When Art and Technology Become a Part of Us...Literally

Iraqi-born Wafaa Bilal, a photography professor from New York University's Tisch School of the arts, had a camera implanted in the back of his head all for the sake of an art project. He planned on keeping the camera implanted in his head for one year, which would take a photograph every minute and feed them to Wafaa Bilal's website as well as have the photos streamed in real-time to monitors set up in the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar for the contemporary art exhibition. Bilal's project wanted to represent all the surveillance in today's society as people in various cities spend much of their time being under watch of surveillance cameras. The article from BBC News shows that the artist, Bilal, was forced to remove the camera implanted in the back of his after his body began rejecting it. Bilal wanted to have it re-implanted but doctors refused because it was too much of a risk for infection, however, he found a way. The artist went to a body piercing studio in Los Angeles to continue with the procedure where the camera was mounted on 3 posts attached to a titanium base that was inserted between Bilal's skin and skull.
I think new technologies are such a wonderful thing, but it's a little bit scary when it ACTUALLY becomes a part of us. I guess if Bilal can function normally and remain infection-free with this camera in his head, then more power to him. But according to the BBC article, he said it was quite painful even with all the antibiotics. Technology is a powerful thing, but so is the human body and we should listen to it more often!