Sha Xin Wei
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Mail code: 5802Campus: Tempe
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Sha Xin Wei PhD is a professor in the School of Arts, Media + Engineering (AME) at Arizona State University. He directs the Synthesis Center for responsive environments and improvisation with colleagues in AME and affiliate research centers.
From 2001 to 2013, he directed the Topological Media Lab (TML), an atelier-laboratory for the study of gesture and materiality from computational and phenomenological perspectives. He established the TML at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001, and moved the lab to Montréal in 2005 with the support of the Canada Fund for Innovation and the CRC. From 2005-2013, Sha was the Canada Research chair in media arts and sciences, and associate professor of fine arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. From 2014 to 2019, Sha directed AME as ASU's transdisciplinary department fusing sciences and humanities with experimental media arts practices.
Sha's research concerns ethico-aesthetic improvisation, and a topological approach to morphogenesis and process philosophy. His particular areas of study include the realtime, continuous mapping of features extracted from gestural instruments (such as woven or non-woven fabrics) into parameters modulating the continuous synthesis of video, sound, and physical or software control systems. This technical work supports the expressive improvisation of gesture in dense, palpable fields of sound, video and structured light, and animated materials.
Sha’s art research includes the TGarden responsive environments (Ars Electronica, Dutch Electronic Art Festival, MediaTerra Athens, SIGGRAPH), Hubbub speech-sensitive urban surfaces, Membrane calligraphic video, Softwear gestural sound instruments, the WYSIWYG gesture-sensitive sounding weaving, Ouija performance-installations, Cosmicomics Elektra, eSea Shanghai and the IL Y A video membrane, and Einsteins Dreams time-conditioning instruments. Sha collaborated with choreographer Michael Montanaro and the Blue Riders ensemble to create a stage work inspired by Shelley's Frankenstein, with experimental musicians, dancers and responsive media.
Sha co-founded the Sponge art group in San Francisco to build public experiments in phenomenology of performance. With Sponge and other artists, Sha has directed event/installations in prominent experimental art venues including Ars Electronica Austria, DEAF / V2 The Netherlands, MediaTerra Greece, Banff Canada, Future Physical United Kingdom, Elektra Montréal, and eArts Shanghai. He has also exhibited media installations at Postmasters Gallery New York and Suntrust Gallery Atlanta. These works have been recognized by awards from major cultural foundations such as the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology; the LEF Foundation; the Canada Fund for Innovation; the Creative Work Fund in New York; Future Physical UK; and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Sha was trained in mathematics at Harvard and Stanford Universities, and worked more than 12 years in the fields of scientific computation, mathematical modeling and the visualization of scientific data and geometric structures.
In 1995, he extended his work to network media authoring systems and media theory coordinating a three-year-long workshop on interaction and computational media at Stanford. In 1997, he co-founded Pliant Research with colleagues from Xerox PARC and Apple Research Labs, dedicated to designing technologies that people and organizations can robustly reshape to meet evolving socio-economic needs.
MIT Press has published Sha's book, "Poiesis, Enchantment, and Topological Matter."
Mathematics, Harvard University and Stanford University
Responsive environments, critical study of media arts and sciences, phenomenology of performance, technologies of performance, gesture, movement, realtime media, computational media.
Process philosophy, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies. Applications of: differential geometry, topological dynamical systems, measure theory, physics.
Synthesis is an atelier for transversal, research blending experimental art, technology and philosophy oriented to process and whole experience. We invent techniques for improvisatory, non-anthropocentric design and sense-making. Globally, we build an ecology of practices for imagining and prototyping the worlds we inhabit.
