Clarkson University Assistant Professor Alex Lee was recently selected to do a residency at the Institute for Electronic Arts (IEA) at Alfred University.

Lee focused on two projects during the residency: Soliloquy for Sagan and Fractals, Particles, Photons, Microwaves.

Lee says his artistic practice is leading him toward the direction of scientific visualization, and Fractals, Particles, Photons, Microwaves references scientific concepts about how subatomic particles behave.

"An example of this is when cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, it sometimes will create electromagnetic particle shower -- something like the aurora borealis," Lee said. "I'm interested in visualizing these concepts with an eye toward formal experimentation."

During his residency, Lee used modular synthesizers, analog video processors and other equipment to juxtapose sound with the scientific visualizations.

For Soliloquy for Sagan, Lee utilized the IEA’s Doupfer modules and surround sound editing software to compose and process the audio component to the animation created using Maya.

For Fractals, Particles, Photons, Microwaves, he processed his video through the Dave Jones Mini Video Image Processor and mixed these edited clips into the final composition of the video.

Lee said these projects function as screener pieces that he will submit for entry into the animation festival circuit.

Read more about Lee's residency at http://blogs.alfred.edu/iea/?p=1573.