Zach Lieberman
PopTech 2009
For most of us, synesthesia—the attachment of colors to sounds and other such cross-sensory cognition—is more concept than lived experience. But “nerd artist researcher hacker” Zachary Lieberman could change that. His work uses technology in a playful way to break down the fragile boundary between the visible and the invisible.
Augmenting the body’s ability to communicate has always been at the core of Lieberman’s work. Working with collaborator Golan Levin, he created installations—"Remark” and “Hidden Worlds”—that presented interpretations of what the voice might look like if we could see our own speech. Similarly, the concert performance “Messa Di Voce” (Italian for “placing the voice”) illustrated the abstract songs and shouts of two vocalists by interactive visualization software. Lieberman’s installation “Drawn,” in which painted forms appear to come to life, recently won awards in the Ars Electronica and CYNETart competitions. Lieberman has held residencies at Ars Electronica Futurelab, Eyebeam, Dance Theater Workshop, and the Hangar Center for the Arts in Barcelona. He is currently developing a suite of software for disabled students that transforms their movements into an audio-visual response, collaborating on an open source toolkit for c++ creative coding and graphics, and helping graffiti artist Tempt, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, write graffiti again using his eye.