I’m a guy who certainly doesn’t have the luck of the Irish. While visiting my grandfather in Ireland when I was 13, I borrowed his gun to shoot a pile of cowshit. The weapon backfired, making me blind in my right eye.

A few years ago I chose to have my sightless eyeball removed which wasn’t an easy decision – the eyes are the windows to the soul, after all. They’re what you look into when you fall in love with somebody, and they influence whether you trust someone or not. I had an emotional attachment to that body part, even though it didn’t function any more.

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But now I’m working on something that’ll modify my empty eye socket to give it a new purpose: I’m developing a prosthetic eyeball containing a tiny wireless video camera. I’ll use it to record the world from my point of view, and compile the footage into a documentary I’ll call Eye 4 An Eye.

There are three other main collaborators on my ‘Eyeborg’ project. Kosta Grammatis is an engineer who usually specialises in developing complex electronic systems used in aircraft and spacecraft.

Phil Bowen is an expert in crafting and fitting false eyes. And Steve Mann, consultant to Team Eyeborg, is a professor at the University of Toronto and a leading authority on cyborgs, surveillance and wearable computer equipment.

There are many challenges we’ll have to overcome together in order to make my vision a reality. For a start, my prosthetic peeper is just 9mm thick, 30mm long and 28mm high, and the space available to fit a camera inside it is even smaller.

The tiny gap not only needs to hold a lens and a sensor behind it, but also image-processing circuitry and some kind of power supply.

Even if we can invent a self-contained camera module miniscule enough, we then have to somehow seal it within the prosthetic, ensuring my fake eye remains watertight, safe and hygienic.

Phil’s used his knowledge of how prosthetics are usually manufactured (using polymethyl-methacrylate, or PMMA, a flexible polymer also found in dentures) to mock up a two-part eyeball that can snap shut around the video equipment. But weight is an issue: if the Eyeborg’s too heavy, it’ll stretch my lower lid down and disfigure my face.

Luckily, scientists from far and wide have heard about my project and are contributing their own research which, when combined, makes my Eyeborg’s success increasingly feasible.

A company called Candor Industries has developed the thinnest circuit board I’ve ever seen, while Micro Art has helped solder some components so titchy that they needed a microscope and X-ray to do the job.

Ashton Kutcher even got in touch to say he’d love to have me involved in Punk’d, because I’d make the best candid cameraman ever!

My documentary will aim more to make a point about government surveillance though. I ask people, ‘Did you know there are 11,000 new video cameras being installed in our country every day?’ But most people don’t seem to give a shit.  Big Brother is watching you all the time. Soon I will be Little Brother, the undersight to the authorities’ oversight.