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Lens Louse: NYU Professor To Have Camera Installed In Back of His Head

NYU Professor Wafaa Bilal finally has the solution for all of those spit balls that come flying whenever he turns his back in class: he is having a camera implanted in the back of his head. That’s right, a camera. It is part of a project commissioned by a new museum in Qatar which will broadcast the live images to museum visitors.

This is a global project. Bilal is an Iraqi assistant professor in the photography and imaging department who is working in the United States at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts but will be doing the project for a Qatar museum — the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art. He will have surgery to implant the camera for the project called “The 3rd I.”

There is a legal issue, however, that has arisen (Thank God). Does he need the consent of students in class who will be captured by his head camera? As a result of objections, Bilal has agreed to cover the camera with a black lens cap while on university property.

Bilal is known for controversial prior projects. In 2008, he inserted an avatar of himself as a suicide-bomber hunting George Bush in a video game he called the “Virtual Jihadi” and in 2007 he enclosed himself in an exhibit that invited people to shoot him with paintballs in a work called “Domestic Tension.”

My question is the willingness of a doctor to perform such a surgery under the Hippocratic Oath. I would think that many doctors would have qualms about installing cameras in a person’s head — no matter how small the camera or how artistic the cameraman. Any you thought you had problems with red eye in taking pictures . . .

Source: WSJ

Jonathan Turley

26 thoughts on “Lens Louse: NYU Professor To Have Camera Installed In Back of His Head”

  5. That’s right. Get rid of everyone who isn’t a heterosexual fundamentalist evangelical charismatic Christian. Then and only then will America be safe for Tootles.

  6. Gyges:

    Do Buddhists promote a dead guy who had sex with a child? If so, get rid of the deport-able ones too.

  9. I read somewhere that the camera would be attached to a piercing, not inserted inside the skull. Surely he would not do it if it was too invasive, as many would just boycott the project altogether out of disgust.

  11. HenMan,

    I once had a student who enjoyed eating paste. I had another student who ate tadpole food…and a student who chewed on his clothing. Children are interesting creatures.

  13. eniobob,

    We are kindred souls brought together by the strangest of circumstances … a blog.

    I loved the smell of paste but not the taste …

  15. Blouise-

    My first grade teacher had a set of those rear-view mirror eyes. She spotted me dipping my finger into the jar of delicious white library paste for a quick snack. She grabbed my little chin between her thumb and forefinger and nearly picked me up off the floor while she explained the evils of eating the delicious library paste. It was a great memory enhancing technique- I still remember it clearly some 60 years later. Well, I’m off to Office Depot to see if they still make that delicious white library paste.

  16. Poor man … had he been born female eyes in the back of the head come as standard equipmentt.

  17. If he is that concerned for his rear flank,why dosen’t he just get that little spy glass I see bike riders wearing when they are in traffic so they can see whats behind them?

    I’m just curious how often would the camera would have to be serviced to remain under warranty?

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