By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — An NYU art professor who had a camera implanted in the back of his head said he was forced to remove part of the device last week following medical complications.
Wafaa Bilal, an assistant art professor at NYU's Tisch School of the arts, had a titanium plate, attached to three posts and then a camera, embedded in between his skin and skull last December so that he could transmit photos of his daily surroundings to a website and to a museum in Doha, Qatar.
The camera was supposed to remain in place for a year, but Bilal said his body was rejecting one of the three posts on which it was mounted, forcing him to have the post and the camera removed last Friday.
Bilal said that he was committed to the project and was currently designing a new version of the apparatus. In the meantime, he has tied the camera to the back of his neck.
On his website, Bilal described the project, called "3rdi," as "a statement on surveillance, the mundane and the things we leave behind."
This is not the first time the artist has sacrificed his body for his art. Bilal, who fled Iraq in 1991, had a map of the country tattooed on his back, with dots representing Iraqi and U.S. casualties marked in invisible ink.
For another of his projects, Bilal spent a month stationed in front of a paintball gun at a Chicago art gallery. People were invited to fire the gun through an internet portal.
