Xin Wei Sha
Sha Xin Wei Ph.D. is Professor at the School of Arts, Media + Engineering and directs the Synthesis atelier for transversal art, philosophy and technology at Arizona State University. He is a professor at the European Graduate School in Philosophy, Art and Critical Theory; Fellow of the ASU-Santa Fe Institute Center for Biosocial Complex Systems; and Senior Fellow of Building21 at McGill University.
Dr. Sha's research concerns topological approaches to poiesis, play and process. His art and scholarship range from gestural media, movement arts, and realtime media installation through interaction design to critical studies and philosophy of technology. Trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford, Sha pursues speculative philosophy, experimental art, and visionary technologies that are reciprocally informed.
He publishes in experimental philosophy, media arts, science and technology studies, and computer science, including the book Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter (MIT).
Art
Sha’s art includes the TGarden playspaces, Hubbub speech-sensitive urban spaces, Membrane calligraphic video, Softwear gestural sound instruments, the WYSIWYG gesture-sensitive sounding weaving, Ouija performance-installations, and kinetic / light sculpture responding to movement and gesture, such as Cosmicomics Elektra, eSea Shanghai, the IL Y A video membrane Stanford/Berkeley, and Time Lenses Beall Center, and Palimpsest Paris. With Montanaro, Sha created media instruments for a stage work inspired by Shelley's Frankenstein. In collaboration with Khintirian, Ingalls, and Laurin, he created the Serra vegetal life environment.
Sha co-founded Sponge San Francisco to create public experimental experiences. Sha (co-)created installations in prominent venues: Ars Electronica Austria, Dutch Electronic Art Festival, MediaTerra Greece, Banff Canada, Future Physical UK, Elektra Montréal, and eArts Shanghai, and the Musée des arts et métiers Paris, Postmasters Gallery New York, San Francisco Exploratorium, Suntrust Gallery Atlanta, and SIGGRAPH. These works have been recognized by awards from major cultural foundations such as the Daniel Langlois Foundation; LEF Foundation; Creative Work Fund; and Rockefeller.
Technical research
Dr. Sha’s technical research include realtime, continuous mapping of features extracted from environmental or ensemble activity into parameters modulating the expressive improvisation of gesture in dense, palpable fields of sound, structured light, and animated materials. He has published in areas of tangible interfaces, human-computer interaction, and wearables (Ubicomp, ICMC, Sound Music Computing), calligraphic media (ACM Multimedia), movement (MOCO), responsive environments (CHI, TEI).
History
Trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford, Sha worked more than 12 years in the fields of scientific computation, mathematical modeling, scientific and differential geometric visualization.
In 1995, he extended his work to network media authoring systems and media theory leading the Interaction and Media Group at Stanford. In 1997, he co-founded Pliant Research with colleagues from Xerox PARC and Apple Research Labs, designing technologies that people and organizations can adapt to meet evolving social aspirations. In 1999, Sha joined Interval Research to work on machine learning and computer vision.
After obtaining an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2001 at Stanford on differential geometric performance and the technologies of writing in Mathematics, Computer Science, and History & Philosophy of Science, Sha joined the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center in the College of Computing, where he founded the Topological Media Lab, dedicated to the study of gesture, distributed agency and materiality with application to performative and environmental experience.
In 2005-2014, Sha was the first Canada Research Chair in media arts and sciences, and Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts Department at Concordia University Montréal, advising PhD’s in Individualized Studies and Humanities Special Program. He directed the wearables / active textiles axis Hexagram Centre for Research-Creation.
Sha's work has been supported by the Canada Fund for Innovation, Hexagram, Concordia University, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council, Le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies, and Le Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture; the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Academy of Sciences, and the United Nations.
In 2020, he established Weightlesstudio, an atelier for design and prototype engineering of enriched environments, as a portal between transversal research-creation and the private and public sectors.
Sha serves as an Editor for AI & Society Journal, and on the Governing Board of Leonardo.
Supervisors: Tim Lenoir, Rafe Mazzeo, and Terry Winograd
Phone: +1-650-815-9962
Address: Stauffer-B Room 255
950 South Forest Mall
Tempe Arizona 85281
Dr. Sha's research concerns topological approaches to poiesis, play and process. His art and scholarship range from gestural media, movement arts, and realtime media installation through interaction design to critical studies and philosophy of technology. Trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford, Sha pursues speculative philosophy, experimental art, and visionary technologies that are reciprocally informed.
He publishes in experimental philosophy, media arts, science and technology studies, and computer science, including the book Poiesis and Enchantment in Topological Matter (MIT).
Art
Sha’s art includes the TGarden playspaces, Hubbub speech-sensitive urban spaces, Membrane calligraphic video, Softwear gestural sound instruments, the WYSIWYG gesture-sensitive sounding weaving, Ouija performance-installations, and kinetic / light sculpture responding to movement and gesture, such as Cosmicomics Elektra, eSea Shanghai, the IL Y A video membrane Stanford/Berkeley, and Time Lenses Beall Center, and Palimpsest Paris. With Montanaro, Sha created media instruments for a stage work inspired by Shelley's Frankenstein. In collaboration with Khintirian, Ingalls, and Laurin, he created the Serra vegetal life environment.
Sha co-founded Sponge San Francisco to create public experimental experiences. Sha (co-)created installations in prominent venues: Ars Electronica Austria, Dutch Electronic Art Festival, MediaTerra Greece, Banff Canada, Future Physical UK, Elektra Montréal, and eArts Shanghai, and the Musée des arts et métiers Paris, Postmasters Gallery New York, San Francisco Exploratorium, Suntrust Gallery Atlanta, and SIGGRAPH. These works have been recognized by awards from major cultural foundations such as the Daniel Langlois Foundation; LEF Foundation; Creative Work Fund; and Rockefeller.
