The EyeWriter – a pair of low-cost eye-tracking glasses that allows artists and graffiti writers with paralysis to draw using only their eyes – was chosen as the winner of the first FutureEverything Award following an online vote by a world-wide community of FutureEverything artists and participants from the past 15 years.
The EyeWriter project was inspired by Tony Quan, aka TEMPT, a legendary LA graffiti writer, social activist and publisher, who was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in 2003. A team of 5 internationally renowned artists collaborated with Tony and a LA-based commercial production company, the Ebeling Group, to create DIY technology that would allow TEMPT to again create graffiti.
In August 2009 TEMPT was able to make artwork in the streets of LA for the first time in seven years. Tony made a number of drawings in his hospital bed in Alhambra, California,using the EyeWriter, and transmitted them over the internet to a team of artists in downtown Los Angeles, who projected his artwork, in real-time, onto a 10-story building beside the Santa Monica Freeway.
