2024-01-21 17:09:00
Jonathon Keats, a researcher from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, invented an interesting camera. This camera was designed to take only one picture every 1,000 years, so it was called the “Millennium Camera.”
Picture: Millennium Camera
The “Millennium Camera” is currently fixed on Tumamok Mountain. It will continue to expose the city of Tucson at the foot of the mountain for a thousand years. Finally, it will obtain a photo of the changes in the city over the millennium.
Any photographer who has turned their camera off in automatic shooting mode knows that if you only let light into the camera continuously for 10 minutes, you’ll end up with an overexposed white photo, let alone a thousand.
So the interesting question is, how does this camera achieve 1,000 years of exposure? What will the final photo look like? What is Jonathan Keats’s purpose in doing this?
Figure: Continuously exposed starry sky image
How does the Millennium Camera work?
Traditional cameras typically rely on rapid chemical reactions (or now digital technology) to capture images. Either way, they take pictures too fast to achieve a 1,000-year exposure to only take one picture.
On the other hand, it is difficult for our existing industrial products to continue working for 1,000 years without damage.
Therefore, this camera is different from what we imagined. It uses the simplest structure to ensure that it will not be damaged for a long time – the simpler, the more durable it is.
Regarding the principle of generating images, Jonathan Keats thought of the way that light causes paint to fade. As long as he chooses a light-fading material that is insensitive enough, he can ensure that only one photo will be taken in 1,000 years.
We can simply understand this camera as a “pinhole camera”.
It uses the principle of pinhole imaging, and the structure of the camera is just like the box we used to do pinhole imaging when we were children.
The exterior of the camera’s 24-karat gold flake has a pinhole-sized hole through which light enters a small copper cylinder mounted on top of a steel pole, which is coated with thin layers of rose-colored madder dye, an oil paint.
Over 1,000 years, the light reflected from the Tucson city scene will slowly fade these dyes, forming a special image 1,000 years later.
Jonathan Keats thought the rose-colored madder dye would fade at the right rate, which he said was an educated guess, but he also believed the camera wouldn’t be opened until 1,000 years later.
Picture: This is the first permanent photo in history. The formation principle is similar to this thousand-year photo. It is estimated that the final image will be similar.
So what will this image look like in 1,000 years?
In 1,000 years, everything will change, and this camera can record both stable and changing states.
When the exposed image remains in a stable state, the light it reflects will steadily fade the paint, eventually completely printing on the image and becoming clearly visible.
Those unstable images are another scenario, because the reflected light changes, which ultimately causes the paint to fade, making the image blurry.
Jonathan Keats said that when a scene changes, it appears in the photograph like multiple images superimposed on top of each other.
He gave an example,For example, after 500 years, all the houses will be demolished. In the photo, the mountains will become clear, sharp, and opaque, while the areas that should have been houses will be blurry and transparent. However, these blurs can record the changes – which can be determined according to the final The image reconstructs it layer by layer.
Pictured: Jonathan Keats
What is the point of this camera?
Jonathan Keats himself was an experimental philosopher, and his purpose in making this camera was to encourage people to imagine the future a thousand years from now.
At Tumamok Mountain, hikers climb up and down the mountain every day, and over time, as animals scurry across the desert floor, cacti grow and die over decades and even centuries.
But 1,000 years from now, a camera will look down over Tucson like a sentinel, urging passers-by to stop and think about what’s to come.
Judging from the feedback received so far, most people are pessimistic about the future and believe that people in 1,000 years will see a worse version of Tucson than today.
But Jonathan Keats argued that this is not a bad thing, because if we can imagine this, then we can also imagine what might happen, so it might inspire us to take action to shape our future.
Original report: https://kottke.org/20/12/the-millennium-camera-a-pinhole-camera-with-a-thousand-year-exposure-time
Editor in charge: Shang Shangwen Q
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