What did the land you're on look like 1,000 years ago? People in 2023 may be able to find out, thanks to an art/science project called the Millennium Camera, which will take an extremely long-exposure photo of the Arizona desert.
The Millennium Camera sits on a pole on Tumamoc Mountain, looking out over a community in Tucson, Arizona -- where it will (hopefully) keep watch for 1,000 years
The brainchild of experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats at the University of Arizona College of the Arts, the Millennium Camera is a fascinating experiment with lofty, if naive, goals. The device will take the world's slowest photos over an entire thousand years, providing future residents of Tucson, Arizona with a time capsule of what has changed and what hasn't.
To predict the future, Kitts looked to the past. The Millennium Camera was a pinhole design, one of the first cameras ever invented - coincidentally, about 1,000 years ago. It is a copper cylinder with a 24K gold sheet at one end and a small hole punched in it. Sunlight filters through the holes and hits the photosensitive surface on the back, which is coated with multiple thin layers of oil paint - Rose Red.
The entire installation is mounted on a steel pole pointing into the desert near Tucson. The purpose of this is to control the exposure to light so that the paint slowly fades to varying degrees, with darker areas such as mountains fading more slowly than lighter areas such as the sky. If all goes according to plan, the end result will be a photo with an exposure time of thousands of years.
Over the course of 10 centuries, the picture would have changed significantly, thus confusing future humans. But this, Keats said, is also part of its charm, with views standing out against the backdrop of the most stable elements, while ever-changing objects, such as buildings, become partially transparent depending on how long they have been there. This is actually a comment on the impermanence of human nature.
"Let's make a very dramatic assumption, 500 years in the future, that all the houses have been demolished," Kitts said. "By then, the mountains will have become clear, sharp and opaque, and the houses will have become ghostly. All the changes will be superimposed on an image, and the interpretation of the final image can be reconstructed layer by layer."
Of course, this all depends on the camera remaining stationary until the 31st century. If a natural disaster occurs or someone destroys the copper cylinder, the efforts will be in vain. By 2245, the area may be bulldozed to make way for apartment buildings. Humanity may also become extinct within this 1,000 years. Or, even if it does survive, the purpose of the experiment may be lost to time.
Whether or not the Millennium Camera actually survives, it's not just here to help our great-great-grandchildren (etc.) think about the past -- its very existence also inspires people in the present to think about the future. The device is installed near a bench on a hiking trail on Tumamoc Mountain, with a sign explaining its purpose. Hikers can stretch their muscles and drink water while looking out over the valley and imagining what the scene will look like in 3023.
"Most people are pessimistic about the future," Kitts said. "It's not hard to imagine that Tucson in 1,000 years will be much worse than Tucson is today. That's actually a good thing, because if we can imagine that, then we can also imagine what else will happen, and that will prompt us to take action to shape our future."
Kitts plans to install other Millennium Cameras facing different directions in the area, as well as in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, China and the Austrian Alps.