Rob Spence

Canadian Rob Spence has been called Eyeborg because he has a prosthetic eye with a wireless video camera embedded in it. Quite a useful device for a professional filmmaker.

Spence sustained permanent damage to his right eye when he was 9. In 2009, he asked several engineers to make him a battery-powered camera eye. It’s not connected to his brain but it does provide the world’s first literal point of view including glancing around and blinking.

Being an eyeborg, Spence became interested in cyborgs or beings with both organic and mechanical parts.  Using Adam Jackson, a fictional cyborg from 2027 and the main character of computer game ‘Deus Ex’ as an example, Spence went on a quest to see how far mankind is from making this fantasy real. For his film Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary he traveled the world to meet people with prosthetic body parts that are actually connected to the brain. Part of the film is recorded with Spence’s camera eye, with Spence remarking: ‘I am now filming your bionic hand with my bionic eye.’

Meanwhile, the team of engineers has worked on improvements to the prosthesis, making it look more like a real eye. Spence’s ‘spy-eye’ has met with criticism too, but Spence, who also produced two documentaries on the proliferation of surveillance cameras in Toronto, says: 'People are more scared of a center-left documentary maker with a prosthetic eye than the 400 ways they are filmed every day at the school, the subway, the mall.’