Tag Archives: Eyebeam

Artists @ Eyebeam

Artists @ Eyebeam

collaboration

While Executive Director of Eyebeam from 2006 to 2011, I worked with staff and the Board to consolidate its residency and fellowship programs, and to develop strategies for public programming to reflect the research undertaken by artists and creative technologists working at Eyebeam. One of Eyebeam’s primary aims is to facilitate situations whereby artists and creative technologists can spend concentrated periods of time researching new ideas, acquiring new skills, forming fruitful collaborations, playing with new media and technologies, and developing new bodies of work.

Artists @ Eyebeam

Core to Eyebeam’s principles is the brokering of relationships between artists, hackers, coders, engineers and other creative technologists and the contexts we provide. The intention is to foster and facilitate relationships whereby artists can come together to germinate and hothouse their ideas, test their hypotheses, develop new processes and create new works through a period of deep immersion in a social context which is rich in technology, expertise and ideas. What we aim for is a form of “creative hydroponics” where ideas are seeded, tested, mutated, replicated, disseminated and realized.

Eyebeam pursued this philosophy through a range of programs. The Artists-in-Residence, Fellowship programs in the Production Studio and in 2006 also the R&D Lab. Employing teaching artists and supporting artists through Grant of Service, Commissions program in the Production Studio had been additional methods for bringing artists into Eyebeam.

In 2006 we adjusted the structure at Eyebeam so that the people working in the Labs comprised Fellows, Senior Fellows (nominated from current or recent Fellows), adjunct Honorary Fellows, Resident Artists, and Student Residents. The atelier model was fundamental to the concept of Eyebeam. The studio/workspace environments, in which the energies of artistic production, education and curatorial practice fuse, provide a unique, stimulating, and vital working context for creating art. This energy, along with the dialogue among curators, artists, and students in various stages of their career development, informed and inspired the creation of artworks that may not previously been imagined or produced. The program was managed in this format by Stephanie Hunt in 2007-2008, and by Roddy Schrock from 2009-2011 (with student residents supported by education staff, Liz Slagus and then Stephanie Pereira).

Research Initiatives served to contextualize work being produced as well as curatorial programming. Initiatives that were active while I worked at Eyebeam included:

  • Urban research, and media in public space: In 2006 I recognized a core strength in urban art, and we began to actively encouraged applications to Fellowship and residents programs by artists exploring locative media, mapping & cartography, street TV and other media interventions in public space.
  • Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group was similarly established in 2006. This was used then as a platform by several artists to explore research around: technology and sustainable infrastructures, weather, food systems, alternative energy systems, as well as a way to share research and eventually also to develop public programs.
  • 10 years of Eyebeam: (2007-2009) an archival research project, in 2007 Eyebeam undertook a series of programs celebrating their 10th Anniversary. These included the exhibitions Source Code and Interference, and then eventually the documentation of every project and public program produced at Eyebeam on a redesign of the Eyebeam web site, rolled out in April 2009 (and previewed at the welcome reception for new residents on March 26, 2009).
  • Education: In keeping with Eyebeam’s Education agenda and building on its strengths, initially spearheaded by Liz Slagus and then later, Stephanie Pereira, Eyebeam’s education program continued signature after school and summer school programs and grew to include Student Residencies, drop in programs, and several organizational partnerships, to integrate learning and engagement into all parts of Eyebeam’s programs.
  • Open Culture: The Open Culture research group grew from the highly successful OpenLab (2006-2008) – established in 2005/06 by Jonah Peretti with Mike Frumin and Kenyatta Cheese – to support the development of open source projects and research.
  • Middle East research group: Founded in 2006 by a group of artists, engineers and designers from Eyebeam (spearheaded by Mouna Andraos) and beyond to examine the influence of media and  technology on the Middle East and its never-ending conflicts.
  • Design for Social Change: (2009-2011) Emerging from the College of Tactical Culture, a core group of practitioners including Paul Amitai, Brooke Singer, Mark Shepard, David Mafoudha and other members of the Open Culture and Sustainability research groups ran a series of working meetings to inform programming at Eyebeam and beyond.

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Internet Economies: Porn, Labor, and Banking

Panel Discussion at Eyebeam art + technology center, 7 Oct 2011

Panelists: Fran Ilich, Stephanie Rothenberg & Jeff Crouse, and Susanna Paasonen. Moderated by Amanda McDonald Crowley

 Jeff Crouse and Stephanie Rotheberg, Laborers of Love


Jeff Crouse and Stephanie Rothenberg, Laborers of Love

What might be strategies to explore and build alternate economies?

