The problem with modern technology, some sickos seem to think, is that it’s just not fleshy enough. Previously, some sulfur-smelling portal linking the netherworld to our plane of existence vomited up Skin-On Interfaces, a horrific solution to some serial killer’s mumbled complaint that phones just don’t have enough human-like skin on them.
Now the same people behind Skin-On (and a creepy, phone-mounted robot finger) have returned with Eyecam, which seeks to switch up the design of a typical webcam by encasing it in a disembodied eyestalk.
Created by a Human Computer Interaction Lab research team led by Marc Teyssier, the Eyecam sits atop a monitor and just kind of stares at you while you try to get something done other than dwelling on its continued existence. A video that runs down its features asks us to “Imagine Eyecam waking up on its own” before showing us just that. The clip tells us to “Imagine Eyecam observing every one of your steps” and to “Imagine bonding with Eyecam” before we see footage of a man petting the horrid device and smoothing out the hair on its single eyebrow.
Eyecam’s website describes its greater purpose. “By presenting Eyecam, an anthropomorphic webcam mimicking a human eye,” it reads, “we challenge conventional relationships with ubiquitous sensing devices and call to re-think how sensing devices might appear and behave.” The evil cyclops tube certainly accomplishes all of this, as well as Teyssier and the Human Computer Interaction Lab’s goal of “[highlighting] the privacy issues of sensing devices.”
Now that we have both Eyecam and Skin-On, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be much longer before we have entire fleshy computers that we won’t have to operate with a mouse, keyboard, or touchscreen. We look forward to starting our days work by climbing into their clammy silicone embrace—a perfect synthesis of blood, plastic, and metal more horrible than anything Cronenberg or Tsukamoto could dream up.
[via The Verge]
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