Continuous Lifelong Capture of Personal Experience
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Toronto
I begin with the argument that continuous archival of per-
sonal experience requires certain criteria to be met. In par-
ticular, for continuous usage, it is essential that each ray
of light entering the eye be collinear with a correspond-
ing ray of light entering the device, in at least one mode
of operation. This is called the EyeTap criterion, and de-
vices meeting this criterion are called EyeTap devices. Sec-
ondly, I outline Mediated Reality as a necessary framework
for continuous archival and retrieval of personal experience.
Thirdly, I show some examples of personalized experience
capture (i.e. visual art). Finally, I outline the social issues
of such devices, in particular, the accidentally discovered in-
verse to surveillance that I call "sosuveillance". It is argued
that an equilibrium between surveillance and sousveillance
is implicit in the archival of personal experiences.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
I.4.0 [Image Processing and Computer Vision]: Gen-
eral; C.3 [Computer Systems Organization]: Special
Purpose and ApplicationsBased Systems--signal process-
ing systems; J.5 [Computer Applications]: ARTS AND
Design, Experimentation, Performance, Theory, Verification,
Computer vision, computer mediated reality, surveillance,
inverse surveillance, sousveillance, oversight, undersight, sur-
vey, sousvey, equiveillance, perveillance, weblog, cyborglog,
concomitant cover activity, eyetap, terrorism, guerrorism,
audit, vidit, auditor, viditor
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CARPE'04, October 15, 2004, New York, New York, USA.
Copyright 2004 ACM 1-58113-932-2/04/0010...$5.00.
THE AUDITOR/VIDITOR ANALOGY
Imagine if government tax auditors prohibited you from
keeping your own records of your own financial activities.
And suppose that the auditors themselves had very accurate
records of your activities. Now if the only records of your
life's activities were in the hands of someone else, would it be
reasonable for you to be held accountable to remember your
actions, without being permitted the ability to collect or
keep evidence in support of your own case or legal argument?
This is exactly what's at issue when Starbucks clerks, or
New York City Transit Authorities tell you that you're not
allowed to take pictures. I argue that in the future we will
likely have not only a right, but possibly even a responsi-
bility to keep our own lifelong cyborg log ("lifeglog") of our
personal experiences. And in the same way we've moved
from the aural tradition to the alphabit/alphabyte of writ-
ten literary records, giving rise to audits and auditors, we
may soon see the emergence of "vidits" and au/vi/ditors
where it will be seen as highly unusual if we have any breaks
in the continuity of our lifeglogs.
In this paper, I will describe not only the technologies
I have invented for lifelong cyborglogging, over the past 30
years, but also what it means to actually use these inventions
in the real world. In particular, these inventions are part of
an iterative process of invention, design, building, using, and
then back to reinvention, redesign, rebuilding, and re-using,
and so on....
EYETAP DESIGNS FOR CONTINUOUS
LIFELONG CAPTURE OF PERSONAL
EyeTap is an experience capturing system. EyeTap de-
vices cause the eye to, in effect, function as if it were both
a camera and display, by mapping an effective camera and
display inside the eye.
I first discuss the evolution of this technology over the
last 30 years, together with new EyeTap designs.
discuss some of the various applications that immediately
arise from the use of such technology and the various new
practices that are made possible with EyeTap technology.
Driven by a personal desire to explore new ways of see-
RAY OF HEAT
RAY OF HEAT
RAY OF LIGHT
RAY OF LIGHT
Figure 1: This unique arrangement allows EyeTap to capture and an-
alyze rays of light passing through the eye, modify them, and resyn-
ing, EyeTap devices have been invented, designed, built and
used over the last 25 years. Long term usage in day-to-day
life has led to greater insights into some of the issues that
would normally have not been discovered in a controlled lab
setting. It is this continuous lifelong usage that has re-
quired the development of devices that go beyond merely a
wearable camera and display.
Invention of electric eyeglasses
Traditional (optical) eyeglasses are limited to modifying
light by refraction, whereas next generation eyeglasses, called
"EyeTap" devices, can also modify light computationally.
With electric eyeglasses, in the future, instead of having to
get new lenses ground, our eyeglass prescriptions might be
downloaded over the Internet. There will also be new forms
of visual correction not possible with optics.
EyeTap devices work by co-locating three things:
1. the center of projection of a scene analysis device such
as a camera;
2. a view into a scene synthesis device such as an aremac;
3. the center of projection of the eye itself.
EyeTap devices allow for the creation of a "mediated re-
ality", because of the ability to modify the light that passes
through the eye. Such modification can be to change visual
content (such as filtering out advertising) or more simply to
see better in various ways. For example, such devices may
be used to see in complete darkness, by simply mapping
each ray of eyeward bound heat into a collinear and cor-
responding ray of eyeward bound light, as shown in Fig 1.
Traditional lens technology has allowed various optical
disorders to be corrected and has allowed some of our visual
abilities to be extended.
Sunglasses and welding glasses,
for example, allow us to see very bright scenes. Magnifying
lenses such as a jeweler might use, allow us to see very small
objects. More recently, devices have been made to allow us
to see in the dark although they are often bulky and danger-
ous to wear because they cause unnecessary disorientation
(e.g. because they consist of a separate camera and display,
rather than the eye-centered design like EyeTap).
EyeTap eyeglasses merge all of these different visual aids
into a single device, and consequently perform in situations
where each one of these seeing aids used alone will not suf-
fice. Consider driving on a country road at night. In this
scenerio, one may benefit from using night-vision technology,
however the headlights on an occasional oncomming could
be blinding. The use of an EyeTap device allows a person to
see in the dark without the danger of being blinded by the
occasional flash of light, since the world is partially medi-
ated by the EyeTap, but also can remain visible unmediated
Also, for those who suffer from more complicated visual
deficiencies, EyeTap devices allow for the use of computa-
tional methods to correct the deficiency.
