Shawn Brixey
Encyclopedia
Shawn Alan Brixey is Associate Professor of Digital Arts and Experimental Media, and the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair for Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is also Co-Founder and former Director of the pioneering research center and doctoral program DXARTS
(The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media) at the University of Washington, Seattle. Brixey is an artist
, educator, writer, inventor, and researcher working primarily at the interface of art, science and technology.
in 1985, and an MSVisS in Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1988. At the Kansas City Art Institute he was a student and protege of Dale Eldred
and Jim Leedy. At The Massachusetts Institute of Technology he studied at the Media Laboratory and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies
. His thesis advisors and research mentors included renowned holography pioneer Steve Benton, sky artist Otto Piene
, bio artist Joe Davis
, and high-speed photography pioneer Harold Eugene Edgerton
. In 1989 Brixey was selected as the inaugural Leonardo Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and as a Visiting Artist at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills Michigan. In 1990 he joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky
and founded their New Media Program which grew to include artist Eduardo Kac
. In 1994 he joined the faculty at the University of Washington
, and Chaired the new Interdisciplinary Visual Arts Program until 1997. In 1997 He received San Francisco State University
's first Presidential Distinguished Scholar Award and helped found their New Media Institute. In 1998 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley
, and was the Founding Director of the New Media Program. He rejoined the faculty at the University of Washington in 2002 to Co-Found the new DXARTS
program along with composer Richard Karpen
. In 2009 Brixey was honored with the University of Washington's Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair in Arts and Sciences.
offers both hybrid B.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Research concentrations range from visual and aural synthesis, to algorithmic processes, sensing and control systems, mechatronic art, robotics, and telematic art . Designed around a revolutionary new model of creative practice, research, and discovery at the frontier of art, science and engineering, DXARTS supports the emergence of a new generation of arts pioneers by fostering the invention of new forms of art through expanded studio research that synthesize advances in digital computing, information technologies, science, biology and engineering .
While at the University of California, Berkeley
, he was Chair and Founder of the New Media Program and also Director of their Center for New Media Research from 1998 to 2002 . At Berkeley he also served as a Primary Investigator for the system wide UC Digital Arts Research Network (UCDARNET), and as an architect of the system wide "new media" Ph.D. initiative . He served as an Executive Council Member of the President's Planning Group on Digital Art. and also served as an Executive Committee and Research Council Member for the system wide Digital Media Innovations Agency (DiMI) . He was an Executive Committee Member of The Consortium for the Arts, and a founding Executive Committee member of The College of Environmental Design's Center for Design Visualization, as well as UC Berkeley's Institute for Design . He remains a Berkeley Art Museum Board of Trustees' Committee Member on New Media, and in 2008 was appointed by Ken Goldberg
to the Board of Directors of UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media. Other board members include Christiane Paul
, and Lev Manovich
.
, astronomy
, cosmology
, biology
and advanced computing. Examples include his 1987 project Photon Voice filmed in the Mojave Desert
by Smithsonian World Television, and detailed in Frank Popper
's 1992 book Art of the Electronic Age. Photon Voice uses radiation
pressure from sunlight (the kinetic momentum of photons) to build a micro-gravitational system. The light source developed for the project encoded an intense beam of sunlight with the artist's voice and was the used to levitate tiny galaxies of graphite
particles in a vacuum chamber
. The levitated graphite had fallen from the pencils used to make both the mechanical drawings for the project as well as the critical and poetic writings. Stereo video-microscopy allowed visitors to view these levitated galaxies, while scattered light from the levitated graphite particles was converted back into spoken word via novel photonics
and electronics
, creating an eccentric choir of audible voices endlessly speaking the words that were used the levitate them.
His project Alchymeia, was designed for the 1998 Winter Olympics
in Nagano, Japan and used naturally occurring steroids from the blood and urine of Olympic athletes to act as doping agents that would stimulate the growth of extraordinarily unusual snowflakes
, snowflakes that would otherwise be impossible to find in nature. Detailed in Steve Wilson
's 2002 book Information Arts, Alchymeia produces unique snowflakes that are precisely copied millions of times their original size creating spectacular colored ice crystals. Human biological material, which is physically embodied in the crystals atomic architecture, dramatically alters the snowflakes familiar and almost sacred form.
