Eye am a camera; Eye am everywear


for MZTV opening exhibit:

Preferably this will be a traveling exhibit to be shown at the Smithsonian Museum in the United States, and the Science Museum (e.g. Wellcome Wing, where WearComp was shown) in the U.K., and then to Canadian Museum of Civilization, etc. (e.g. since U.S. is very "provincial" they may react better if being first)...

Funding sources:

BUDGET:

Pieces to be exhibited (prioritized sequence list)

Generally a larger number of rigs are proposed into the exhibit, and as we get down to the actual details, new ideas unfold, resulting in slight variations in the number (e.g. it's better to bring too many items to exhibit, and thus not use them all in the exhibit, than to have too few).
Additionally, a piece entitled "Mirrorshades", as pictured in http://wearcam.org/lvac/ (second to last picture) is intended for placement at the entrance to the exhibit (where the Marilyn Munroe exhibit was). This piece is intended to be worn on a mannequin, and connected to a computer system which alternately shows transparency (a view of the wearer's eyes) and reflectivity (a view of the viewer). The switching between the two is done in the manner of a jump cut, with a deliberately induced vertical asynchronicity, in order to mimic typical video switching in video surveillance CCTV systems. A large screen TV behind the mannequin is intended to show only the viewer (reflection mode only, no transparency).
At the time of the exhibit opening, or slightly later, an additional piece entitled "ShootingBack Pack" http://wearcam.org/lvac/ third from last picture, is to be made available for display in the CHUM CITY building. This piece comprises five Internet connected cameras and a wearable radar system intended for display on one or more large screen televisions to be donated by SONY. It will become available after a department store performance piece entitled ECE431 Personal Safety Device for which it is required.

Layout and additional thoughts and ideas

Mannequin 1: the mannequin about to leap across the bridge of 3 or 4 artifacts.

Mannequin 2: the one on the circular raised portion, closest to mannequin 1.

Mannequin 3: the one on the circular raised portion, furthest from mannequin 1.

Mannequin 4: the one in the middle on the circular raised portion, (the tall antennas will not reach too close to the ceiling)

The theme of the circular raised portion of mannequins 2, 3, and 4 is wearable television in the cybernetic photographic context, (painting with lightvectors) for which lightvector paintings from the past 20 years would play on the tv screens mounted thereupon.

Mannequins 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 represent the theme of performance art. This theme differs somewhat from the earlier theme because the earlier theme regarded television as a means to another end (production of the final lightvector paintings) while the performance art theme of mannequins 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 incorporates television more directly. These devices were Internet connected wearable television production studios in which the television production was itself the final work of art, as well as the process of resituating television in a disturbing and disorienting context to challenge our preconceived notions of the moving visual image, and of cameras in particular.

While mannequins 1-4 depict that which was concerned with static art in the lightvector painting, mannequins 5-9 clearly shift to the moving image as an art form.

These mannequins could therefore be situated differently, e.g. around the periphery, or around the museum, in a more dynamic fashion.

If space permits, an additional one or two mannequins would wear one or both of the anonymous Internet televisor art depicted in http://wearcam.org/id/floorprojector.htm and http://wearcam.org/newsflasher/ (warning: art may offend)

Additional pictures showing examples of installation setup

Previous exhibits at the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam http://wearcam.org/stedelijk/ and http://wearcam.org/lvac/index.html may be consulted as examples of how to lay out the exhibit.

Additional concerns with present design

Having the mannequins lean out into publically accessible space may present a hazard to the visually challenged or mobility impaired.

In particular, consider the growing population of elderly who may visit with their children, etc., and may bump into objects that extend outward from the floor, beyond the "footprint" that can easily be determined with a guide cane in the case of the visually challenged.

Moreover, young children may also tamper with these devices despite any motion alarms or the like, which would otherwise constantly be triggered giving excessive false alarms and reducing sensitivity (what the layperson describes as "crying wolf"). The mannequins being too easily accessible could have the alarms frequently activated.

Other items such as the base station depicted in the middle of the first picture of http://wearcam.org/citytv/ need to also be isolated and protected from tampering. The raised portion in the middle works well for this purpose because it is raised and also because it is slanted (making it an unwelcome surface upon which to walk, etc.).

Some of these issues should still be addressed.

Mannequins are to be painted mid grey (photographic grey), wherein mid grey is defined as reflecting 18% of the incident light regardless of wavelength (e.g. the color of the standard video/photographic "grey card" used in the television industry). Mannequins are to be dressed in black clothing (black cloth being symbolic of the photographic past and of the video camera which is itself a descendant of the camera obscura).

Mannequins in a variety of poses are to be selected, suitable for emphasizing the portable, mobile, and wearable nature of television in the modern age of the nomadic.

Mannequins are to be secured to platform(s) with standard butt rods, screwed to the platform, and, additionally, both feet are to be firmly screwed to the platform, or mannequins otherwise need to be secured so that the often heavy packs they wear to not tip them over.

One important aspect of this exhibit is the transition of time, and the rapidly changing notion of time, and the passage of time. The Internet has so rapidly changed our world, yet the "cyborgs" shown in the exhibit represented the past (even though this apparatus has appeared on many magazine covers, etc., to depict the future). This wonderfully confused sense of past, present, and future could be amplified by having video from the cyborgs transmitted to the many different television sets in many different time periods, so that the visitors to the museum would see themselves upon the different television screens as they explored the evolution of television from the big heavy TV sets to the EyeTap television systems of the future.

Linux wristwatch

The Linux wristwatch (wristwatch based TV production studio) needs to be integrated into the exhibit in such a way that it does not get visually lost in the clutter. This will be the remaining challenge. There is more information on this piece at http://wearcam.org/wristcam/

excerpts from ISSCC 2000 conference where the invention was presented

ISSCC: 'Dick Tracy' watch watchers disagree

By Peter Clarke
EE Times
(02/08/00, 9:12 p.m. EST) 
   
   SAN FRANCISCO -- Panelists at a Monday evening (Feb. 7) panel session
   at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) here
   failed to agree on when the public will be able to buy a "Dick Tracy"
   style watch for Christmas, with estimates ranging from almost
   immediately to not within the next decade.
   
   Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, was hailed as
   the father of the wearable computer and the ISSCC's first virtual
   panelist, by moderator Woodward Yang of Harvard University (Cambridge
   Mass.).

...

   Not surprisingly, Mann was generally upbeat at least about the
   technical possibilities of distributed body-worn computing, showing
   that he had already developed a combination wristwatch and imaging
   device that can send and receive video over short distances.

   Meanwhile, in the debate from the floor that followed the panel
   discussion, ideas were thrown up, such as shoes as a mobile phone --
   powered by the mechanical energy of walking, and using the Dick Tracy
   watch as the user interface -- and a more distributed model where
   spectacles are used to provide the visual interface; an ear piece to
   provide audio; and even clothing to provide a key-pad or display.