The more important features of EyeTap devices however,
have no analog in traditional eyewear. EyeTap eyeglasses
can help us remember better, through what is called a life-
glog (lifelong cyborglog) or simply 'glog, for short. A 'glog
uses lifelong video capture to record what our eyes see over
our entire lifetime. By using the data management capabil-
ities of modern computers, we will be able to recall things
that we have seen with perfect clarity in a natural and in-
tuitive way. Having an on-demand photographic memory
can help all of us by offloading, to a wearable computer,
the task of memorizing now-mundane details that might
only later become important. This kind of visual mem-
ory prosthetic is very beneficial to all of us, since our
environments have become so overloaded with information.
This lifeglog can also be used to increase personal safety and
crime reduction by providing visual evidence for criminal
acts, and to allow for trusted third party inverse surveil-
lance ("sousveillance") in situations where the user may
feel threatened. Moreover, in settings where surveillance al-
ready exists, sousveillance (the recording of an activity by
a participant in the activity) can help prevent the surveil-
lance recordings from being taken out of context. It is this
contextual integrity of the evidence, combined with a per-
sonal right and responsibility of individuals to preserve ev-
idence, that sets forth an equilibrium between surveillance
EyeTap devices can also take an active role in helping us
to filter our visual world so salient information stands out
from the background clutter of visual advertising detritus.
Imagine a world without advertisements! By using advanced
computational methods, EyeTap technology has been used
to remove the annoying visual propoganda that plagues our
Since EyeTap devices can function as a computer display,
they allow users to merge cyberspace with the real world.
This feature is tremendously important since we are becom-
ing increasingly bound to our computers due to our reliance
on the internet as both an information and a social resource.
As long as we are forced to focus our attention on a single
physical object (such as a computer terminal, PDA or cellu-
lar phone), we will only feel more encumbered by computer
and telecommunication technology as time passes. There-
fore the EyeTap represents a liberating tool, to free us from
the confines of attention-demanding computer terminals.
History of eyetap designs
Since my childhood in the 1970s I have been inventing,
designing, building, and wearing computer systems for the
creation of electronically mediated vision. The creation of
EyeTap followed the practice of designing these wearable
The EyeTap and wearable telephone/computer
was and still is an important wearable input/output device
satisfying the two most used senses of experiencing life as
well as interacting with our surroundings, i.e.
The evolution of these inventions is shown in Fig 2
The drive to miniaturization led me to create, in 1995,
devices having a completely normal appearance. However,
subsequent realization that covertness stigmatizes the activ-
ity, led me to no longer see covertness as essential.
To explore new concepts in imaging and lighting, I de-
signed and built the wearable personal imaging system. Orig-
inally, a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT, 1.5in, 5kV) on the helmet
presented both text and graphics (including images), and a
wearable light source helped me find my way around in the
dark. I also carried an electronic flash lamp that let me ex-
plore, as a form of visual art, how subject matter responded
Over the years development of smaller and smaller per-
sonal imaging systems has allowed for the EyeTap to shrink
to an acceptable size: acceptable in terms of wearability and
With the advent of consumer camcorders, miniature CRTs
became available, making possible the early to mid 1980s
electric eyeglass design as shown in Fig 3.
Later I used a 0.6-inch 6kV CRT facing down (angled back
to stay close to the forehead).
This apparatus was later
transferred to optics salvaged from an early 1990s television
set (Fig 2, early 1990s). Though still somewhat cumber-
some, the unit could be worn comfortably for several hours
at a time. An Internet connection through the small hat-
based whip antenna used TCP/IP with AX25 (the standard
packet protocol for ham radio operators).
These wearable computer reality mediators have evolved
from headsets of the 1970s, to EyeTaps with optics outside
the glasses in the 1980s, to EyeTaps with the optics built
inside the glasses in the 1990s to EyeTaps with mediation
zones built into the frames, lens edges, or the cut lines of
bifocal lenses in the year 2000 (e.g. exit pupil and associ-
ated optics concealed by the transition regions between glass
and frame, or within the frame). For example, in one such
design, the computational element of the EyeTaps is incor-
porated into the eyeglass frames, as shown in Fig 4. This
system functions as both an electric seeing aid, as well as
a wearable cameraphone, using a sleek and slender boom
microphone as illustrated in Fig 5.
In view of such a concealment opportunity, I envisioned a
new kind of EyeTap design in which the frames come right
through the center of the visual field. With materials and as-
sistance provided by Rapp optical, eyeglass frames were as-
sembled using standard photo-chromatic prescription lenses
drilled in two places on the left eye, and four places on the
right eye, to accommodate a break in the eyeglass frame
along the right eye (the right lens being held on with two
miniature bolts on either side of the break). I then bonded
fiber optic bundles concealed by the frames, to locate a cam-
era and aremac in back of the head, for being concealed by
the hair of the wearer.
This fully functional research prototype proves the viabil-
ity of using eyeglass frames as a mediating element. The
frames being slender enough (e.g.
two millimeters wide)
do not appreciably interfere with normal vision (especially
when the apparatus is in operation) being close enough to
the eye to be out of focus.
Figure 3: An early to mid 1980s eyeglass-based lifeglogging and com-
puter mediated reality system, recently shown at the Smithsonian
Institute, National Museum of American History, as well as at SIG-
GRAPH. This system was developed for the production of visual art
in a computer mediated reality environment. The picture itself was
captured using another similar system, and similar methodology.
This brings about a reversal of the roles of eyeglass frames
and eyeglass lenses, in which the eyeglass lenses are a deco-
rative design element, whereas the frames are what enables
Although, in this design, one might think that the frames
would block vision, the fact that they are so thin makes them
quite tolerable. But even if the frames were wider, they can
be made out of a see-through material, and of course they
can be seen through by way of the illusory transparency
afforded by the EyeTap principle. Therefore, there is def-
inite merit in seeing the world trough eyeglass frames; the
frames do not block vision because of illusory transparency,
because they are computationally transparent as part of the
compuational process of seeing.