Artists Fran Ilich, Stephanie Rothenberg & Jeff Crouse, and Finnish researcher Susanna Paasonen led discussion on the worlds of online porn, digital labor, and alternative finance models.

In their projects “Laborers of Love”, an adult web site that leverages Mechanical Turk labor, and “Invisible Threads” a just-in-time telematic factory, Rothenberg and Crouse have been researching new models of outsourced, distributed global labor. They are interested to explore not only how this affects production but in how these new technologies impact behaviors, value systems and ideologies as workers move between worlds.

During his Eyebeam Fellowship, Ilich investigated creative practices in virtual community investment banking. Globalized capitalist markets use finance as a means to extract surplus and value from localized world production – relying on networks of power to do so. But finance can also be reversed engineered so that it becomes the seed for new forms of cooperation, collaboration and socialization, drawing on and building networks through virtual communities. Used creatively, finance can actually further the prosperity and efficacy of minority reports, marginal narratives, alternate commodity markets, social currencies, hacktivism and other activist practices, as well as strengthen the hope of sustainability in creative digital labor and internet production practices.

Paasonen’s research is in online porn – with a primary focus on how the genre has been transformed with digital production and distribution tools. She explores how we might better account for the affective dynamics of porn consumption. This links to affective economies, amateur porn as “labors of love” (or not), and cans of worms around labor and ethics.

Pictures of the event are here.

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MTV Brazil – Art and Technology in New York

Direto de Nova York, Ronaldo Lemos trata de tecnologia e suas relações com a vida: cultura, economia, política, sociedade e assim por diante.

An expose that includes an interview with me, as well as ever brilliant Aaron Myers and Fran Illich.

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MIXER

mixerMIXER (2007-11) was Eyebeam’s event series showcasing audiovisual performance and interactive art curated and produced by Paul Amitai.

Each MIXER event featured live performances by video artists, musicians, VJs and DJs, as well as innovative new interactive artwork by Eyebeam artists and the NYC community that require audience participation and ancourage creative play. Each MIXER was organized around a theme – from the mythical NYC underground to the World’s Fair to the Olympics. Hybrid in format, and Eyebeam in spirit – collaborative, spontaneous and a little off-the-wall – MIXER electrified Eyebeam’s vast former Chelsea space for an art party quite unlike any other.

http://eyebeam.org/programming-series/mixer

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Eyebeam Holiday MIXER 2010

MIXER December 2010

[NBC] Take a Tour of a Chelsea-Based Art Group’s Eclectic Holiday Mixer from Oresti Tsonopoulos on Vimeo.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/blogs/niteside/Eyebeam_Holiday_Mixer_All__National_-111776494.html

Oresti Tsonopoulos/NITESIDE

Amanda McDonald Crowley, executive director of non-profit Eyebeam, walks us through the group’s unconventional holiday mixer over the weekend at the art and technology center’s Chelsea digs. The merry mixer — thrown by trendy event group Mean Red — was host to interactive art, DIY gifts, a book launch and even several seven-deadly-sins-themed snowglobes.

NBC: http://nbcnewyork.com/​blogs/​niteside/​
Video: www.orestimusic.com
Eyebeam: http://eyebeam.org/
MeanRed: http://www.meanredproductions.com/​

Canon T2i / 24-70mm f2.8 / Rode VideoMic / FCP

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X-LAB

X-LAB

xlab

From October 26, 2010 – January 29, 2010, Eyebeam Art + Technology Center’s main exhibition space was transformed into X-Lab, an open lab environment where we shared the ongoing research and practice of our residents and fellows, and offered opportunities for deep public engagement.

Much as an unConference favors a flexible, participant-driven format that values energetic dialogue over talking head presentations we described X-Lab as an unExhibition where, rather than present finished works, we provided a space for critical reflection on and participation in the research and production processes at Eyebeam.

In the spirit of open culture, X-Lab was a platform for opening Eyebeam’s process to the public. Through X-Lab, we shared thinking and techniques behind the work-in-progress through workshops and presentations, while looking critically at experimental lab models around the world. Artists, engineers, hackers and program staff  tracked the activities and projects within X-Lab as they evolved, forked, and converged via a dynamic documentation process – available online and in the space.

