Shawn Brixey, The Altamira Project©
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THE ALTAMIRA PROJECT
Part of the Popular Science Design Challenge at the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, The Altamira Project © looked to create an innovative new form of visualization.
http://www.dxarts.washington.edu/pop_sci/
Shawn Brixey heads up a group
which has designed a system to enable users to jack into
the cosmos. Shawn's Altimira project involves an Electrophosphene
Generator which translates radio signals eminating from
pulsars into electrophosphene patterns in the intimate
gel of one's own retina. It sounds downright bizarre and
it is downright bizarre –magnificently bizarre.
The project has never been realized, but the concept,
along with its graphic representaion of a user in an extreme
state of cosmic connection, cannot be ignored.
I am immediately reminded of Plato's cave analogy where
humanity shuffles about in the shadows of reality, missing
the stunning world outside the cave. The Electrophosphene
Generator beseeches us, "Wake up, monkeys, the universe
awaits." Granted, retinal phosphenes triggered by
radio waves is yet another form of indirection. But the
yearning to connect with the infinite ripples through
this Hyper-Runt with more honesty and faith than your
average blood sacrifice.
Shawn Brixey is co-founder of an unusual Phd. program
which has been launched recently at the University of
Washington in Seattle. The Digital and Experimental Arts
(DXArts) program promises to generate a host of interesting
new phenomena, perhaps even a Hyper-Runt or two, born
from the intersection of art, culture, science and technology.
I've visited the joint and can attest that unlike MIT's
Media Lab, which has cultivated a fairly corporate atmosphere,
DXArts promises a more probing and liberated culture of
inquiry.
--Ebon Fisher |
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Bio
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Shawn Brixey is Associate Director and
Co-founder of the University of Washington’s newly
established Ph.D. program in Digital and Experimental
Arts (DXARTS) and their Center for Digital Arts and Experimental
Media. A graduate of MIT's CAVS/Media Lab, he has exhibited
art and technology works internationally; including Documenta
in Kassel, Germany, the MIT Museum in Boston, The International
Symposium of Electronic Arts at the Chicago Art Institute,
and the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
His research interests lie at the emerging interface of art, science and
technology. He is currently developing radical new art forms, which present
important evolutionary transformations in digital media by synthesizing
these technologies with the physical sciences and biotechnology as hybrid
strategies for future computational expression. |
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