Chimera Obscura, created in collaboration with UC Berkeley Museum curator Richard Rinehart was commissioned for the 2002 premiere of the touring exhibition Genesis | Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery
. Chimera Obscura examined issues of genomic research through the creation of a massive multi-user data driven organism. The project centered on the operation of a precision tele-robot that online visitors piloted through an elaborate real-world maze in a museum created from a human thumbprint. As visitors moved through the maze space they left behind archeological layers of virtual information genes in the form of text, video and audio. The stored data from their electronic “bread crumb trail” evolved into large structural information nodes. Much like cities, the information architecture of the nodes in the maze naturally mutated over time, and the more activity that occurred within the data organism, the more the physical space changed. The continually evolving physical structure of the maze, its dynamic range and mutability, required millions of Internet
visitors aligned in loose confederations much like a social organism to generate a fundamental mapping and sequencing of a co-mingled hybrid virtual and real space.
More recent work, such as Eon, develops novel high-energy ultrasound
, sonochemistry
and plasma physics to explore the creation of “material poetry,” art formed from the discrete interactions of matter
and energy
. Eon received a 2003 Rockefeller Foundation
Fellowship, and focused on harnessing the phenomenon of sonoluminescence
, the process by which sound in liquids can be converted directly into light, to construct a tiny brilliant star-like light source. Eon allowed museum and telepresent visitors from the Internet to send short poetic e-mails in five different languages to the exhibition site and have them converted into voice-encoded ultrasound. The high-frequency sound field modulates a 1000ml vessel of ultrapure water creating a series of high and low-pressure nodes. The sounds nodes trap microscopic gas bubbles at the center of the glass vessel, and through the process of sonoluminescence, the voice encoded sound field crush bubbles into infinitesimally small energy emitting points that produce a brilliant star-like light source radiating words as light from a small glass cylinder. Visitors wear specially designed headphones that allow them to listen directly to the starlight and the voices of the Internet based visitors around the world creating the star. Eon amplifies lingering questions on the nature of belief, beauty and the fidelity of digital experience, and begins to ask whether the nearly unbelievable natural phenomenon at the core of the project is more believable than the sophisticated technology tools used to create and sustain it.
, Intel Corporation
, Microsoft
, IBM
GmbH, AVID
Incorporated, Newport/Klinger Research Corporation, Boxlight Corporation, Silicon Graphics
, 3M
, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Leica and Hughes Aircraft
.
His artistic work has also been honored with numerous state and national arts council awards including; The National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council for the Arts, Michigan Council for the Arts, Kentucky Council for the Arts, and South Carolina Council for the Arts.
In 2003 he received a prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for New Media, past fellows include Bill Viola
, Lynn Hershman and Gary Hill
. In 2004 Brixey and two DXARTS doctoral students Bret Battey and Ian Ingram were selected winners of the Editors Choice Award, in Popular Science
Magazine's, "World Design Challenge". The winning entry was awarded for novel use of feedforward ultrasound technology used to produce wide-field active noise cancellation in underwater environments specifically to protect endangered marine mammals. In 2006 Brixey was inducted as a lifetime fellow of the World Technology Network fellows include Char Davies
, Jaron Lanier
, Jeffery Shaw, and Eduardo Kac
. In 2009 Brixey received the University of Washington’s prestigious faculty award in the arts, the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair in Arts and Sciences.
As an artist his installations have been commissioned and exhibited internationally; including Documenta
8 in Kassel, Germany 1987, The Deutscher Kunstlerbund
in Karlsruhe, Germany 1988, The Cranbrook Art Museum in Detroit, Michigan
1990, The Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati 1992, The MIT Museum in Cambridge 1995, The International Symposium of Electronic Arts at The Chicago Art Institute 1997, The Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan 1998, The first American Design and Architecture Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York 2000, Arizona State University
's Institute for Studies in the Arts 2001, Henry Art Gallery
, University of Washington
, Seattle 2002, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California 2003, The National Products Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2004, and The Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University
, Ashland, Oregon 2009.
DXARTS
The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, or DXARTS, is a program offering BFA and PhD studies in the New Media art at the University of Washington...
(The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media) at the University of Washington, Seattle. Brixey is an artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, educator, writer, inventor, and researcher working primarily at the interface of art, science and technology.
Background
Brixey was born in Springfield, Missouri and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee and Kansas City, Missouri. His parents Alan M. Brixey and Mary Lou Peters were celebrated stage and radio performers, as well early television pioneers in the U.S. Brixey received a BFA in Sculpture and Experimental Media from the Kansas City Art InstituteKansas City Art Institute
The Kansas City Art Institute is a private, independent, four-year college of fine arts and design founded in 1885 in Kansas City, Missouri....
in 1985, and an MSVisS in Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1988. At the Kansas City Art Institute he was a student and protege of Dale Eldred
Dale Eldred
Dale Eldred was an internationally acclaimed sculptor renowned for large-scale sculptures that emphasized both natural and generated light.-Biography:...
and Jim Leedy. At The Massachusetts Institute of Technology he studied at the Media Laboratory and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies
Center for Advanced Visual Studies
The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT was founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes. Kepes, who taught at the new Bauhaus in Chicago, originally founded the Center as a way to encourage artistic collaboration on a large civic scale....
