Tag Archives: Surveillance

Wafaa Bilal displays his "3rd I" (AP Photo)

Who has the right to record whose image? Where? Under what conditions? Corporate, civic and governmental surveillance are increasingly the norm. Airport security systems strip travelers bare. Businesses record their customers, but often forbid photography on the premises. As our imaging technologies become more sophisticated, ethical questions become more tangled.

Iraqi-born media artist and NYU/Tisch School of the Arts professor Wafaa Bilal is shooting back. He has had a small digital camera surgically implanted into the back of his skull, and for a period of one year, the camera will transmit images in one-minute intervals from the back of the artist’s head to Qatar and On-line. The piece is called The 3rd I, and was commissioned by the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art as one of 23 contemporary works that will inaugurate the new museum that opens in Doha, Qatar on December 30th. What images will come? The On-line launch is the 15th of December, and is counting down now at The 3rd I.