Sha Xin Wei | ASU Search

Sha Xin Wei | ASU Search
Sha Xin Wei
Professor
The GAME School
Other ASU affiliations
School of Complex Adaptive Systems
ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems
Board Member
Leonardo Initiative
Professor
Biosocial Complexity Initiative
Professor
ASU SFI Center
Affiliated Faculty
Professor
ASU-SFI Fellow
Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity (CSDC)
Senior Global Futures Scientist
Global Futures Scientists and Scholars
[email protected]
Mail code:
5802
Campus:
Tempe
Long Bio
Sha Xin Wei PhD is a professor in the School of Games + Arts + Media + Engineering (GAME) and the School of Complex Adaptive Systems at Arizona State University. He directs the Synthesis Center for transversal research-creation and responsive environments 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.  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."
Education
Mathematics, Harvard University and Stanford University
CV
Curriculum Vitae
Video
Research Website URL
ORCID Profile ID
Research Interests
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.
Research Group
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.
Publications
Research Activity
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).
Teaching Website URL
Courses
2026 Spring
Course Number
Course Title
CAS 593
Applied Project
2025 Fall
Course Number
Course Title
AME 590
Reading And Conference
AME 792
Research
AME 799
Dissertation
CAS 593
Applied Project
CSE 593
Applied Project
2025 Spring
Course Number
Course Title
AME 799
Dissertation
AME 531
Experimental Media Philosophy
AME 792
Research
AME 792
Research
AME 792
Research
CAS 598
Special Topics
CAS 598
Special Topics
AME 494
Special Topics
AME 598
Special Topics
CAS 593
Applied Project
CAS 593
Applied Project
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
Presentations
Editorships
AI & Society, Curmudgeon Corner Founding Editor, Editorial Board
Service
Leonardo ISAST Board
Expertise Areas
Art and Ecology
Artificial Intelligence
Arts, Media and Engineering
Boundary Spanning Organizations
Communication and Philosophy
Complex Systems
Computation and Digital Media
Continental Philosophy
Creative Process
Cultural Studies and Technology
Design
Design Thinking
Digital and Media Art
Digital Culture
Digital Media
Dynamical Systems
Emerging Technologies
Human Computer Interactions
Interactive Arts
Interactive Media
Interactive Technology
Media and Performance
Modeling and Simulation
Movement
Sound Installation
Technology and Society
Wearable Technologies