. His thesis advisors and research mentors included renowned holography pioneer Steve Benton, sky artist Otto Piene
Otto Piene
Otto Piene is a German artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf and Groton, Massachusetts.-Biography:...
, bio artist Joe Davis
Joe Davis
Joe Davis, OBE was a British professional player of snooker and English billiards....
, and high-speed photography pioneer Harold Eugene Edgerton
Harold Eugene Edgerton
Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
. In 1989 Brixey was selected as the inaugural Leonardo Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and as a Visiting Artist at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills Michigan. In 1990 he joined the faculty of the University of Kentucky
University of Kentucky
The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...
and founded their New Media Program which grew to include artist Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac is an American contemporary artist internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio-art. Kac was born in 1962, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He lives and works in Chicago....
. In 1994 he joined the faculty at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, and Chaired the new Interdisciplinary Visual Arts Program until 1997. In 1997 He received San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
's first Presidential Distinguished Scholar Award and helped found their New Media Institute. In 1998 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, and was the Founding Director of the New Media Program. He rejoined the faculty at the University of Washington in 2002 to Co-Found the new DXARTS
DXARTS
The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, or DXARTS, is a program offering BFA and PhD studies in the New Media art at the University of Washington...
program along with composer Richard Karpen
Richard Karpen
Richard Karpen is an American composer of electronic and acoustic music. He is also known for developing computer applications for music and composition.- Biography :...
. In 2009 Brixey was honored with the University of Washington's Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair in Arts and Sciences.
Career
Brixey is Co-Founder and former Director of the University of Washington's Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media. Established in 2002, DXARTSDXARTS
The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, or DXARTS, is a program offering BFA and PhD studies in the New Media art at the University of Washington...
offers both hybrid B.F.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Research concentrations range from visual and aural synthesis, to algorithmic processes, sensing and control systems, mechatronic art, robotics, and telematic art . Designed around a revolutionary new model of creative practice, research, and discovery at the frontier of art, science and engineering, DXARTS supports the emergence of a new generation of arts pioneers by fostering the invention of new forms of art through expanded studio research that synthesize advances in digital computing, information technologies, science, biology and engineering .
While at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, he was Chair and Founder of the New Media Program and also Director of their Center for New Media Research from 1998 to 2002 . At Berkeley he also served as a Primary Investigator for the system wide UC Digital Arts Research Network (UCDARNET), and as an architect of the system wide "new media" Ph.D. initiative . He served as an Executive Council Member of the President's Planning Group on Digital Art. and also served as an Executive Committee and Research Council Member for the system wide Digital Media Innovations Agency (DiMI) . He was an Executive Committee Member of The Consortium for the Arts, and a founding Executive Committee member of The College of Environmental Design's Center for Design Visualization, as well as UC Berkeley's Institute for Design . He remains a Berkeley Art Museum Board of Trustees' Committee Member on New Media, and in 2008 was appointed by Ken Goldberg
Ken Goldberg
Kenneth Y. Goldberg is a Professor of Industrial Engineering and OperationsResearch , with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering and...
to the Board of Directors of UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media. Other board members include Christiane Paul
Christiane Paul
Christiane Paul is a German film, television and stage actress.Paul first worked as a model for magazines such as Bravo. She was 17 when she obtained her first leading role in the film Deutschfieber...
, and Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich is an author of new media books, professor of Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego, U.S. and European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he teaches new media art and theory, software studies, and digital humanities...
.
Experimental Media Art
Brixey is best known for pioneering highly complex experimental artworks that synthesize physicsPhysics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
, cosmology
Cosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
, biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
and advanced computing. Examples include his 1987 project Photon Voice filmed in the Mojave Desert
Mojave Desert
The Mojave Desert occupies a significant portion of southeastern California and smaller parts of central California, southern Nevada, southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona, in the United States...
by Smithsonian World Television, and detailed in Frank Popper
Frank Popper
Frank Popper is a historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He has been decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government...
's 1992 book Art of the Electronic Age. Photon Voice uses radiation
Radiation
In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing...
pressure from sunlight (the kinetic momentum of photons) to build a micro-gravitational system. The light source developed for the project encoded an intense beam of sunlight with the artist's voice and was the used to levitate tiny galaxies of graphite
Graphite
The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Ancient Greek γράφω , "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead . Unlike diamond , graphite is an electrical conductor, a semimetal...
particles in a vacuum chamber
Vacuum chamber
A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump. The resulting low pressure, commonly referred to as a vacuum, allows researchers to conduct physical experiments or to test mechanical devices which must operate in outer space...
