That impulsive duck-face kissy photo you took of yourself and your friend at the Apple store to test out the new iPads camera may be destined for an art gallery wall.

That is if you happened to snap it at any of the Apple stores visited by Irby Pace.

On a daily basis people are leaving their portraits behind on iPhones, iPads and iPods, says Pace who in late 2010 retrieved over 1,000 images from Apple products in stores across Texas and New York City.

Pace, who is coming to the end of his photo MFA at the University of North Texas in Denton, began lifting the images by e-mailing and texting them to himself from Apple stores.

Later, we discovered a device to directly download massive groups of images straight to our own iPad, he says.

From the huge cache of images, he has edited down a series of portraits and enlarged them for gallery exhibition.

Last year a similar art project by Kyle McDonald called People Staring At Computers used software that McDonald installed on Apple store computers to detect faces and capture an image every minute.

Over 1,000 captures were automatically uploaded to McDonalds computer and then posted to a (now shuttered) Tumblr account.

But where McDonalds stunt garnered him a home visit from the FBI and got his laptop and flash drives confiscated, the only question hanging over Pace seems to be whether the images he extracted are the legal property of Apple.

Pace said Apple store staff were not particularly vigilant: None of them seemed interested at all in what we were doing.

Aside from the fact McDonald installed spyware on property he didnt own, he also implicated members of the public without their stated permission.

Without his subjects choosing to click the shutter, McDonalds People Staring At Computers was ethically dubious; a great stunt but truly a violation of privacy.

Pace argues that the people in his reclaimed images represent themselves however they chose, and without scrutiny.

To reuse the anonymous portraits is hardly seditious but no doubt Unintended Consequences will make some people uncomfortable.

Unintended Consequences (Feb 5th–10th) will be on show at the Cora Stafford Gallery, 1120 W.

Unintended Consequences explores changes in behavior for those people who have not considered how these images may be used, says Pace.

Pace feels justified in his actions and believes he broke no ethical rule.

Inasmuch that Paces subjects posed and captured the image themselves, the individuals in Unintended Consequences could be said to be willing participants.

In the majority of cases, it seems they snapped their portrait in a performative manner and Pace has created an exhibition of them.

The project gives these abandoned images more prominence than they probably deserve, but there is wit and illusion to Unintended Consequences too.

Just because these people go up on a gallery wall doesnt make them significant in any way; Pace plays with the aggrandizing that can often go along with white cube galleries.

- – – – – – – -Unintended Consequences (Feb 5th–10th) will be on show at the Cora Stafford Gallery, 1120 W.

Brielle Shreiber is a business journalist based in Munich, Germany. Brielle has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Brielle spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.