Sha Sha Feng, M.F.A., B.A.
sfeng@harlemchildrensociety.org
Sha Sha combines the best of both the arts and technology to develop socially conscious media. As an interactive media designer and programmer, she uses computer technology to create a dynamic experience. Some of her projects explore topics such as blogs, sound, images, space, psychogeography, and compositions with real time interactivity using the body as an interface.
Her work includes a range of experiments which integrate web based art and open source technologies. She explores questions around the blurring boundary of how preconceived notions, stereotypes, and metaphors that we’ve learned in the real world change when we bring it into the virtual world?
Sha Sha has been a part of HCS since 2003. She is currently the IT Manager. Some of the work she has done at HCS is the website design launched in 2005, creating an interactive map + blog, applying technology to facilitate tasks, working with the student interns to create flyers, updating the web, and various other media related projects. She has enjoyed participating in HCS events such as the annual Science Street Fair and attending the 2006 Sigma Xi conference along with the staff and 50 HCS students in Detroit, MI.
She holds a MFA in Integrated Media Arts and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and in Music from Hunter College. Her experience includes working as a computer consultant, information technology specialist, teacher, and researcher. Sha Sha is an adjunct lecturer teaching digital media courses to undergraduates. In addition, she tutors students in computer science. She has participated in collaborative research projects: developing game strategies in Artificial Intelligence and XML technologies through NSF scholarships in Computer Science & Mathematics, designing socially conscious game modules at Tiltfactor Lab and worked with Andrea Polli on creating an interactive soundmap of NYC called Soundseeker. It has been presented and featured at galleries and other venues in NYC, Spain, Japan, and on various websites.
As a musician, she is classically trained in piano. She combined her computer knowledge and developed an interest in computer music and interactive sound composition later making her own interactive instrument called “Musical Arch”.
She is a member of Sigma Xi - The Scientific Research Society (Rockefeller University Chapter), NYSAE (New York Society for Acoustic Ecology), ASAE (American Society for Acoustic Ecology), Phi Beta Kappa, and Golden Key International Honor Society.
Currently, Sha Sha is working on designing a low cost system for remote collaboration: MapaboutMaps. This system will bring technology to places that may not have any or limited technological resources. It will allow communities to use technology to empower themselves and exchange knowledge. The project will allow for people to communicate in the virtual world using maps, social software and physical instruments to exchange information and research and in so doing, learn about each other's cultures, geographies and communities.