. The levitated graphite had fallen from the pencils used to make both the mechanical drawings for the project as well as the critical and poetic writings. Stereo video-microscopy allowed visitors to view these levitated galaxies, while scattered light from the levitated graphite particles was converted back into spoken word via novel photonics
Photonics
The science of photonics includes the generation, emission, transmission, modulation, signal processing, switching, amplification, detection and sensing of light. The term photonics thereby emphasizes that photons are neither particles nor waves — they are different in that they have both particle...
and electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
, creating an eccentric choir of audible voices endlessly speaking the words that were used the levitate them.
His project Alchymeia, was designed for the 1998 Winter Olympics
1998 Winter Olympics
The 1998 Winter Olympics, officially the XVIII Olympic Winter Games, was a winter multi-sport event celebrated from 7 to 22 February 1998 in Nagano, Japan. Seventy-two nations and 2,176 participans contested in seven sports and 72 events at 15 venues. The games saw the introduction of Women's ice...
in Nagano, Japan and used naturally occurring steroids from the blood and urine of Olympic athletes to act as doping agents that would stimulate the growth of extraordinarily unusual snowflakes
Snowflakes
Snowflakes is the first Christmas album by American R&B singer–songwriter Toni Braxton, released in the United States on October 23, 2001 by Arista Records...
, snowflakes that would otherwise be impossible to find in nature. Detailed in Steve Wilson
Steve Wilson
Steve Wilson may refer to:* Steve Wilson , baseball player* Steve Wilson , former NFL player for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers* Steve Wilson , former NFL player for the Denver Broncos...
's 2002 book Information Arts, Alchymeia produces unique snowflakes that are precisely copied millions of times their original size creating spectacular colored ice crystals. Human biological material, which is physically embodied in the crystals atomic architecture, dramatically alters the snowflakes familiar and almost sacred form.
Chimera Obscura, created in collaboration with UC Berkeley Museum curator Richard Rinehart was commissioned for the 2002 premiere of the touring exhibition Genesis | Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics at the University of Washington’s Henry Art Gallery
Henry Art Gallery
The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in 1927 and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The...
. Chimera Obscura examined issues of genomic research through the creation of a massive multi-user data driven organism. The project centered on the operation of a precision tele-robot that online visitors piloted through an elaborate real-world maze in a museum created from a human thumbprint. As visitors moved through the maze space they left behind archeological layers of virtual information genes in the form of text, video and audio. The stored data from their electronic “bread crumb trail” evolved into large structural information nodes. Much like cities, the information architecture of the nodes in the maze naturally mutated over time, and the more activity that occurred within the data organism, the more the physical space changed. The continually evolving physical structure of the maze, its dynamic range and mutability, required millions of Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
visitors aligned in loose confederations much like a social organism to generate a fundamental mapping and sequencing of a co-mingled hybrid virtual and real space.
More recent work, such as Eon, develops novel high-energy ultrasound
Ultrasound
Ultrasound is cyclic sound pressure with a frequency greater than the upper limit of human hearing. Ultrasound is thus not separated from "normal" sound based on differences in physical properties, only the fact that humans cannot hear it. Although this limit varies from person to person, it is...
, sonochemistry
Sonochemistry
In chemistry, the study of sonochemistry is concerned with understanding the effect of sonic waves and wave properties on chemical systems. The chemical effects of ultrasound do not come from adirect interaction with molecular species...
and plasma physics to explore the creation of “material poetry,” art formed from the discrete interactions of matter
Matter
Matter is a general term for the substance of which all physical objects consist. Typically, matter includes atoms and other particles which have mass. A common way of defining matter is as anything that has mass and occupies volume...
and energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
. Eon received a 2003 Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
Fellowship, and focused on harnessing the phenomenon of sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence is the emission of short bursts of light from imploding bubbles in a liquid when excited by sound.-History:The effect was first discovered at the University of Cologne in 1934 as a result of work on sonar. H. Frenzel and H. Schultes put an ultrasound transducer in a tank of...