Check out a video of Eyebeam Residents + Fellows talking about their work in X-Lab.

Follow X-Lab projects online as they were in development: http://eyebeam.tumblr.com.

In exploding the Eyebeam lab model, putting it under the microscope for closer inspection, we offer new ways for both the public and Eyebeam itself to understand and shape its vision for creative practice at the nexus of socially-engaged art, design, and engineering. In keeping with exploring collaborative models for not only developing new work, but also developing new ways to curate and present interdisciplinary, and research based projects, the program itself was a collaborative effort, with some twenty different events, workshops, prototyping events, dinners, and discussions included in the program series.

X-Lab included the following resources and work/play spaces:

  • R&D houses tools for prototyping and developing work
  • Prototyping is a fabricating space for production
  • Sandbox is a play space for user testing and collecting data for new projects
  • Classroom is a networked space to think and make and meet
  • Presentation is flexible space for workshops, discussion groups, formal presentations, and dinners
  • Bookstore is a space for informal conversation, reading, doing research – and shopping 🙂

These spaces are flexible and permeable: the activity from one can easily bleed into others, or be taking place simultaneously in many.

The public is invited to interact with the artists’ works during our X-Lab Open Hours: Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 12PM – 6PM. Docents will lead visitors through the space and introduce artists during those times. Go here to view the schedule of artists’ work-in-progress.

Creators: Aaron Meyers; Brooke Singer; Jacob Ciocci; Jon Cohrs; Kaho Abe; Aram Bartholl; Piotr Adamczyk; Stefani Bardin; Tahir Hemphill; Ted Southern; David Jimison; Hans-Christoph Steiner; Tikva Morowati; Max Lavicka; Justine Neuberger.

Organizers: Amanda McDonald Crowley; Paul Amitai; Roddy Schrock; Stephanie Pereira

Technology and Infrastructure: Marko Tandefelt; Jamie O’Shea; Jackson Moore; Nicholas Fraser

Design: Not An Alternative (Ange Tran and Jason Jones)

Partner Organizations: Parsons The New School For Design; FutureEverything; Visualizing.org; SEED; Hacks/Hackers NYC Meetup

Interns: Arash Nassiri; Madeleine Aronson

 

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Curatorial Masterclass

Eyebeam Summer School: Curatorial Masterclass

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An initiative of Eyebeam’s Summer School program, the Curatorial Masterclass was led by Eyebeam research partner Sarah Cook from CRUMB, the online resource for curators working with media art. The series provided an opportunity for emerging and established curators of art to get together within a focused period of time to learn from each other’s practice, and to develop a greater understanding of curating, open source methods, and working in the public domain.

The first hour of each day was structured as a formal conversation modeled on CRUMB’s tea-time chats, and featured established curators and artists. The second hour was a rigorous participant driven discussion that built upon the first hours of themes and insights. Following each presentation and workshop, participants had the opportunity to stick around for beer o’clock and conversation with presenters and fellow masterclass participants, as well as participants from other Eyebeam Summer School programs.

Lead Tutors and Program Management: Amanda McDonald Crowley, Anne Barlow, Dominic Smith, Fred Benenson, Hans Bernhard, Lize Mogel, Patrick Lichty, Rebecca Cittadini, Sarah Cook, Scott Burnham, Stephanie Pereira, Stephen Duncombe, Steve Dietz, Steve Lambert, Taeyoon Choi.

• Download the complete schedule, list of guest bios, and key references compiled by Sarah Cook here: CMSS_09_crumb_eyebeam.

Day 1: July 7, What open source is and what it means for art (Burnham, Smith, Benenson) | WATCH VIDEO
Day 2: July 9, Publication and Documentation (Mogel, Cittadini) | WATCH VIDEO
Day 3: July 14, Networking and Collaboration (Lichty, McDonald Crowley, Cohrs) | WATCH VIDEO
Day 4: July 16, Curating in the public domain (Dietz, McDonald Crowley, Choi) | WATCH VIDEO
Day 5: July 21, Evaluation and Audience Engagement (Barlow, Bernard, Duncombe) | WATCH VIDEO

Eyebeam Summer School, 2009

Summer School 2009 program also included:BBQ_IMAGE

Summer School @ Night, A series of free evening lectures open to the public led by hosts from Eyebeam’s Summer School program and friends of Eyebeam, programmed by Stephanie Pereira and Paul Amitai.

