This paper will examine what has been learned through three years of research by an interdisciplinary university laboratory investigating ethical design and media. The University of New Mexico’s Social Media Workgroup (SMW) is an environment in which faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and outside experts work in interdisciplinary collaborative teams to design and develop a wide variety of media tools, assets and events including the large-scale projection work Particle Falls visualizing real-time air quality in San Jose, California, and a permanent public work at the University of Utah, E-Oculus .

Atmospherics/Weather Works is a performance, installation and distributed software project for the sonification of storms and other meteorological events, generated directly from data produced by a highly detailed and physically accurate simulation of the weather.

In this article, the author discusses the inspiration, concept, and technology behind her sound performance work using eye movements in relationship to current research on human eye movement. She also compares the playing of the eye-tracking instrument to research on musical improvisation using unconventional musical instruments and “active music.”