Tag Archives: Eyebeam

Open Culture

data visualization from Hip Hop Word Count by Tahir Hemphill

data visualization from Hip Hop Word Count by Tahir Hemphill

As Director at Eyebeam art + technology center, building on the work of the Open Lab and its predecessor the R&D Lab, we established an Open Culture Research Group in 2008 to explore the history of craft traditions, free software, open source, creative commons, and other models of shared, open culture.

Part of an Open Culture, is the culture of sharing, so we regularly organized skillshares about a range of issues: from how to share your wifi safely, to how to best advocate for open licensing among artists and visual makers.

Projects developed by Fellows ranged from Ayah Bdeir‘s littleBits, which has gone on to be a major successful open hardware business, Limor Fried research which led her to establish the highly successful Adafruit Industries, and Zach Lieberman and Theo Watson‘s work further developing Open Frameworks, a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation, with the OF community.

Resident artist Dustyn Roberts published Making Things Move: DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists, published by McGraw-Hill in 2010. