Idea IS the format

In the thirty years I have now been without sight in my right eye never once did it occur to me to make it my life’s work to develop my own bionic equivalent, so that I could come up with a catchy name and style myself as a kind of first generation Six Million Dollar Man.

Damn.

I did once contemplate asking my ocularist to make me a novelty glass eye, but it felt a bit like asking Leonardo Da Vinci to paint the bathroom ceiling. The man’s spent his life perfecting the art of concealing the fact that people have broken eyes, it seemed a little churlish to ask him to help me draw attention to the fact.

I like this Eyeborg fellow though. Hook that puppy up to the optic nerve, mix in a little augmented reality, and he might be onto something. Then all I need is a name.

Except that I already have one. I was given it at school. I think it was supposed to be hurtful, but I kind of liked it.

Cyclops .)

This is the five-minute edit I’ve pulled together from my visit Mr Haas the other day.  I know that probably sounds like a long time, but I hope you’ll give it a chance – it shows a unique and remarkable artist at work.

I mused over the soundtrack for a while, before settling on One Of These Things First, one of my favourite songs by the late Nick Drake.  You can find out more about him at www.brytermusic.com, the official site of his estate, and you can by his music on iTunes here.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Mr Haas and his work I recommend this article on Times Online.  It goes to a far greater degree of detail than I am able to.

As to the question of my own eye, and once people find out that I wear a glass eye they often have questions, I’m happy for anyone to post any questions you have as a comment, and I will endeavour to answer.

I went and saw Mr Haas today.  He’s an ocularist, and has been making glass eyes for me since I was four years old.  He’s probably made about a dozen for me over the years.  He’s the only ocularist in the UK working in glass.  The glass itself comes from Germany, as does he.

It’s amazing watching him work, but I can’t hope to do justice to the process in words or pictures.  About 6 years ago, after Tommy and I had just launched the first iteration of Ploggle, I went to see him, and produced this plog.  You can see from the picture quality how early it was in the evolution of camera-phones.

Fortunately, today Mr Haas was kind enough to let me film him creating my new eye.  I have a couple of hours’ footage I need to condense into a couple of minutes, so it’s likely to be a little while before I have it wrapped, but I thought I’d post these photos in the mean time.