Fig 6 illustrates the concept of illusory transparency. Sub-
ject matter blocked by the display device is still visible be-
cause the device exactly resynthesizes every corresponding
ray of light that was absorbed in the analysis.
Additionally, beyond merely an illusory transparency, the
computer screen is replaced by a computationally processed
version of reality.
In eyeglasses, the long-term adaptation to seeing through
a reality mediation device provides a unique opportunity to
capture, process, store, and recall visual memories. Unlike
Figure 2: Evolution of lifeglogging (lifelong cyborglogging) for continuous archival and retrieval of personal experience.
Figure 5: Eyeglasses, having illusory transparent frames, form the
basis of the wearable cameraphone, for the continuous archival and
retrieval of personal video.
a mere wearable camera, the EyeTap, because it becomes
a manner of seeing, captures exactly what the bearer does
see. This results in a new kind of EyeTap cinematographic
vision, which involves long-term adaptation to the new way
A custom made injection moulded version of the EyeTap is
shown in Fig 7. Such a design is suitable for mass production
Design Principles: Basis of New EyeTap
The design of the EyeTap has evolved considerably over
the past 30 years. With components shrinking from day
to day the EyeTap design has become more feasible for
commercialisation and mass production. There are already
many displays on the market but the unique configuration
of an EyeTap with a camera and display simultaneously co-
located effectively inside the eye, allows for more possibili-
ties. It not only allows the merging of real world with com-
puter mediated world but also opens new avenues for lifelong
cyborglogging, and new modes of visual communication us-
ing computer mediated reality (Fig 8).
This configuration however has some critical points that
allow the interface to be intuitive, non obtrusive and truly
serves the possibility of having a computer as wearable as
ones wrist watch and spectacles. In particular, the design is
such that, after time, the user forgets he or she is wearing
While many displays exist on the market, none are suit-
able for long term usage such as lifelong capture. Therefore
the EyeTap fills a necessary role in making lifelong continous
capture possible. The collinearity is the most important fac-
tor that is necessary to achieve this lifetime synergy: A very
important factor is the EyeTap distance. The dis-
tance from the diverter to the eye should be exactly
equal to that between the diverter and the camera.
This calibration is vital to meet an EyeTap criterion
in which the eye effectively becomes the camera.
Social Aspects The early prototypes were quite obtrusive
and often made people ill at ease, but more recently the
apparatus has been gaining social acceptance. This can be
attributed partly to miniaturization, which has allowed the
construction of much smaller units, and partly to dramatic
changes in people's attitudes toward personal electronics.
With the advent of cellular phones, pagers, and so forth,
such devices may even be considered fashionable.
When equipped with truly portable computing, including
a wireless Internet connection and an input/output device
like the modern style EyeTaps. the author found that peo-
ple were not distracted by the device. In fact, they could
not discern whether the wearer was looking at the screen or
at the other party, because the two are aligned on exactly
the same axis. This possibility only arises from the arrange-
ment possible in an EyeTap of the camera, diverter and the
Figure 4: Eyeglasses having illusory transparent frames. When worn, the frames pass directly over the eyes, and the wearer sees "through" the
frames by way of computer controlled laser light that resynthesizes rays of eyeward bound light. This fully functional but crude prototype leaves
the workings visible, but in actual manufacture, the workings may be completely concealed within the frames.
aremac. The problem of focal length can generally be man-
aged by setting it so that the display or aremac and anyone
the wearer is talking with are in the same depth plane. This
compared to all other systems that require complete atten-
tion into a display is far more intuitive in the user behavior
that will develop. Thus the aremac, combined with camera,
is preferable to a display.
APPLICATIONS, SECURITY AND
Just as computers have come to serve as organizational
and personal information repositories, "smart clothing", when
worn regularly, also becomes a multi purpose device.
After wearing the EyeTap for a number of years, one
adapts to seeing the world that way, and this provides a
new kind of personal experience capture, in day-to-day life.
The hands-free nature of the EyeTap therefore helps docu-
ment everyday personal interaction.
While a camera may not be used as a record of truth, it
can be used as a visual memory prosthetic. Our own family
photographs bring back childhood memories for each of us,
but mean little or nothing when shown to someone else.
Similarly, We can relive our Christmas vacation by scrolling
through an EyeTap image sequence, even if it is severely
downsampled (e.g. throwing away every 100 frames or so).
Even a low resolution movie brings the memory back to us
clearly in our own mind, even when the images are barely
discernable to others who were not present at the event.
Cyborglogging ('glogging) is the (usually continous) record-
ing of an activity by a participant in the activity, which of-
ten results in the serendipitous capture of precious moments,
such as the birth of a newborn baby, as shown, for example,
Such a living and permanently installed/instilled photo-
graphic perspective allows the bearer to capture the birth
of a newborn, or to capture baby's first steps.
I am a document camera.
The EyeTap also opens a new possibility: seeing another
person's point of view from within, i.e. not just a point
of view camera, but to actually see exactly what the other
person sees. The use of this technique has been made on
numerous occasions, including remotely delivered Opening
Keynotes at conference and symposia, that some have said
to be more compelling than the actual physical presence
of keynote speakers in previous years, and thus the remote
intervention is made interesting in and of itself. An example
of a Visual Vicarious Soliloquy, was the author's keynote
address at DEFCON 7, as illustrated in Fig 11.
This excerpt from the realtime 'glog depicts how the au-
dience was, in effect, able to "be me", rather than "see me",
in the sense that a first-person perspective was offered by
Figure 8: Computer mediated reality as a new form of interactive communication.
