Camera will spend 1000 years taking photos of same spot for an important reason – And the reason is surprising everyone
A camera will be set up to focus on one particular spot for 1000 years.
You may have already seen time lapse photography, showing things like a plant growing over several months in a matter of minutes.But this project will aim to take things to a different level entirely, pointing a camera at one single spot for 1,000 years. Yes, that is the correct number of zeros.
Quite how you can make sure that such a thing would last that long is unclear, as there’s no way to know for certain. However, to put it into perspective, it would be like finding a camera from 1024, some 42 years before the Battle of Hastings when the Anglo Saxons still ruled the fledgling kingdom of England. While there are artefacts which have survived from that period, they tended to have been buried underground – such as the Sutton Hoo ship burial – rather than being out in the open.
Nonetheless, the project hopes to capture 1,000 years of history and change in the landscape.The project comes from conceptual artist Jonathon Keats, who is known for creating large scale thought experiments. The Millennium Camera was placed next to a bench which overlooks the Star Pass neighbourhood in Tucson, Arizona. Keats said in a statement: “One thousand years is a long time and there are so many reasons why this might not work. “The camera might not even be around in a millennium. There are forces of nature and decisions people make, whether administrative or criminal, that could result in the camera not lasting.”
In a way, it’s like whether the camera actually goes on until 3023 is not actually important. What is important is that people can and reflect on what they think the future might look like.
And in 2024, it’s safe to say that we have a very different relationship with the future than we’ve had before. There is far less sense of optimism or progress in 2024, with many instead looking to the future and seeing civilisational collapse by ecological catastrophe as climate change takes hold. Keats said: “Most people have a pretty bleak outlook on what lies ahead, “It’s easy to imagine that people in 1,000 years could see a version of Tucson that is far worse than what we see today, but the fact that we can imagine it is not a bad thing. “It’s actually a good thing, because if we can imagine that, then we can also imagine what else might happen, and therefore it might motivate us to take action to shape our future.”
Let’s just hope it’s not out of focus!
