Millennium Camera: 1000 years in one image
On Tumamoc Hill, a simple but durable camera has been observing the Tucson landscape for years. It uses neither chemistry nor digital technology, but just a hole in gold leaf and a light-sensitive pigment. Over the course of 10 centuries, sunlight reflected from the city will slowly fade the pigment, creating an extremely long exposure image of all the changes that will occur in the future.
The idea for the camera, called the Millennium Camera, comes from experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, a research associate at the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts. He wants the camera to be an invitation for people to think about the future and engage in conversations about urban development and the relationship with the natural environment.
“Most people have a pretty bleak view of what’s to come,” he said. “But if we can imagine a worse future, we can also imagine a better future, and that can motivate us to take action to shape our future.”
The camera that looks into the future
The camera was installed in 2023 on Tumamoc Hill, a historic and cultural site that has a deep relationship with the people of Tucson. The camera is next to a bench facing west, overlooking the Star Pass neighborhood. The bench invites you to take a break from your walk and the camera encourages walkers to imagine what the future holds.
“In no way is the camera making a statement about development – about how we should or shouldn’t build the city in the future,” Keats said. “It’s there to invite us to ask questions and invite the perspective of future generations in the sense that they are on our minds.”
Keats expects the camera to last 1,000 years and not be opened before then. He believes that the final image will be a mix of stable and dynamic elements, revealing the transformations that will occur in the city. For example, if houses are removed at some point, they will appear as ghosts in the image, while mountains will remain clear and opaque.
“What will happen then is that the final image will be an overlay of all the changes that have occurred over time,” Keats said. “It can be reconstructed layer by layer in terms of interpreting the final image.”
A global vision
Keats wants to install at least one more camera on Tumamoc Hill, looking in a different direction, perhaps east, overlooking downtown Tucson. The two views will mirror each other and show the dynamics of human interaction with the environment.
He is also looking to install the cameras around the world, in places where the future is uncertain and fascinating. He already has plans to place cameras in China, the United States and the Austrian Alps.
“This project depends on doing this in many places around the world,” Keats said. “I hope this leads to a planetary process of reimagining planet Earth for future generations.”
Who is Jonathon Keats?
Jonathon Keats is an American conceptual artist and experimental philosopher, born in New York in 1971. He is known for creating large-scale thought experiments that explore philosophical, scientific, and social questions in creative and provocative ways. He studied philosophy at Amherst College and currently lives in San Francisco and Italy 1
Among his most notable projects are:
- Selling real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory2
- Trying to genetically engineer God using synthetic DNA3
- Petition to pass the Identity Law, A ≡ A, as statutory law in Berkeley, California.
- Record his mind as a sculpture he created, and sell futures contracts on his brain in an IPO.
- Install a camera that will capture an image of Tucson over 1,000 years using a sun-faded pigment.
Keats is a research associate at the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts and a contributor to Forbes magazine. He is also the author of several books, including The Book of the Unknown (2009), You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future (2016), and Bitwise: A Life in Code (2018). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
