Camera of the Future

What does it mean to give everyday objects and appliances the ability to see? From phones to buildings, cars and children's toys, an impressive array of things is being manufactured with embedded cameras that are connected to the Internet. How does this trend affect our relationship to these objects, as well as to sensor networks? What are the implications for traditional photography? If we consider these devices filmmaking tools, what new stories can we tell?

I would begin by asking students to name the most common camera. They suggested phones, consumer cameras, and security cameras. At the time, I believed it was the optical mouse: a tiny, very close camera focused on the texture of the surface beneath it. The example mattered because technical cameras were already operating around us in forms we did not necessarily recognize as cameras.

I co-led the all-day workshop during Specular's Towards a Virtual Reality research residency at MAD. Participants imagined, designed, and prototyped hybrid cameras through discussion, playful speculation, and experiments with devices both real and imaginary. The residency treated virtual reality as a cultural and cinematic question through a gallery installation and three public programs. I curated A Cinematic History of Virtual Reality as a loose eighty-year chronology, beginning with Pygmalion's Spectacles (1935) and moving through science-fiction films, corporate research, and product demonstrations. Selections included The Invention of Morel and The Lawnmower Man. We also led the Cultural Impact of Computer Vision roundtable with Lauren McCarthy, Sophie Kahn, Clement Valla, and Liam Young.