Professor Embeds Camera in Back of His Head

Wafaa Bilal says the surgical procedure is part of an art project.

Bilal, a teacher at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, was named artist of the year by the Chicago Tribune in 2007 for a project that allowed internet users to fire paintballs at him. He has followed up that controversial project with an even stranger one: having a camera surgically implanted in the back of his head. The camera will automatically take a picture once every minute for one year to capture images of his everyday life, which will presumably result in millions of photos of people pointing at the back of his head and mouthing the words, “What the hell is that?” The project will be exhibited at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar next December.