- Prototyping Social Forms: Fusing art, science, conceptual and experiential methods, co-investigators reimagine, prototype and assess how people experience technologies, products, services in plausible, thick social settings. (Sha, Barua, Johnson)
- Alter-Eco Alternate Economies & Ecologies: State of the art in contemporary finance and computational capitalism and alternative economies-ecologies; ASU, Senselab Montreal, European Graduate School Malta, Dartington UK (Sha, Dirks; Fynsk, Damiris, Boldon)
- Speculative engineering: Leveraging state of the art signal processing and realtime media to create responsive media beyond interactivity, and responsive environments beyond AR/MR/XR (Mechtley, Ingalls, Rawls, Thorn, Sha)
- Place & Atmosphere: How these physical systems simultaneously operate as social, aesthetic, political and affective spaces. (Mechtley, NCAR, Sha; Förster (Potsdam))
- Movement-based Research, Rhythm: Linking movement with time-based media studying the sense of dynamic, change, rhythm, and joint, embodied intention scaled from individuals to cities. (Ingalls, Stein, Rajko; Turaga, Sha)
- Ontogenetic Process, Emergence and Individuation: Navigating unpredictable and open-ended biosocial evolution. (Sha, Nocek, Bennett ASU, Espelie (Boulder), Kauffman (Santa Fe), Longo (ENS Paris), Thurtle (Washington), Wild (Providence), Wolfe (Rice))
- Telematic Embodied Learning: Collaborative, portable, wearable, mixed reality tools and techniques that free students and teachers from their screens and keyboards and enable them to exercise intercorporeal and spatial awareness and interaction for hybrid learning.
- NSF Award 2122924: ASU - NERC Partnership for Neurodiverse Computational Thinking and Telematic Embodied Learning (2021-2024), a partnership between Synthesis, AME, and Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU, and Science Prep Academy, Temple Grandin School, and Neurodiversity Educational Research Center.
- CHIF: Startup for Hosting Research Clusters at Synthesis (ASUF 30005923). ASU FDN(1/1/2014 - 12/31/2015).
Courses
2025 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 531 | Experimental Media Philosophy |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
CAS 593 | Applied Project |
CAS 598 | Special Topics |
CAS 598 | Special Topics |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
AME 598 | Special Topics |
2024 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
CSE 599 | Thesis |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 484 | Internship |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
AME 598 | Special Topics |
CAS 598 | Special Topics |
CAS 598 | Special Topics |
AME 294 | Special Topics |
CAS 593 | Applied Project |
2024 Summer
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
2024 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 531 | Experimental Media Philosophy |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 294 | Special Topics |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
CAS 593 | Applied Project |
2023 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
CSE 599 | Thesis |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 484 | Internship |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
AME 598 | Special Topics |
AME 485 | MAS Capstone I |
AME 486 | MAS Capstone II |
CAS 598 | Special Topics |
CAS 598 | Special Topics |
2023 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 531 | Experimental Media Philosophy |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 294 | Special Topics |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
2022 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
CSE 599 | Thesis |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 484 | Internship |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
AME 598 | Special Topics |
AME 598 | Special Topics |
2022 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 531 | Experiential Media Studies II |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
HUL 598 | Special Topics |
HUL 598 | Special Topics |
HUL 494 | Special Topics |
HUL 494 | Special Topics |
TMC 498 | Pro-Seminar |
TEM 494 | Special Topics |
OMT 598 | Special Topics |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
AME 598 | Special Topics |
2021 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
CSE 599 | Thesis |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 485 | Digital Culture Capstone I |
AME 484 | Internship |
AME 486 | Digital Culture Capstone II |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 294 | Special Topics |
2021 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 531 | Experiential Media Studies II |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
2020 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
CSE 599 | Thesis |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 484 | Internship |
AME 530 | Experiential Media Studies I |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 294 | Special Topics |
2020 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
AME 799 | Dissertation |
AME 531 | Experiential Media Studies II |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 691 | Seminar |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
AME 494 | Special Topics |
2019 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
CSE 599 | Thesis |
AME 590 | Reading And Conference |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 484 | Internship |
AME 792 | Research |
AME 593 | Applied Project |
AME 799 | Dissertation |