniCam, to Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell, to commercial lifecasting ventures Ustream.tv and Justin.tv, many people use video and internet technology to record and broadcast every moment of their waking lives. But Spence is taking lifecasting a step further, with a bionic eye camera that is actually embedded in his body.

This is quite a lengthy article, read the entire thing on

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/eye-spy-filmmak.html

Hello all!

Some of you may have read this on the WIRED website.

Happy Accident Opens Door to Cheaper, Higher-Resolution Cameras

By Dave Bullock

12.01.08

LOS ANGELES — Scientific accidents have brought some of the most groundbreaking discoveries — vulcanized rubber, X-rays, penicillin — and now scientists at UCLA have accidentally discovered a material that could make digital cameras as we know them obsolete.

Graduate student Hsiang-Yu Chen was working on a new formula for solar cells when something went wrong. Instead of creating electricity when hit with light, the conductivity of the material she was working with changed.

"The original purpose [was] to make a solar cell more efficient," says Chen. "However, during the research we found the solar cell phenomenon [had] disappeared." Instead, the test material showed high gain photoconductivity, indicating potential use as a photo sensor.

Thanks to this lucky mistake, a new breed of camera sensors that are cheaper, higher-resolution and have lower distortion could be on the horizon.

Things To Think About

Hello all,

was hoping to find an image of a pinhole camera made from a turkey since it is close to Thanksgiving, but no such luck (I'm sure there is some form of turkey in Spam). Anyway, had a couple of ideas I figured you all could think about. Maybe we could do something where we all brought weird objects in class and worked on making pinhole cameras out of them. Then after we made the cameras we could take photos and show off what we came up with. Just a thought.

I know we talked about doing something with Polaroid in mind (which would be awesome!) since they are discontinuing the production of their instant film, but what about thinking about doing something for the whole digital to analog thing since we are making the change after next semester. Still trying to come up with a plan but if you all have any ideas feel free to share.

Hope you all have a great turkey or tofurky day

Polapremium????

Hey guys, found this site pretty randomly and I must say I am intrigued. The page only says "Polapremium -- The new home of instant photography" but that is enough to keep me interested. There is not much else there yet except for a countdown in seconds that seems to end around next Thursday or Friday (my math is not all that reliable). So keep your eyes peeled and hopefully this will be something worthwhile.

What do you guys think?

Google and Flickr and Smithsonian, oh my!

One of the great things about the Smithsonian being public domain is that eventually, it all winds up on the internet.  And it has.  

The Smithsonian Flickr Account has over 1200 images from the collection of the world's largest museum, or "a sample of the more than 13 million images in some seven hundred collections in our museums, archives, and research centers." This is some seriously cool public domain stuff, also available in High-def, ripe for both research and appropriation.

Because we do that.

Like Marchel Duchamp did.

LIFE Photo Archive To Be Made Available On Google

This may be more exciting to some of you than others.

Access to LIFE's Photo Archive -- over 10 million images in total -- will soon be available on a new hosted image service from Google, Time Inc. Ninety-seven percent of the photographs have never been seen by the public. The collection contains some of the most iconic images of the 20th century, including works from great photojournalists Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Gordon Parks, and W. Eugene Smith.

These images can be found when conducting a search on Google.com or on Google Image Search. Users can also search through the LIFE Collection directly by visiting http://images.google.com/hosted/life.

The LIFE Photo Archive featured on Google will be among the largest professional photography collections on the Web and one of the largest scanning projects ever undertaken. Millions of images have been scanned and made available on Google Image Search today with all 10 million images to be available in the coming months.

Geostationary Banana over Texas

Although this may not have anything to do with photography I found it quite humorous none the less.

The Geostationary Banana Over Texas project hopes to put a giant banana over Texas.

The artist behind the Banana Over Texas work is César Saez. Saez plans to put the banana between the high atmosphere and earth's lower orbit for about one month. It will be visible to Texans with the naked eye, day and night.

As stated on the website: the banana will be constructed like a blimp. Filled with helium, it will float between 30 and 50 km up in the sky. I will have a semi-rigid structure made of bamboo and a skin made with synthetic paper. Thanks to an extra load in gas and a valve system, it will keep its shape at all times. The final size of the piece will be 300 meters in length.

They were suppose to launch this thing in August 2008 but sounds like they ran into issues with funding of course.

Everything is bigger in Texas.. even the giant bananas floating in the sky.

