The Eyewriter

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.


Tony Quan is a legendary LA graffiti artist, writer, and publisher better known to the public as TEMPTONE. He is known not only for his public work, but producing one of LA's first graffiti magazines Big Time with fellow graffiti artist Relic.  Sadly, in 2003 Tony was diagnosed with ALS, a disease which left him completely paralyzed but mentally intact.    It is because of stories like this that the Eyewriter project has been developed.

Banning together, members of Free Art and Technology, Open Frame Works, the Graffiti Research Lab, and the Ebling Group are working towards creating a low-cost, open sours eye tracking system that will allow patients like Tony to draw using only their eyes.  This week the Eye Writer team has released all the source code, free software, DIY instructions, and eye tags by Tempt1 to the public at eyewriter.org.

The group isn't looking to profit from their innovations, they hope instead to create a professional/social network of software developers, hardware hackers, urban projection artists and ALS patients from around the world who are using local materials and open source research to creatively connect and make eye art.  The result: giving back the means of expression to an artist.