Eyes of the future.

Everyone has one, at least in their mobile. They are rather boring to look at, but are meant to look through, not at, so that doesn’t matter. What most people don’t realize is what’s inside all digital cameras. I didn’t either, but since the camera in itself is such an uninspiring object, I decided to take it apart and find some interesting parts, which I did.

They look very ordinary, but looking through them is all but…

The LCD screen in any digital camera consists of several separate layers of thin plastic films. Two of these are polarizing filters, one horizontal and one vertical. I guess they help prevent glare and also direct the light from the screen directly at the user. But if you pull them apart and hold them up in front of your eyes, they diffract incoming light and break up the image a bit like a kaleidoscope, but much more random and colourful. I carefully glued these filters to pieces of clear perspex that I installed in an old pair of glasses (I wanted to avoid adding refractive correction to the already diffracted colours and image fragments caused by the polarizing filters).

They look ordinary but make the world extraordinary.

I found that while wearing them most people could hardly take a few steps out of fear of walking into doors and other people, and were confusedly looking around them, but all with a big smile on their face.

Object no. 40