Grand Rapids Redux

Well, for the like... six of us... that went [plus Jan and Crew, and Fred] it was interesting.  Between seeing The Beatles and Chaplin well larger than life size, to stumbling down the stairs and onto the hoovercraft;  to a Deitmar retrospective... to shiney things... thanks to all of us that went.

Grand Rapids - Image Transfers - Cool Art

So for all that do NOT know. We are going to Grand Rapids on Saturday to hit up some art Galleries. If you want to go and have not talked to anyone you can email me or just show up at Wightman 153 at 11:30 saturday morning. It should be a pretty cheap trip, seeing as at least one of the galleries is free.

Next week we are going to have a demo by Kelly P. She is going to show anyone who is interested how to do direct image transfers. Also bring ideas for work that we can do, any cool artists you have seen in your travels through the world of art that you think we would be interested in, and any work that you would like some feed back on.

As for cool art, I found this the other day and thought it was pretty creative. The guys who make photoshop have been busy getting CS4 ready for us to make pretty pictures with, but in their spare time they created an amazing ad campaign.
Check it out here.

Hope to see you all saturday!

Mike

New Generation of Polaroid

Hey all,

check this out! As some of you may know Polaroid has worked with ZINK (zero ink) to put out an ipod sized printer that instead of using actual ink cartridges uses this special paper that is embedded with colored dye crystals that get heated up by the printer to make a photograph. Now of course the next step is to put this printer into a digital camera and voila...a digital Polaroid (kinda)! They will be marketing a version of this camera that spits out 2x3 prints hopefully this winter, but they also are in works to be producing a camera that will do the standard polaroid size of 4x3(sometime in 2009). It's not the same as a nice solid polaroid that develops before your eyes...but awesome none the less. If you are itching for this technology then there is a camera coming out in Japan starting November 28 (in America by April or May 2009)for around $320, the TOMY xiao TIP-521 Digital Camera. The neat thing about this camera is not only can you print within the camera but it also features an IrDA receiver so that you can print images sent to the xiao wirelessly from other IrDA devices (other cameras, phones). Pretty awesome stuff!

Marios

Installation Art

Very cool work by an artist named Birjer Jarlsgatan (I think that is him name). Basically the work makes you think that areas of the restaurant are under surveillance.

Just check it out!

Art is terrifying.

Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2KkGFuRLew&feature=related

That's a sculpture by Theo Jansen that runs entirely off the wind.

He has since developed ways for the sculptures to save their wind energy and the ability to turn around when confronted with impassable obstacles like buildings or bodies of water. They even have a hammer system that will drive a stake into the ground when the wind becomes too extreme for them to handle.

The goal is to have a multitude of these different "animals" living on beaches and be totally self-reliant.

This is a pretty different way to sculpt and I'm just wondering...

Where is the line between Scientist and artist?
Is there a line at all?
Or in this case, when does a person start becoming God?

Just a few things

Hey guys,

So, I sent out author invites to everyone who is currently on my version of the email list. So if you did not get an invite to your email you can do a couple things: first check your spam folder it may have gotten sent there, or you could just email me and Ill send you an invite (and add you to the email list if you want.

Remember, this is YOUR blog not just mine. Feel free to add ANYTHING that you feel others would find of interest. If it has a photographic element that is a bonus, not that I am saying it has to because I want this to be very open.

Also, if you guys have not seen the 6x6 show that is up on the walls at Kaya you should take a look. It was an amazing success, there were around 75 pieces entered and we hung every single one of them on the wall. It is truly something to see. On that note, I have been told that the people over at Kaya want to keep that space permanently stocked with fresh art. This was setup through Print Club (they meet right after us with art league if you are interested, its a blast) but I have asked and we are more than welcome to contribute. So if you guys want to have your work shown for all the world to see (get it out of just the art department) either get a hold of me or the heads of print club/art league.

I seem to remember people being interested in some sort of Halloween party/art show. Again, the every vigilant people over at print club/art league have expressed similar interest. I think a group event would be really cool, plus then we would not be competing for people to attend.

For our next meeting: Pictionary, Telephone, and Abstract Images. And if everyone could come up with one idea for a show we could get one started pretty soon. And as always if you have ideas for happenings or anything else we could do keep it coming.