A remote spouse may, for example, provide interactive
annotation of visual space, to assist in memory, communication, etc..
the apparatus of the invention serving as an existential doc-
The existential aspect of the apparatus of the invention
puts the audience, in effect, inside the wearer's head to share
a truly first person perspective. I presented the Keynote
Address of DEFCON 7 as a lecture to myself, which I gave
while walking around, while writing on a notepad. The Eye-
Tap causes the eye itself to, in effect, function much like a
document camera, but also, through long term adaptation,
brings the wearer at one with his or her surroundings.
This capability adds a new dimension to videoconferenc-
PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE CAPTURE:
THE EVERYDAY WORLD IN A
One of the original goals behind the invention of the wear-
able computer and EyeTap devices was not just for per-
sonal experience capture but also for personalized ex-
Thus the EyeTap device that allows the wearer to capture
everyday life without conscious thought or effort, also allows
the wearer to interpret the world in an expressive and artistic
Computer Mediated Reality as a form of
Computer Mediated Reality is created when the user's
visual perception of their environment is augmented, dimin-
ished or otherwise altered in some way. I achieve this by
the use of an EyeTap device to change the wearer's per-
ception, possibly by altering the visual appearance of the
scene, or adding/removing/modifying visual content. In this
way, computergenerated information may be added into
the scene, or may replace/modify content in the scene. Sim-
ilarly, realworld objects may be removed from the scene.
Finally, computer generated information may be blended
into the realworld scene. In particular, this computer gen-
erated information may consist of a view of the world, seen
in a different light.
Mediated Reality differs from virtual reality (or augmented
reality) in the sense that it allows users to filter out things
they do not wish to have thrust upon them against their
Here a computer display screen
(VGA television) is mounted on an easel to display the subject mat-
ter directly behind it. While at first one might be inclined to think
that such a device, whether in eyeglasses or life size, is totally useless.
However, it is the ability to insert computation in the reality stream
that makes it useful.
will. Just as a Sony Walkman allows us to drown out ambi-
ent noise or undesirable music with our own choice of music,
Mediated Reality allows us to implement a "visual filter".
Photographic Origins of Computer
Mediated Reality in the 1970s and 1980s
The original Personal Imaging application was an at-
tempt to define a new genre of imaging and create a tool
that could allow reality to be experienced with greater in-
tensity and enjoyment than might otherwise be the case.
This effort also facilitated a new form of visual art called
Lightspace Imaging (or Lightspace Rendering) in which a
fixed point of view for a base station camera was selected,
and then, once the camera was secured on a tripod, the
artist walked around and used various sources of illumina-
tion to sequentially build up an image layer-upon-layer in a
manner analogous to paint brushes upon canvas, and the cu-
mulative effect embodied therein. An early 1980s attempt,
at creating expressive images using the personal imaging
system developed in the 1970s and early 1980s is depicted
in Fig 12. Throughout the 1980s, a small number of other
artists also used the apparatus to create various lightvector
paintings. However, due to the cumbersome nature of the
Injection molded EyeTap suitable for mass production.
Note the illusory "eye is camera" (camera in the eye) appearance
owing to the fact that rays of eyeward bound light are diverted into a
camera (actually mounted in the nosebridge and pointing toward the
wearer's right eye).
early WearComp hardware, etc., and the fact that much of
the apparatus was custom made by, and to fit the author,
it was not widely used over an extended period of time by
However, the personal imaging system proved to
be a new and useful invention for a variety of photographic
My particular approach to creating this poetic narrative
on reality, was to combine multiple exposures of the same
Typically exposures are maintained as separate image files
overlaid on the artist's screen (EyeTap) together with the
current view through the camera. The exposures being in
separate image files allows the artist to selectively delete
the most recent exposure, or any of the other exposures
previously combined into a running "sum" on the EyeTap.
("Sum" is used in quotes here because the actual entity, a
summation in an antihomomorhic vectorspace .) Addi-
tional graphic information is also overlaid to assist the artist
in choice of weighting for manipulation of this "sum". This
capability is quite useful, compared to the process of paint-
ing on canvas, where one must paint over mistakes rather
than simply being able to turn off the brushstrokes that
were mistakes. Moreover, the ability to adjust the intensity
of brushstrokes after they are made, is also useful, beyond
merely turning them on and off. Furthermore, exposures to
light can be adjusted either during the shooting or after-
wards, and then re-combined. The capability of doing this
during the shooting is an important aspect of the personal
imaging invention, because it allows the artist to capture
additional exposures if necessary, and thus to remain at the
site until a final picture is produced. The final picture as
well as the underlying dataset of separately adjustable expo-
sures is typically sent wirelessly to other sites so that others
can manipulate the various exposures and combine them in
different ways, and wirelessly send comments back to the
artist (e.g. by email), as well as by overlaying graphics onto
the artist's head mounted display which then becomes a col-
Figure 9: Video still from 'glog showing Christina Mann, immediately
Lightstrokes and Lightvectors
Each of a collection of differently illuminated exposures
of the same scene or object is called a lightstroke. In the
context of Personal Imaging, a lightstroke is analogous to
an artist's brushstroke, and it is the plurality of lightstrokes
that are combined together that give the invention described
here it's unique ability to capture the way that a scene or
object responds to various forms of light. From each ex-
posure, an estimate can be made of the actual quantity of
light falling on the image sensor, by applying the inverse
transfer function of the camera. Such an estimate is called
a lightvector .
