This fellow, encountered at Monument Valley, AZ two week ago, took plenty of time to install this little camera on his huge SUV, a somewhat robotic eye... (or, more likely, a proxy to capture souvenirs).

A brief chat with him allowed me to understand that he wanted to get an exhaustive view in the park. This led me to think about objects' viewpoint: the increasing use of this kind of camera (on bike and snowboard more generally) indeed enable to capture visual elements from a very specific angle. The results can be both dramatic or crappy but it's clearly curious to see the sort of traces produced.

Why do I blog this? This feature actually makes me think about robot perception, or how digitally-enabled artifact can perceive their environment. Of course, in this case, this is only a car with a camera... but I can't help thinking that this big robotic eye has a curious effect on observers. Perhaps it leads to this "human-robot intersubjectivities", the ‘signs of life’ that are exhibited by robots and that people perceive and respond to.