Artist Tanya Marie Vlach lost her left eye in a car accident in 2005 during the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. Losing control of her car, she crashed and almost lost her life if it wasn’t for her speedy rescue. Since then, she’s been looking for ways to regain her sight. She now has a design for a prosthetic eye that will be equipped with a digital camera, which she hopes can take and record 720p resolution videos. She also hope the camera inside her prosthetic eye has a wireless transmitter, a 3x optical zoom and can record in MPEG-4/H.264.
Her new eye implant will let her start a number of artistic projects. “I’ve been plotting new strategies to tell my story, both my personal one and the one of my sci-fi alter ego, into a transmedia platform, which will include: a graphic novel, an experimental documentary, a web series, a game, and a live performance,” she explains.
It will cost a lot of money to complete this project, so she chose Kickstarter to get the funds she needed. She calls the project “Grow A New Eye.”
Vlach’s physician, Dr. William Danz, said, “I’d always given thought to using cameras to restore sight to the blind. This is a little different, more like James Bond stuff.”
At the moment, 174 backers have pledged $6,438. The project will only be funded if it reaches the $15,000 goal by August 3. You can visit Grow A New Eye’s Kickstarter page for more information.