Furthermore, a particular lightstroke may be repeated
(e.g. the same exposure may be repeated in almost exactly
the same way, holding the light in the same position, each
time a new lightstroke is acquired). These seemingly identi-
cal lightstrokes may collectively be used to obtain a better
estimate of a lightvector, by averaging each of the lightvec-
tors together to obtain a single lightvector of improved signal
to noise ratio. This signal averaging technique may also be
generalized to the extent that the lamp may be activated at
various strengths, but otherwise held in the same position
and pointed in the same direction at the scene. The result
is to produce a lightvector that captures a broad dynamic
range by using separate images that differ only in exposure
Figure 12: The goal of Personal Imaging , is to create something
much more like the sketch pad or artist's canvas than like the camera
in its usual context. This kind of Personal Experience Capture pro-
duced as artifacts, results that are somewhere at the intersection of
painting, computer graphics, and photography, with an emphasis on
the personal interpretation of reality. Notice how the broom appears
to be its own light source (e.g. self-illuminated), while the open door-
way appears to contain a light source emanating from within. The
rich tonal range and details of the door itself, although only visible
at a grazing viewing angle, are indicative of the affordances of the
Lightspace Rendering  method.
Computer Mediated Reality as a tool for
transforming everyday life into visual art
Stepping beyond the obvious practical uses of Computer
Mediated Reality, there is a more existential motivation re-
garding how we, as humans, are able to choose the manner
in which we define ourselves . The lifelong cyborglog
recorder is more than just a visual memory prosthetic. It is
also a new tool for the visual arts.
One of the original goals of Computer Mediated Reality
was to create a bodyborne wireless sensory environment
which, although technically sophisticated, would function
more in the spirit of an artist's personal notes or a painter's
An example of the combination of different exposures of
the same subject matter, to generate lightvector paintings, is
shown in Figure 3 of an accompanying publication in ACM
Multimedia 2004, entitled "Sousveillance".
This process of "painting with lightvectors" was also pos-
sible with a group of people wearing computerized seeing
aids that were tuned to the same virtual channel, so that
there was a shared computer-mediated visual reality.
this way, the team experienced a collectively modified view
of the world, in the production of visual art. See Fig 13.
Lightvectoring: Blending in lightspace
It has been shown that cameras respond nonlinearly to
light . Because Mediated Reality typically uses a cam-
era to view the user's environment it may be considered a
photographic process. Thus, the nonlinear response of the
camera can be taken into account. This allows the use of
techniques dealing with camera response functions to be ap-
plied towards creating a convincing and visually accurate
Mediated Reality. In successful implementations of medi-
ated reality, computergenerated information is blended into
a realworld scene while taking into account the inherent
nonlinearity of the camera response.
Just as computergenerated information can be spatially
registered with the realworld, so to must it be tonally
aligned. Because the user's environment is percieved through
video taken from a camera, the photographic qualities of
the camera become important considerations when analyz-
ing images, and synthesizing output images.
This is important for Mediated Reality for a variety of rea-
sons. Firstly, from a userinterface standpoint, some form of
blending is required. If computergenerated information is
simply overlayed on the input image, then objects appear or
disapper behind the computergenerate information. While
this creates a more convincing appearance of the computer
generated information as being attached to the realworld,
the user can no longer see the occluded portions, which,
in some applications, may be undesirable. Thus, display-
ing a blended version of the realworld and the computer
generated information is often desirable.
For tonally accurate Mediated Reality, the computer gen-
erated information should appear to be appropriatedly light-
ened or darkened to match the realworld image in some
sense. For instance, in a dark environment, it may be desir-
able to dim the computer generated information to naturally
match the video image, and vice versa in a well-lit environ-
ment. Additionally, this also presents the eye with a more
uniform amount of light, allowing it to better adjust. The
computer generated information will be appropriately bright
in a bright image, and not be lost or difficult to see. Like-
wise, computergenerated information will be appropriately
dim in a dim image, and not overpower the image.
Finally, typical blending techniques may not produce de-
sirable results when applied to photographic material. The
blending applied for computer graphics applications does
not take into account the nonlinear nature of the images.
Photoquantigraphic technique (lightspace rendering) pro-
duce superior blending.
Fig 14 shows a lightvector painting for being exhibited to
replace billboards and advertising. By replacing offensive
billboards, advertising, and other visual detritus with fine
art, we can reduce the distracting and unpleasant visual
clutter, to allow the wearer of the electric eyeglasses to focus
more on what is important.
I found that when billboards and other ads are filtered out,
there is an abrupt and startling transition that is distracting
-- sometimes even more distracting than the ad itself, and
that this effect could be mitigated by making the ad dissolve,
much like the dissolve units used to crossfade between two
35mm slide projectors.
Fig 15 shows the results of an advertisement dissolve, as
part of ongoing collaborative work with my PhD student
The need to diminish existing architecture from a user's
view is discussed in . The removal of billboards via a
projective plane tracking algorithm is discussed in . Our
approach differs in the use of a photographic response based
blending techniques (lightspace rendering), rather than com-
plete removal or replacement of scene content.
Our approach is based upon comparametric methods of
determining the response function of the cameras [10, 2, 3,
1]. We assume that the camera's response function is known,
and use this information in the blending process. Candocia
[2, 3, 1] discusses use of the response function for blend-
ing images of the same scene to create image panoramas
and composites from differently exposed images registered
both spatially and tonally. Our blending differs in that it
uses computergenerated content from another scene to be
blended into the realworld scene.
Computer vision and image processing is achieved on the
graphics hardware by treating the input image as a tex-
ture. This image texture is mapped onto a quadtrilateral,
and this quadrilateral is displayed with the desired geom-
etry. The display geometry allows for scaled images to be
by displaying the image larger or smaller
than its original size), or a projection of the image to be
displayed. The latter is useful when combined with a pro-
jective plane tracker since images are naturally defined in
a projective space in both the tracking solution and the
graphics hardware. This also moves the task of image el-
ement interpolation onto the graphics hardware which uses
interpolation techniques on the texture.
