With Personal Imaging I have attempted to define a new form of interaction between humans and technology.

I have equipped a pair of ordinary sunglasses with miniature spatial light modulators, CCD sensor arrays, and appropriate optics, so that when I put them on, I see a computer screen. On my computer screen I see a video image of what is actually present in the real world. Rather than allow the light to simply pass through, as would be the case with ordinary sunglasses, the apparatus absorbs and quantifies incoming light, processes it computationally, and then sends the processed result on toward my eyes.
After several years of adaptation, the apparatus has begun to function as a visual prosthetic of sorts - a true extension of my mind and body that allows me to record exactly what I see. Clearly I don't need to carry a camera because I am a camera, but in "Shooting Back", I do anyway. Thus the act of merely making a documentary with an ordinary camcorder (while wearing my prosthetic camera) allows one camera to see through the other, and thus allows the audience the unique first-person perspective, as though being inside my eye, while I am shooting with a camcorder.
In "Shooting Back", I confront representatives of the "Surveillance Superhighway" (establishments such as department stores where video surveillance is used extensively, yet photography by customers is strictly prohibited). I begin with my camcorder held down at my side, pointing away from a representative of the SS. Then, I ask the representative "What are those mysterious ceiling domes - those dark hemispheres..." or "Is that a video camera? Why are you taking pictures of me without my permission?". After the representative tells me that I am paranoid and that only criminals are concerned about cameras, I raise the camcorder up to my eye (the vantage point of the audience, who see the face-to-face conversation followed by the eyecup of a camcorder, eventually revealing the inside of the viewfinder, upon which we now see the representative of the SS displayed). At this point, the representative of the SS often shows great concern about my camcorder, and thus, in a 180 degree reversal, is self-incriminating.


Links: http://www.n1nlf-1.media.mit.edu/shootingback.html

Steve Mann (USA) is a doctoral student at the MIT Media Laboratory where he co-founded the MIT wearable computing project. He currently holds degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering. Steve is known to many as inventor of the so-called "wearable computer" and "WearCam" [personal imaging system]. His present research includes photometric image-based modeling, pencigraphic imaging, and wearable, tetherless computer-mediated reality. He is also an accomplished artist, having received numerous awards for his work in the interrogative, situationist, and visual arts. Steve currently holds degrees in physics and electrical engineering.