Jonathon Keats doesn't do instant gratification.

The American artist and self-proclaimed "experimental philosopher" will be exploring themes of surveillance, transformation and mortality in his upcoming photography exhibition, scheduled to open on May 16, 2114. That’s right, 100 years from now.

After observing some of the rapid changes to his hometown of San Francisco, Keats began playing with long-term exposure photography. He was curious about what the results can show us about our evolving urban development. After some successful trial runs, Keats, in cooperation with Berlin’s Team Titanic Gallery, has built 100 pinhole cameras and given them away (with a 10€ deposit) to 100 willing participants. Those people are free to place their cameras anywhere in Berlin — with the caveat that they will keep the location secret into their old age, at which point they will pass on the information to one person of the next generation.

The exposure on each of the cameras is set to 100 years, meaning an entire century will be captured all on one piece of film.

One hundred years from now, future participants will return the cameras (assuming they're still where they were left) to Team Titanic (assuming the gallery still exists), who will reimburse the 10€ deposit and extract the 100-year-old photo sealed inside the the box.

What Keats expects the future to discover are massive changes in industrialization. "The photograph not only shows a location, but also shows how the place changes over time," Keats explains. "For instance an old apartment building torn down after a quarter century will show up only faintly, as if it were a ghost haunting the skyscraper that replaces it."

Team Titanic describes the imagined result in simpler terms, “100 years of municipal growth and decay for scrutiny and judgment by future generations.”

Seemingly not satisfied with the scope of his 100 year plan, Keats is now working on a 1,000-year camera, perhaps to be installed on every continent in order to document the effect of climate change. If all goes well, there will be someone left to hand in the results.

Need to know more about Keats and his "experimental philosophy"? Just watch this:

Via Fast CoExist