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“Obviously you don’t want students to be under the burden of constant surveillance; it’s not a good teaching environment.”
Fred Ritchin, associate chairman of the photography and imaging department of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where an Iraqi assistant professor, Wafaa Bilal intends to undergo surgery in coming weeks to install a camera in the back of his head.
The thumbnail-sized camera will be affixed to Mr. Bilal’s head through a piercing-like attachment, his NYU colleagues say.  For one year, Mr. Bilal’s camera will take still pictures at one-minute intervals, then feed the photos to monitors at the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. The museum commissioned the artwork, titled “The 3rd I,” which is intended as “a comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory and experience.” Mr. Bilal’s work would be among the inaugural exhibits of Mathaf Museum, scheduled to open next month.
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