Projective Image Registration
The most computationally intensive part of our method
for Computer Mediated Reality is the calculation of projec-
tive image registration parameters P which spatially align
the coordinate systems [x, y]
and [x , y ]
of two input im-
ages . Specifially, the algorithm calculates:
which solves for the 3 parameters (8 scalar parameters)
P = [a
to spatially register two images.
It has been shown that this algorithm is capable of track-
ing a user's head motion, as well as tracking planar objects
in the scene , using a wearable computer system and
EyeTap eyeglasses. In order to create a convincing com-
puter mediated reality for the user, we apply this algorithm
to register frames of video input from the EyeTap so the se-
quential images can be registered, and computer generated
information placed into each frame so that it appears affixed
to the realworld.
We have developed our system such that new image pro-
cessing and computer vision algorithms can be quickly im-
plemented, and then run as independent processes on multi-
ple parallel graphics devices, so that the system runs in real
LIGHTVECTORING MADE EASY:
"DUSTING" FOR MAINSTREAM
Having worked on mediated reality and lightvectoring for
some 30 years, it is my desire to bring this technology to
the masses, and make it readily available for anyone to use.
Thus, in part, this paper expands on aspects of the com-
panion paper I have published in ACM Multimedia 2004,
in particular, to make the art of lightvectoring easy, we de-
signed a simple hand grip for a light source and a simple
display (Fig 16).
Such a device is also easy for children to learn how to use
it (Fig 17). Once familiar with the operation, the device is
easy to actuate as a lightvectoring medium (Fig 18).
An example of an expressive/creative lightvector painting
by Christina appears in Fig 19.
Moreover, an archival of personal experience may help a
child remember a past that would be otherwise forgotten,
at an age when memory is not so well formed.
EXPERIENCE CAPTURE IS
Early on, in my pursuit of the invention, design, building,
and using electric seeing aids, and tools for archival and
recall of personal experiences, visual art, etc., I observed a
strong opposition from certain organizations.
Over the past 30 years I have noticed an increased peer
acceptance, over time. Over the same time period, organi-
zational acceptance has decreased. By organizational accep-
tance, I refer to the acceptance by persons acting in a role,
or official capacity.
Most notably, I noticed that the places where I suffered
the strongest form of discrimination where places that had
the greatest degree of surveillance cameras. It seemed as
though the more surveillance cameras an organization had
within it, the more opposition I would encounter. Thus I
came to think of personal imaging (i.e. the archival of
personal experience) as an inverse to surveillance, for which
I coined the term "sousveillance". Surveillance is French for
"veiller" ("to watch") and "sur" ("above"). Thus the word
"surveillance" means "to watch from above". This notion
of a God's eye view, watching down on us from on-high
(Fig 20), has been pervasive, implicit, but unspoken, and
unquestioned. In fact a recent series of posters put up by
the London Underground incorporated the imagery of eyes
in the sky, designed around the London Underground logo
The Sousveillance Industry
There is now a growing sousveillance industry. For exam-
ple, the Hitachi Design Center in Milano recently sponsored
an event entitled "Applied Dreams Workshop 3: 'Surveil-
lance and Sousveillance'". (See excerpt in Fig 22.) Other
companies such as Microsoft (this workshop, i.e. CARPE,
SenseCam, etc.), Nokia ("lifeblog" which is quite similar to
the author's lifeglog project), and Hewlett Packard (the au-
thor worked at HP Labs on many related ideas in the early
1990s) with their "casual capture" project, are doing similar
Sousveillance differs from counterveillance ("counter surveil-
lance is the practice of avoiding surveillance or making it
difficult" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance) in that
it's not necessarily aimed at avoiding or eliminating surveil-
lance, but, rather, at creating a separate view in the other
EQUIVEILLANCE: THE EQUILIBRIUM
BETWEEN SURVEILLANCE AND
Proponents of ubiquitous surveillance (or "perveillance"
pervasive surveillance, ubiqcomp, pervcomp, etc.) might
be inclined to propose an increase in transparency as a good
thing, or if not a good thing, as something inevitible. How-
ever, what people seem to not notice, is the one-sided nature
I noticed, for example, that taxicab drivers began to be-
come upset when photographed, around the same time that
surveillance cameras began to appear in taxicabs. Shopkeep-
ers became upset at being photographed around the same
time that surveillance cameras began to appear in shops,
and so on. More recently, around the same time that new
surveillance cameras were installed in the parks in Toronto,
signs were also put up warning people not to take pictures of
their own (Fig 23). One wonders if the surveillance cameras
were put up to enforce the no photography policy.
By simply trying to live my own life, without bothering
anyone, I found myself discriminated against, and I found
that this discrimination was correlated to the amount of
surveillance in an immediate environment. I do not try to
make the claim that the discrimination was caused by the
surveillance, but the correlation certainly was very evident,
and consistent over a 20 year period in many different coun-
tries around the world. It seemed to depend very little on
culture, i.e. it was consistent across many different cultural
Ironically, the prohibition on photography, and the like,
was allegedly for privacy reasons, e.g. the officials would
typically say that they were trying to protect the privacy of
other patrons, citizens, or the like.
Protect privacy by installing surveillance cameras?
Well, even if the surveillance cameras were, in fact, in-
stalled to help enforce rules that prevent people from pho-
tographing each other, one must ask: What definition of
privacy is being protected?
The answer, is of course, the very same kind of privacy
that prisoners of Bentham's Panopticon enjoy: they have
absolute privacy from those in other cells, and zero privacy
from the guards. Thus if privacy is the condition of be-
ing photographed by a central authority, who protects us
from photographing each other, then we must be living on
a prison planet -- a Panoptic prison to be exact.
This led me to the notion of inequiveillance (equiveillance
being the equilibrium between surveillance and sousveillance),
and in particular, to the following equiveillance doctrine:
Equiveillance 1: Although there may well be
situations where sousveillance might be inappro-
priate, sousveillance must never be prohibited in
situations where surveillance exists.
