According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi assistant professor at New York University, is having a camera surgically embedded in the back of his head.
The unusual act is part of a museum installation called 3rdI. For a year, the camera will take still pictures in one-minute intervals and send them wirelessly to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, which will display them on monitors.
Bilal is known for his provocative art. He has a tattoo on his back that details American and Iraqi casualties, he set up a website where people could shoot him remotely with paint balls and created a suicide-bomber avatar of himself in a video game that hunted down President George W. Bush.
The 3rdI project, which launches Dec. 15, has raised a bunch of privacy concerns that the university is still addressing. The semi-permanently installed camera could catch all activities of Bilal's life, both personal and profesional, including the lives of students at the university.
"Obviously you don't want students to be under the burden of constant surveillance; it's not a good teaching environment," Fred Ritchin, an associate chairman of the department, told the Wall Street Journal.
Credit: AP
Tags: Artists, Digital Cameras, Surveillance, Visual Arts
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