In the entire body of medical literature, there has never been a recorded case of a person with a functional set of eyes in their stomach. Or on the back of their heads. Or extended on stalks three feet above the tops of their skulls. Given the improbable configurations that human beings do manage to come in, that seems almost miraculous. Pretty much every human ever has seen the world exactly like the others: through a pair of eyes set right in the middle of his head.
That might seem like a pretty weird way to introduce the Eyeteleporter, a giant cardboard periscope that you can wear over your head to experience the world a little differently, but this idea of seeing the world in a new way is actually not that far off from the thought processes that inspired London designer Juste Kostikovaite to develop this offbeat take on the periscope in the first place.
According to Kostikovaite, the idea for the Eyeteleporter came to him after reading the works of Oliver Sacks and V.S. Ramachandran, two popular writers who have written enchanting, accessible books about neurology and neuroscience, such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and The Tell-Tale Brain (respectively). It made Kostikovaite interested in the ways in which he could go about recreating for himself the unusual conditions through which people with altered, removed, or different organs of perception viewed the world.
The Eyeteleporter, then, lets you experience the world as if your eyes were placed somewhere else besides the middle of your head. A simple cardboard periscope attached to a mask, it can be worn either traditionally so that it looks above you, at waist level, or behind you.
Wearing an Eyeteleporter, Kostikoviate says he found his hands "operating in weird places, [my] eyes disagreeing with [my] brains, and other amusing proprioceptive experiences." Fun!
Eyeteleporter is a little pricey—you can preorder one on Kickstarter starting at around $85—but it's really just a backer award to realize an even crazier invention: a more high-tech version of the Eyeteleporter mask that is also a scooter, teleporting your eyes to the tip of your toes and making it seem as if you're zooming along twice as fast as you actually are. Because hey, no humans have been born with eyeballs on the tip of their toes either, and doesn't that seem like something that should be remedied?
You can find out more about the Eyeteleporter on the site's official Kickstarter here.