The existence of surveillance takes away a reasonable expec-
tation of privacy, and therefore creates, of a space, a free-fire
zone. But more importantly, a subject of surveillance has
a right (and perhaps also a responsibility) to contextual in-
tegrity of the surveillance data. Therefore, to prevent the
said surveillance data from being taken out of context, the
subject may wish to capture his or her own personal record
of his or her own life, to provide proper context for what the
surveillance data might show.
This leads me to a second, although weaker requirement:
Equiveillance 2: One who has placed a per-
son, or persons under surveillance invalidates the
surveillance data by prohibiting persons under
surveillance from also keeping their own record
(sousveillance) of their actions.
Thus, for example, it is my opinion that High Park should
not be able to use their surveillance data in a court of law,
because they have a policy and practice of prohibiting pa-
trons from constructing their own case. By prohibiting sub-
jects from collecting data that could be used in their own
defense, the surveillers should be seen as tampering with
evidence. Not that they have actually edited the recorded
data, but the manner in which the data is recorded must be
seen as suspect at best, when denying another party from
a reasonable opportunity to collect data in his or her own
exoneration. Moreover, for a person who has a memory im-
pairment, one who prevents that person from reasonably re-
membering what happened, should not be taken as credible.
Indeed, when, for example, a contract is signed, between two
parties, each party has both a right and a responsibilty to
keep a copy of the contract. Were one party would prevent
another from keeping a copy of the contract, the preventing
party should lose the force of the contract.
Thus in much the same way that a radio station keeps
a logfile of what they transmit, perhaps a society under
surveillance should keep a logfile of what it says. Accord-
ingly, the art of sousveillance, i.e. the recording an activity
by a participant in the activity, may very well be what is
needed to tame the monster of surveillance with a piece of
I have come to believe that secrecy, rather than privacy
(true privacy, not panoptic privacy), is much to blame for
crime, terrorism, and the like. In particular, it could be said
that crime is pervasive, at all levels, whereas surveillance
provides only a one-sided top-down "oversight" without a
But we are at a pivotal era in which it is possible to turn-
ing the tables toward correcting the imbalance that was re-
cently introduced with the proliferation of a surveillance-
Information is power, seeing is believing, and organiza-
tions believe in power - power over individuals. But the
very miniaturization (Fig 24) that has made it possible for
police to hide cameras in shopping-mall washrooms has also
made camcorders small and light enough for average citizens
to carry around and capture events like the Rodney King
beating, and similar human rights abuses in other countries
as well. As with many problems, the problem of surveillance
contains the seeds of its own solution, namely sousveillance.
The camcorder represents a highly portable system, that
exists at the end of a 3 step hierarchy of portability:
· Fixed: (also known as "base stations): fixed devices
on or in buildings, homes, offices, or other "fixtures
such as a ham shack, post, outpost, or attached to a
tree, or other fixture;
· Mobile: Vehicular or ship-based systems, wireless sys-
tems in trucks, vans, cars, boats, or motorcycles. A
wireless station on a bicycle such as N4RVE's behe-
moth would also be categorized as Mobile. People who
use mobile communications devices are often called
· Portable: Handheld or wearable systems.
borne by (e.g. worn or carried upon) the human body.
An implantable system such as a wireless communica-
tor injected beneath the skin would also fall under the
There are three weaknesses in the camcorder technology,
1. inconvenience and obtruseveness;
2. destructibility of the evidence; and
3. insufficient protection from forced disclosure
(the latter two pertaining to siezure by authorities). Firstly
a camcorder's use requires an active role. Despite names
like "handycam", it does require thought and effort to pull it
out and begin recording with it, whereas its big brother (the
surveillance camera upon the lamp post or ceiling) requires
zero effort to engage - it is always on. If the officers had
seen the witness pulling out a camcorder (pulling it out does
attract considerable attention) they would have probably
confiscated the recording. In fact there have been numerous
situations in which persons recording police misconduct have
themselves become targets of misconduct. This brings us to
the second weakness of the camcorder: local storage.
The EyeTap combined with the WearCam allows one to
put images and video onto his World Wide Web home page
with near zero delay. The EyeTap points ahead, matching
the view of the wearer, and it sends images over the inter-
net, so that they can be backed up in one or more remote
locations, perhaps in different countries around the world.
Basically an EyeTap has the capability of producing an in-
destructible visual record.
Although other forms of sousveillance, such as neckworn
cameras, and the like, are possible (e.g. Fig 25), the EyeTap
has been found to provide the best and most useful data,
owing to the notion of an "eye-centered design".
The end of video Surveillance
The distributed nature of the EyeTap mediated memory
data would make it less subject to a totalitarian control than
video surveillance. Video surveillance will always be upon
us. Quite likely, the establishment, with its use of video
surveillance, will have the upper hand, for they have the
advantage of fixed camera geometry calibrated within the
environment, the ability to do motion detection (e.g. when
nobody is present, all pixels remain the same), and better
communications (hard-wired closed-circuit). However, the
ubiquitous use of wearable EyeTap will tip the balance a
little toward the center, i.e. towards a little bit of fairness
on the surveillance superhighway. While the taxi drivers,
law enforcement officers, shopkeepers, and government will
continue to have surveillance, now the passengers, suspects,
shoppers, and citizens will be able to look back at the former
on a more fair and equal footing.
Privacy advocates are often either ignored, or focused on
the wrong issues (e.g. worrying about ways to reduce junk
mail). Another approach that might be worth considering
is shooting back.
