sha.
Artist and designer of the award-winning
Alphasphere

Is there something traditionally Austrian within your work, something that inspires you?

Gustav Mahler, for example. The very slow movements of the 5th Symphony, the Adagietto or the 10th Symphony—there are moments of timelessness and spacelessness that inspire me. A place [that inspires me] in my home country is Styria. I like the mountains and the free space in Austria. And the shape of the Alphasphere is very similar to the hills and the softness of the landscape [surrounding] my hometown.
 
For the past ten years, sha. has married futuristic art with architecture and design, creating unique multi-sensory rooms for museums, banks, airports, hotels and spas. Among his realizations are the "sonosphere," an inhabitable music installation at the House of Music in Vienna; "ID," an intercultural SoundEllipse and public audio sculpture sponsored by the EU Culture Programme, located on the Dorner Platz in Vienna; and an art room at the Salzburg airport. His AlphaSphere, a lounger and room object equipped with a unique combination of sounds, warmth, vibrations and monochromatic blue light effects, received the "European Spa Award 2006." sha. was also awarded Austria's highest mark of scientific recognition, the Erwin-Schrödinger Prize, for his work in research. "I'm interested in making something holistic, so you feel a new connectivity to the world," .sha explains.