New York University photography professor Wafaa Bilal has surgically attached a camera to the back of his head to capture images for an art installation, which will be held at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. Bilal, an Iraqi who fled Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime, is known for provocative art installations. Recently, in a project entitled And Counting, Bilal received 105,000 tattoos on his back to commemorate those killed in the Iraq War, including American military personnel. For this project, Bilal will wear a lens cap when on the property of NYU to protect his students' privacy. Otherwise, the camera, which is waterproof, will stay on 24-7.
He will wear the camera for a year, and the images will be beamed live to the museum as part of a project called The 3rd I. Bilal hopes that this project will provoke a dialogue about surveillance. Bilal has definitely provoked dialogue about a lot of things, like how far one should go for the sake of art. We wonder if he will explore the question of being surveilled as opposed to inviting surveillance.
Read more at Popular Science. Watch video of a CNN interview demonstrating the technique below: