"Art is a tool of empowerment and social change, and I consider myself blessed to be able to create and use my work to promote health reform, bring awareness about ALS and help others."
- Tempt One
The Eyewriter using eye-tracking hardware and free software to allow the user to draw with their eyes. It was developed by members of FAT, OpenFrameworks, the Graffiti Research Lab, and The Ebeling Group for TEMPT1, a graffiti artist from LA who was diagnosed with ALS in 2003 and since has been paralyzed except for his eyes. Since, TEMPT1 has been able to make his art again, and raise awareness for ALS. The Eyewriter was made in 2010, and it was made into a larger project, Art By Eyes, which was funded by Kickstarter to fund TEMPT1's art and awareness campaign.
The project is really well-documented, with a main website as well as a photos page that gives a lot of insight about the project. The documentation and the Art By Eyes campaign are the most important parts of the project in my opinion. Rather than just create a product, the team applied the product in a lot of different ways and imagined what it could do beyond just what they wanted to use it for. To me, this has a lot of potential for an eye-based operating system, which doesn't seem (based on a really quick search) to be that fleshed out yet, although it does seem like Samsung was working on some kind of "eye mouse" in 2014 (https://www.cnet.com/news/samsungs-eyecan-lets-your-eyes-control-your-computer/). I think that would be really cool, and they seem to have done a lot of the work already. Media art is very important in exposing different ways to use existing technology, and I think this is a great example of that. It seems like the tech industry as a whole is very focused on "forward" progress rather than progress in other directions, which is what Alan Warburton was talking about, and that can often lead to a lot of lost potential.