But sousveillance is not merely a 20th century "us versus
them" concept. For example, a cab driver on day may be a
passenger in someone else's cab the next. A shopkeeper may
at times be a shopper in someone else's store. Thus sousveil-
lance, when it becomes a form of inverse surveillance, is not
about shooting clerks. It's about creating balance. More-
over, a more general notion of sousveillance is the recording
of an activity by a participant in the activity, which need not
necessarily have anything to do with political hierarchy. (See
eveillance, also known as coveillance, meaning "peer
to peer" watching to the side, http://www.surveillance-and-
society.org/articles1(3)/sousveillance.pdf in Surveillance and
Society, 1(3), pp 332-355.)
Citizens as mainstream culture, and guards
as activits for counter culture
The sousveillance industry has created and will continue
to create a mainstream cultural force that is unstoppable. In
this sense, it is not the users of sousveillance products who
are activits in a counter culture. These users are merely
becoming part of the mainstream culture. Instead, it is the
security guards who use, or threaten to use violence to stop
sousveillance who are the activists fighting for their political
cause of surveillism and surveillist monopoly.
A guard or garrison that threatens to use violence in order
to achieve its political goal (such as a protest against life-
glogs) is known as a "guerrorist" (`
a la guerre). In this sense
a security guard becomes an activist, protesting against in-
evitible technologies for the Continuous Archival and Recall
of Personal Experience that would record the guard's (in-
verse) civil disobedience. It is as if those of us wearing the
cameras are inside the walls of the city, having a summit
to discuss the future of C.A.R.P.E. while the guards have
gathered outside to throw stones at us in protest. In this
sense, there has been a role reversal, in which sousveillance
has become or will soon become the cultural "Strong Force"
and Panopticism has become or will soon become (relatively
speaking) the cultural "Weak Force".
EyeTap devices facilitate the continuous archival and re-
trieval of personal experiences, by way of lifelong video cap-
ture. As a form of electric seeing aid, and wearable camer-
aphone, such devices function as natural extensions of the
mind and body. More generally, a visually mediated reality
facilitates new forms of visual art.
Unfortunately, the greatest difficulties to be overcome are
not technical ones these have largely been solved over the
past 20 or 30 years. What remains to be solved is the prob-
lem of inequiveillance, i.e. the imbalance between surveil-
lance and sousveillance.
I greatfully acknowledge the support of Nikon, and the
assistance of Daymen Photo (Metz). I'd also like to thank
Chris Aimone (Camere distortion parameters), Anurag Seh-
gal who worked with me on the original draft part of a sim-
ilar article on EyeTap designs, and James Fung who worked
with me on a similar paper on realtime wearable hardware
implementation of advertisement filters with lightvectoring.
 A. Barros and F. M. Candocia. Image registration in
range using a constrained piecewise linear model.
IEEE ICASSP, IV:33453348, May 13-17 2002. avail.
 F. M. Candocia. A least squares approach for the joint
domain and range registration of images. IEEE
ICASSP, IV:32373240, May 13-17 2002. avail. at
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a common exposure via the simultaneous registration
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reality for exterior construction applications. In
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wearable computers and augmented reality, chapter 12,
pages 397427. Lawrence Erlbaum Press, New Jersey,
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Also see example images in
http://wearcam.org/lightspace, July 1992.
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scene. In Proceedings of the 46th Annual IS&T
Conference, pages 5052, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
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Lausanne, Switzerland, December 1996. Also appears
in: M.I.T. M.L. T.R. 384, 1994.
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Figure 20: The word "surveillance" is French for "to watch from
above". This God's eye view is typical of the notion of watching from
Figure 21: Eye-in-the-sky: London Underground posters to let people
know they are being watched from above.
Figure 22: Excerpt from Hitachi Design Center's recent event (Mi-
"Applied Dreams Workshop 3:
Sousveillance"'. Many other companies are also looking at sousveil-
lance in various ways.
Figure 24: Mobile surveillance: Miniaturization of surveillance cam-
eras has made it possible to put passengers in many taxicabs under
Figure 10: The Vicarious Soliloquy genre as Keynote Address at DEFCON 7: Six still frames from a realtime 'glog used as a new communications
Figure 11: The eye itself as a document camera: Annotation of existing media: eye as document camera.
Figure 13: Shared computer mediated reality makes possible the personalized experience capture of a "cyborg" collective.
Figure 14: Lightvector painting made in Harold Edgerton's Strobe Lab, exactly as it was left after his death. This image is from the Microseconds
and Millennia exhibit of the author's work at Olga Korper Gallery. The beautiful glow in a closeup detail of the flash tube, located above the
30,000 volt potentiometer control, was extracted, magnified, and used to replace a cigarette advertisement.
Figure 15: "Adissolve" project: Advertisements dissolve into fine art. Here a cigarrette ad dissolves into a closeup view of the lamp glow in a
selection from the Microseconds and Millennia exhibit at Olga Korper Gallery. The top row shows video frames from a linear dissolve (image-based
rendering). The bottom row shows lightspace rendering. While the end points look very similar, midway along the dissolve, the lightspace-based
rendering looks much more realistic, and is more vibrant than the image-based rendering.
Figure 16: A new and simple keyer grip interface for lightvectoring.
Figure 17: Christina familiarizing herself with the keyer.
Figure 18: Self portrait by Christina, single lightvector.
Figure 19: Lightvector painting by Christina Mann.
Figure 23: These signs were put up around the same time as surveillance cameras were installed in High Park, in Toronto.
Figure 25: A more literal reversal of surveillance brings the familiar ceiling domes of wine-dark opacity from the heavens down to earth (i.e.
from the lamp posts and ceilings down to human level). This form of sousveillance fashion re-situates the surveillance dome as an accessory to a
wearable computer system, as a Sousveillance Situationist challenge to our pre-conveived notions of surveillance. Although such human-centered
sousveillance maintains the familiar appearance of surveillance (i.e. matches the decor of just about any gambling casino or department store),
an eye-centered design (i.e. EyeTap) was found to provide much more useful data.