Technical research
Dr. Sha’s technical research include realtime, continuous mapping of features extracted from environmental or ensemble activity into parameters modulating the expressive improvisation of gesture in dense, palpable fields of sound, structured light, and animated materials. He has published in areas of tangible interfaces, human-computer interaction, and wearables (Ubicomp, ICMC, Sound Music Computing), calligraphic media (ACM Multimedia), movement (MOCO), responsive environments (CHI, TEI).
History
Trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford, Sha worked more than 12 years in the fields of scientific computation, mathematical modeling, scientific and differential geometric visualization.
In 1995, he extended his work to network media authoring systems and media theory leading the Interaction and Media Group at Stanford. In 1997, he co-founded Pliant Research with colleagues from Xerox PARC and Apple Research Labs, designing technologies that people and organizations can adapt to meet evolving social aspirations. In 1999, Sha joined Interval Research to work on machine learning and computer vision.
After obtaining an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2001 at Stanford on differential geometric performance and the technologies of writing in Mathematics, Computer Science, and History & Philosophy of Science, Sha joined the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and the Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center in the College of Computing, where he founded the Topological Media Lab, dedicated to the study of gesture, distributed agency and materiality with application to performative and environmental experience.
In 2005-2014, Sha was the first Canada Research Chair in media arts and sciences, and Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts Department at Concordia University Montréal, advising PhD’s in Individualized Studies and Humanities Special Program. He directed the wearables / active textiles axis Hexagram Centre for Research-Creation.
Sha's work has been supported by the Canada Fund for Innovation, Hexagram, Concordia University, Social Sciences Humanities Research Council, Le Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies, and Le Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture; the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Academy of Sciences, and the United Nations.
In 2020, he established Weightlesstudio, an atelier for design and prototype engineering of enriched environments, as a portal between transversal research-creation and the private and public sectors.
Sha serves as an Editor for AI & Society Journal, and on the Governing Board of Leonardo.
Supervisors: Tim Lenoir, Rafe Mazzeo, and Terry Winograd
Phone: +1-650-815-9962
Address: Stauffer-B Room 255
950 South Forest Mall
Tempe Arizona 85281
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Videos by Xin Wei Sha
15 October 2021
Making Sense of Complexity Speaker Series, hosted by the School of Complex Adaptive Systems | ASU
Sha Xin Wei
After rapidly rehearsing some fundamental mathematical, conceptual, and methodological challenges to present day complexity science, we present possible alternatives for next-gen science of complex adaptive systems, drawing on Shannon, Wiener, Gill; Wittgenstein, James, Deleuze, Whitehead; Barad, Arendt; Stepney; Longo, Calude, Saari, Wolpert, Kauffman, Montevil.
Slides: topologicalmedialab.net/xinwei/papers/slides/navigating-scas
In Solutions for Postmodern Living (1 November 2021) https://www.solutionsforpostmodernliving.org/world-building-blog/sha-xin-wei
How can we live in a world which is always full of surprises, where bacteria outflank antibiotics, more data yields less understanding and Gaia herself shrugs off carbon capitalism with a fever? We’ll look at a few examples of queering art, technoscience and politics playfully and ethico-aesthetically, in the 21c: post-digital responsive media environments, quantum finance and non-anthropocentric design.
Sha Xin Wei
Professor and Director, School of Arts, Media and Engineering + Synthesis
25 March 2019 • Gammage • ASU
synthesiscenter.net
1984 ushered in the personal computer, 2004 social media. But our mediated lives are more complicated and brittle than ever. Can we turn from piling up the internet of things to navigating cities and infrastructures that are centuries deep? How can media conduct value as well as fact? What will computational media become in 10 or 20 years? How will we create environments that are not complicated, but rich?
Credits: Connor Rawls, Pete Weisman, Brandon Mechtley, Garrett L. Johnson, Yanjun Lyu, Megan Patzem, Emiddio Vasquez. Thanks to the TEDxASU team.
A talk at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community at Arizona State University. Learn more at ted.com/tedx
Papers by Xin Wei Sha
(The attached PDF has three images from original manuscript not in the published version.)
Sometimes, more often in recent years, I’ve taken to asking students and colleagues, why do you do what you do? Although that question is not the same as, “Why we live?” it is not unrelated because I think how we live would be part of my own response to the question, why we live. The quality of life is perhaps a more fruitful question than the meaning of life, so popular in an earlier era of the 20th century, more enamored of epistemology’s charms. It’s a phenomenological question about the experience of life, but I would like to answer it in a poetic way in the context of contemporary and emerging technologies of performance, where performance is construed generously beyond the domains of performing and performance arts.
One may aspire to do philosophy in the mode of poetry again, a Laozi multiply transposed. But didn’t Plato throw out the poets from the Republic because they operated in the realm of the fictive imitative, thrice-removed from the truth, and therefore were not to be trusted with the proper affairs of the polis? I’m writing this as an exercise in philosophy in the mode of art, trusting that it can be done, that it matters not only what we say or do, but how we say or do it. I’m wagering that both truth effects and ethico-aesthetic passions can be accommodated in the same breath, the way mathematicians construct truths. However, mathematicians are not scientists, because their theorems do not claim anything about the “real world.” Therefore they do not write under the sign of empirical truth. Mathematicians prove theorems true or false within propositional systems that they themselves construct. Therefore their constructions are works of imagination. Writing neither under the sign of truth nor of fiction, mathematicians create truths via imaginative processes that can be regarded as poetic processes.
It is in this spirit that I would propose to explore some questions refined from crude, concrete, and technical craft, refined over the years into what would typically be considered philosophical questions…
See https://www.solutionsforpostmodernliving.org/world-building-blog/sha-xin-wei