Thanks guys, hope to see you all Thrusday

Mike

Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life

Ok guys to get things off right after I URL fix and telling people about it again... sorry ... Here is a video that will make you VERY happy. If you dont know bright eyes then shame on you...they have been around for years and have almost always been great



I feel that this is more than a regular MTV music video. This a good work of art, seeing a lot of these people open up to the camera was a very moving thing to see. What do you guys think? Trashy MTV work? Of work of art?

Let's do something like this!

From Strobist,

By writing words onto transparent plastic and sliding the sheet into a slot near the film plane, the whole rig now works backwards and becomes a projector. By leaving the shutter open and slaving the rear flash, he can now project those words onto the subject of someone else's photo when their flash trips his flash.

He's in it for the social commentary, but I can't help thinking how much fun this would be for sophomoric jokes, too.

We have the technology... can we do this for a happening of some sort?  Projected art, anyone?

See original [and great video] here

--Jake

New Name, New Game

I have taken the time to rename and relocate the URL for this here blog. We are now at http://subversiveartclub.blogspot.com

So update whatever you have to update. And wash up just in case.

Till next week,
Mike

ps just had a pow wow about happenings and I am more excited than ever. So if you guys have ideas let it be known.

photoshop help

Hey I just found a pretty cool site with a lot of photoshop help. It claims to help you learn the program in one week.... sure

Now, I know photoshop pretty well. But it is always nice to have a place to look up those random questions.

Here is the link

READ, LOOK, AND READ

Excellent article over here with a lot of photography links.

One thing that I find myself doing (now that I'm graduated, ironically) is reading as much as I can on Photography/Photoshop techniques and looking at as many images as my brain can handle. I've decided that my main contribution to this blog will be posting a weekly list of links that I've come across in my "studies". I hope to find not only links to online articles, but also provide book reviews and portfolios.

Here's wishing that this blog is of use to all of us, whether it be for learning, teaching, or venting purposes.

Ron

I seem to be reading more and more recently about press photographers getting attacked while in the line of duty. It seems that a press pass means less these days than it used to. This article is written by a press photographer who, in the middle of shooting a peaceful anti-war protest in front of the Republican National Convention, had his camera blow up in his face. It seems it was hit with a riot bullet right before he was forced to the ground and manhandled by police forces, all the while doing everything in his power to stay out of the way of their way as they worked.

This is a video of Carlos Miller. He is a photographer that was arrested for taking photographs of a police officer. He was on a public street, watching pubic servants do their work in public. So he was doing nothing wrong at the time, other than taking pictures of a person of authority who did not want to be photographed. His website http://carlosmiller.com documents many cases of photographic rights being violated.

We now live in a time where it is VERY important to know your rights, especially when you are taking pictures (and even more so if that equipment costs more than you can afford to replace). It is not just the press that is under attack. There a many reports of people being told something along the lines of "since 9/11 we don't allow that anymore." Here is an article of a person arrested just of taking a photo of police on a public street with his cellphone. There was even a student here at CMU who was told to delete the memory card on their camera because they were in violation, while shooting from a public street. Luckly the student was able to recover those files.

So if you value your right to photograph it is more important than ever to know when you are justified in taking photos. Here is a PDF document that Lon Ferguson gave out in one of our photo classes that documents your rights (its off of my website, so if it does not work let me know). Also, here is an article from the USAToday about your rights a photographer. The most important thing is to just be kind and helpful, but do NOT give up your rights.

It is your right as an American to photograph, don't let anyone stop you.

Mike

What Is Happening?

So the chalking/Happening went over better than we could have hoped. Campus was covered with the mark of creativity for at least a day. (I took picture of the chalk hanging from the trees, but if anyone has pics of the chalking PLEASE email me or add it to flickr with the CMUPhotoClub tag. I really regret not having my camera with me...) With this success, I seems that people are open to this sort of thing. This encourages me, and I feel that we could very easily continue this kind of work with good reception.

So, if anyone has any ideas PLEASE make a point to either post it here or bring it to one of our meetings. (On that note please send an email to me at kent1ms@cmich.edu if you want authorship)

Till next Thursday take care all,
Mike

I setup the slideshow thing on the side >>> to show anything on flickr with the tag CMUPhotoClub (must be exact). So if you put anything that was made for one of our projects on flickr tag it CMUPhotoClub and it will show up there.

Photo Club 2008

Hey guys. I started a blog for us to communicate about meetings, as well as other things happening in our art community.

Also feel free to post anything else that you think others would enjoy.