, the process by which sound in liquids can be converted directly into light, to construct a tiny brilliant star-like light source. Eon allowed museum and telepresent visitors from the Internet to send short poetic e-mails in five different languages to the exhibition site and have them converted into voice-encoded ultrasound. The high-frequency sound field modulates a 1000ml vessel of ultrapure water creating a series of high and low-pressure nodes. The sounds nodes trap microscopic gas bubbles at the center of the glass vessel, and through the process of sonoluminescence, the voice encoded sound field crush bubbles into infinitesimally small energy emitting points that produce a brilliant star-like light source radiating words as light from a small glass cylinder. Visitors wear specially designed headphones that allow them to listen directly to the starlight and the voices of the Internet based visitors around the world creating the star. Eon amplifies lingering questions on the nature of belief, beauty and the fidelity of digital experience, and begins to ask whether the nearly unbelievable natural phenomenon at the core of the project is more believable than the sophisticated technology tools used to create and sustain it.
Awards and Distinctions
For his research, Brixey has received numerous corporate grants including, Apple ComputerApple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
, Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation is an American multinational semiconductor chip maker corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most...
, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
GmbH, AVID
AVID
AVID stands for:* Advancement Via Individual Determination, a college-readiness system designed to increase the number of students who enroll in four-year colleges in the U.S....
Incorporated, Newport/Klinger Research Corporation, Boxlight Corporation, Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
, 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Leica and Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Culver City, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company...
.
His artistic work has also been honored with numerous state and national arts council awards including; The National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council for the Arts, Michigan Council for the Arts, Kentucky Council for the Arts, and South Carolina Council for the Arts.
In 2003 he received a prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for New Media, past fellows include Bill Viola
Bill Viola
Bill Viola is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media...
, Lynn Hershman and Gary Hill
Gary Hill
Gary Hill is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington.One of the pioneers of video art, Gary Hill has exhibited his video and video installations worldwide . He is represented by Donald Young Gallery of Chicago.An anthology on the work of Gary Hill by Robert C...
. In 2004 Brixey and two DXARTS doctoral students Bret Battey and Ian Ingram were selected winners of the Editors Choice Award, in Popular Science
Popular Science
Popular Science is an American monthly magazine founded in 1872 carrying articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the ASME awards for its journalistic excellence in both 2003 and 2004...
Magazine's, "World Design Challenge". The winning entry was awarded for novel use of feedforward ultrasound technology used to produce wide-field active noise cancellation in underwater environments specifically to protect endangered marine mammals. In 2006 Brixey was inducted as a lifetime fellow of the World Technology Network fellows include Char Davies
Char Davies
Char Davies is an artist who creates artworks using the technologies of immersive virtual reality.-Life and work:Davies was born in Toronto. Originally a painter, she transitioned to digital media in the late 1980s, becoming a founding director of the 3-D software company Softimage...
, Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier
Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality .A pioneer in the field of VR, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves...
, Jeffery Shaw, and Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac is an American contemporary artist internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio-art. Kac was born in 1962, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He lives and works in Chicago....
. In 2009 Brixey received the University of Washington’s prestigious faculty award in the arts, the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair in Arts and Sciences.
As an artist his installations have been commissioned and exhibited internationally; including Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
8 in Kassel, Germany 1987, The Deutscher Kunstlerbund
Deutscher Künstlerbund
Deutscher KuenstlerbundThe Deutscher Künstlerbund was founded at the beginning of the last century on the initiative of Harry Graf Kessler, promoter of arts and artists, Alfred Lichtwark, director of the Hamburg Art Gallery and the famous painters Lovis Corinth, Max Klinger and Max Liebermann...
in Karlsruhe, Germany 1988, The Cranbrook Art Museum in Detroit, Michigan
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
1990, The Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati 1992, The MIT Museum in Cambridge 1995, The International Symposium of Electronic Arts at The Chicago Art Institute 1997, The Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan 1998, The first American Design and Architecture Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, New York 2000, Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...
's Institute for Studies in the Arts 2001, Henry Art Gallery
Henry Art Gallery
The Henry Art Gallery is the art museum of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, USA. Located on the west edge of the university's campus along 15th Avenue N.E. in the University District, it was founded in 1927 and was the first public art museum in the state of Washington. The...
, University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
, Seattle 2002, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California 2003, The National Products Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2004, and The Schneider Museum of Art, Southern Oregon University
Southern Oregon University
is a public liberal arts college located in Ashland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1926, it was formerly known as Southern Oregon College and Southern Oregon State College . SOU offers criminology, natural sciences, including environmental science, Shakespearean studies and theatre arts programs...
, Ashland, Oregon 2009.
External links
- Shawn Brixey's Profile
- Photon Voice (YouTube Video) Filmed in Lone Pine, CA, by Smithsonian World, June, 1986, in collaboration with the Laura Knott Dance Company.
- Alchymeia Going for the Gold (stream), David Pescovitz, Wired, 1998.
- Chimera Obscura by Richard Rinehart and Shawn Brixey. Rhizome, 2004.
- Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA, 2002.