Many digital eyes and ears are on us as we move through our daily lives. Surveillance cameras monitor us on the street and smart devices listen to us in our homes.
What could happen if part of this surveillance happened through an expressive human eye simulation?
Researcher Marc Teyssier undertook to create one device, giving synthetic flesh to a webcam. He turned it into a moving eye, with eyebrows and eyelashes. So we have it eyecam.
You can see the camera in action in the following video, which gives us the impetus to use our imagination:
Imagine Eyecam waking up on its own.
Imagine Eyecam watching you every step of the way.
Imagine that Eyecam is always there όταν even when you do not want it to be there!
If you can get over the creepy idea, it's just a device. Seeing people in the video carrying an eye on their palms is certainly not the best.
The project is part of a research in Saarland University Human-Computer Interaction Lab, and explores very interesting questions. How would we interact with our devices if they were more human? How would our behaviors change if surveillance seemed much more tangible?
If you want to create your own mate, design and software of Eyecam are available at Github and Marc Teyssier promises a complete step-by-step video for her construction of. More details are available at Teyssier website, along with many images from each stage of the construction process.
