My friend Zachary Lieberman who’s work I highly admire just pointed me to the Kickstarter Campaign he started for his project with and for Tony Quan (aka TEMPT1).
TEMPT1 is an artist, publisher and social-activist based in Los Angeles, California. He was a pioneering artist in the California graffiti scene in the 1980’s and 90’s and influenced a younger generation of graffiti writers with his vision to unite the No-Cal and So-Cal graffiti communities. Sadly, in 2003, TEMPT1 was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis ( also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a degenerative neuromuscular disorder that causes paralysis and ultimately death. Over the course of 5 years, he lost the ability to move his arms and legs, speak, eat and even breathe without life-support systems. But, the disease has left his mind alert, and his creative spirit and drive to make art completely intact.
In the last year, Zach and his team have been developing tools and software in collaboration with TEMPT to help allow him to draw again using his eyes. See eyewriter.org for more info. Now, they’re going to make some art from the great drawings that he’s making.
This represents his return to being able to make a living as an artist.
In addition to the kickstarter, they’re also going to be dropping a 2.0 version of the device in the very near future. It’s a big improvement over the first design, which was really specific to TEMPT and his condition, and remains cheap (approx 100$ in parts), fully open source and has a high degree of accuracy. They were just out in LA testing it, and he told them that it’s completely comparable in accuracy to his 15k system.
TEMPT will be making artwork for digital prints, typefaces and screensavers, and in addition, they’re teaming up with my friends Chris Glass and Arianna Orland to make t-shirts, letter press prints. There’s alot of ways to get involved.
Let’s support TEMPT1 & EyeWriter. Go to kickstarter.com to get involved.