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NYU professor to have camera surgically installed in back of his head
The tiny camera will take a photo every minute and transmit the images to monitors in a Qatar museum.
Wed, Nov 17 2010 at 4:17 PM
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Photo: Derek K. Miller/Flickr
Ever have someone ask what you did over the weekend, only to draw a blank? Next time that happens to NYU assistant professor and performance artist Wafaa Bilal, he’ll be able to check the footage from the camera attached to his head. Yes, you read that right: The Wall Street Journal reports that Bilal, who teaches in the photography and imaging department of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, plans to have a camera surgically implanted in the back of his head. The stunt, which has already sparked concerns about privacy, is part of a project being commissioned by a new Qatar museum.
Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art is set to open in Doha, Qatar, on Dec. 30, and aspires to “highlight and share contemporary art by Arabs and artists living in the Middle East.” The NYU professor's installation will be titled "The 3rd I."
According to Bilal’s NYU colleagues, the tiny camera will be secured to the artist’s head via a piercing-like attachment. Over the course of a year, photographs will be taken at one-minute intervals and fed directly to monitors in the museum. Assuming this occurs with some immediacy, much of the footage viewable during the museum’s open hours may be of Bilal sleeping. (Doha is eight hours ahead of New York City. If Bilal starts his day around 8 a.m., it will be 4 p.m. in Doha; likewise, if he sleeps for about eight hours each night, it will amount to something in the vicinity of 2,920 hours spent photographing his pillow.)
After a group of NYU faculty met to discuss the potential privacy infringement of his students, Bilal agreed to cover the camera with a black lens cap while on university property.
Despite the restrictions on campus and time spent sleeping, Bilal’s camera will capture thousands of hours worth of images that Mathaf museum curators hope will serve as "a comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory and experience.”
As CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk drolly noted, “It is, indeed, difficult to capture a memory of something you never see because it's behind you.” Check out the rest of the CNET story to learn more about the professor's curious history and his penchant for raising eyebrows.
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This post has really proved the saying that one day the man become robot.Thanks for this interesting read.
This surgery will be a masterpiece and if successful then the saying will become true that One day the man will become machine.
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I can think of somewhere else he can place that camera
he needs to glue it there. surgically is too extreme. because someone anything that can send an electro magnetic pulse can troll him really well.
I was quite nervous until I read the part about him not being able to use it in NYU property. Luckily, NYU owns a fairly good chunk of NYC. Now if Columbia would make him promise the same thing for them, as well, we'd have the rest of the city safe from pics by this guy.
Good luck at the airport, foreign dude.
At the least, I hope he can get some good snaps of the TSA flunkie who is giving him a full-grope search.
can't he just wear a hat with a camera on it facing backwards?
How appropriate that it's being shown in a backwards-looking Islamic state.
hahaha, anything for a dollar America!! Keep up the good work! Be afraid! Be very afraid of everything!!
I wonder to what extent this removes intention from the discussion of modern art. Somewhere in the mix between flicking paint at a wall, the urinal-as-found-art, and shooting oneself at close range, I reckon. :)