Call it crazy. Call it stupid. Call it ingenious. But one NYC professor is calling his decision to install a camera in the back of his head "art."

Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-born photography professor at New York University, had the procedure done at a piercing studio last month for an art project commissioned by a museum in Doha, Qatar, he told CNN. The "procedure" also involved Bilal inserting a metal plate into his head.

"This will expose the unspoken conditions we face," Bilal said Thursday. "A project like this is meant to establish a dialogue about surveillance."

Bilal calls the project "The 3rd I." The camera, which magnetically attaches to a mount, beams a picture a minute back to the Arab Museum of Modern Art. That's possible because the camera's cord runs to a computer that Bilal carries around in a custom-made shoulder bag.

To allay privacy concerns at the NYU, the university has mandated that Bilal cover up the camera with a lens cap while teaching on campus.

"I see myself as a mirror reflecting some of the social conditions that we ignore," he said.

Read more at CNN.com.