Biometric Devices: Would You Implant A Camera On Your Head?

A pretty crazy story was passed along to the staff of Eye Tracking Update the other day. If I remember correctly, we may have mentioned this in passing in an earlier post (lots of posts on here now!), but correct me if I’m wrong.

Last month and artist at New York University had a camera installed into his head in an odd biometric twist that blurs the line between technology, surveillance, and art. Wafaa Bilal is a visual artist who’s worked in interactive and performance art projects in the past. He underwent a procedure to have a little digital camera placed into the back of his head for a new project commissioned by an art museum in Doha, Qatar, in the Arab Gulf. Bilal is an Iraqi born artist and teaches a number of courses at NYU’s Tisch School of Arts. He plans to wear the camera, which measures 2 inches in diameter and just about an inch thick, for a year.

Bilal plans to unveil the piece for a museum preview on December 15th and online. He decided to have the camera installed into his head as a metaphor for the things we don’t see and leave behind, and it’s set to capture his everyday activities (well, what happens behind his everyday activities at 60-second intervals for 24 hours a day. The data will be transmitted to a series of monitors installed at the museum. Bilal is going about his normal life, doesn’t plan to alter his activities, and should at the end of the year have a record of everything he’s missed, so to speak.

We were interested in this story from more of a biometric standpoint, perhaps as a sign of the times we live in, where it’s possible to have things like biometric and identification chips implanted into bodies. Certainly, having a camera implanted into the back of your head is something novel and specific to our modern age.

NYU has commented somewhat on the privacy issues the project raises, making sure students would remain safe and private, though many students interviewed apparently weren’t all that concerned with privacy issues.

It sounds like an interest conceptual piece that might be worth looking into as it’s unveiled. Bilal has completed other projects dealing with racism, stereotypes of Muslims, and casualties of Americans and Iraqis in the war.

3rd eye: NYU artist gets camera implanted in head

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