This controversial exhibition lets you destroy cameras – but it’s only possible because of the frightening rate of tech churn

'Camera Obsolete?' is a participatory installation and major public exhibition confronting the collapse of photography’s mechanical era. Conceived and produced by Belfast Photo Festival, audiences are invited to destroy, dismantle, repair or recast obsolete cameras into new sculptural forms. Part participation, part spectacle and part material transformation, the exhibition forces questions of authorship, truth and the erosion of photography as a physical, tangible medium. (Toby Smith / Belfast Photo Festival).

I recently spoke to Toby Smith, the director of development and fundraising for the Belfast Photo Festival – which this year is hosting probably the most controversial photography exhibition in history.

Camera Obsolete will give visitors the choice between smashing up a camera, carefully dismantling it or buying it for a small fee, saving it from a violent death, with Smith saying the idea is to confront the rise of AI “so that we don't just happily slide quickly into a computational era,” forgetting all about mechanical cameras.