This weekend the Star-Ledger had terrific coverage of Project X, described by funder Lynn Shostack as “a slush fund for creativity and risk-taking.”
The Project X grants underwrite unconventional engineering research projects that are unlikely to find funding elsewhere.
The Star-Ledger piece features a video by Nyier Abdou on Edgar Choueiri, who has developed a mathematical technique for recording and playing back sound in 3-D.
Writes Judy Peet of the Star-Ledger: “Choueiri has a world-class reputation in deep-space propulsion and plasma dynamics. Yet with the university’s blessing, he is exploring a totally foreign field in which he has little training and few credentials. And in the process, he may revolutionize the way deaf people hear.”
Elsewhere, digital music pioneer Paul Lansky has called Choueiri’s efforts ingenious. What Choueiri has managed to do,” said Lansky, “is recreate the spatial dimension of the original recording situation. If he could make this truly portable, it would change the world.”
The Project X grants come from a fund named in honor of Lynn Shostack’s husband, David Gardner, Princeton Class of ’69. The fund, administered by Princeton’s Council of the Humanities, is known as the Magic Fund — read the full article to find out why.