Digital Day Camp 2009, a summer program for open to NYC public high school students to engage in lectures and hands-on workshops focusing on art and technology tools, and relevant social and artistic topics, managed by Stephanie Pereira. Check out the DDC2009 Blog here for information on participants, tutors, and program. DDC activities are led by invited technology professionals, contemporary artists, and Eyebeam’s residents and fellows and was an annual program at Eyebeam from 2000 to 2011.

College of Tactical Culture, A think tank on creative activism led by Stephen Duncombe and Steve Lambert. Project Manager: Paul Amitai. Participants: Larry Bogad, Andrew Boyd, Rebecca Bray & Britta Riley, Ava Bromberg, Anne Frederick, Packard Jennings, Kristin Horton, Aaron Hughes,  Laura MacCleery,  Ricardo Miranda Zuniga, Eve Mosher, Brooke Singer, Ella Turenne.


Photos: Christine A. Butler courtesy of Eyebeam

Press release for the Summer School 2009 is available here: summerschool_PR_070109_FINAL

Further archive information about Summer School at Eyebeam.

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Tour of Eyebeam, August 2008

CAMERAHUG visits EYEBEAM in Manhattan and gets a tour by Executive Director Amanda McDonald Crowley.

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CAMERAHUG visits Eyebeam

 

13 Apr 2008

“CAMERAHUG visits the EYEBEAM GALLERY in Manhattan and gets a tour by Executive Director Armanda McDonald Crowley. Eyebeam is the birthplace of many great inventions like the Laser Tag (Graffitti Research Lab).”

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FEEDBACK

FEEDBACK

feedback_arrows_logo
The title for FEEDBACK, an exhibition conceived and curated by Eyebeam’s Sustainability Research Group, refers to the self-correcting mechanisms by which systems—in this case, ecological—respond to the influence they exert on their environments.

Numerous projects in the exhibition addressed energy consumption, production and harvesting: A visitor entered the exhibition through Fluxxlab’s Revolution Door, a modified revolving door that harnesses and redistributes human energy. Mouna Andraos’ The Power Cart is a mobile unit that delivers alternative power to people on the street, and Jeff Feddersen’s installation The Off-Grid Outlet is a solar-powered AC outlet and 12V DC power port destined for the Brooklyn restaurant Cafe Habana. Building on existing urban infrastructure, Andrea Polli’s Queensbridge Wind Power Project investigates how clean, renewable wind power might be integrated into the landmark architecture of the Queensboro Bridge.

FEEDBACK also featured the winners of the Eco-Vis Challenge, a two-part juried design competition to raise environmental awareness through creative data visualization projects.

A series of short video-documentaries by Jason Jones of the Brooklyn artists’ collective Not An Alternative, commissioned especially for FEEDBACK, documents the making of each of the displayed projects, providing insight into the creative process. These videos were screened in the main gallery, and are  available on Eyebeam’s website.

FEEDBACK

Curators: Amanda McDonald Crowley, Liz Slagus, Paul Amitai, in collaboration with Eyebeam’s Sustainabilty Research Group
Exhibition designers: Fluxxlab
Videographer: Jason Jones, Not An Alternative

Project and artist websites:
Andrea Polli, The Queensbridge Wind Power Project
Annina Rüst, eRiceCooker
Brooke Singer, Superfund365
Eve Mosher, HighWaterLine
Fluxxlab (Jennifer Broutin and Carmen Trudell), Revolution Door
Forays (Geraldine Juárez and Adam Bobbette) Edible Excess
Green Map® System, Green Map® Icons
Leah Gauthier, Sow-In
Michael Mandiberg, The Real Costs
Mouna Andraos, The Power Cart
Preemptive Media, Area’s Immediate Reading (AIR)
Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, DrinkPeeDrinkPeeDrinkPee
Roger Marvel Architects, Govenors Island Project
The Living (David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang), Living City
The Studio for Urban Projects, Strange Weather
Timm Kekeritz, VirtualWater and WaterFootprint
Fred Beneson, CommitteeCaller
Natalie Jeremijenko, The Environmental Health Clinic
Sustainable South Bronx
SolarOne
Not an Alternative

Feedback Press Release: PRFeedback030408FINAL.

Video interview with Amanda McDonald Crowley about FEEDBACK workshops

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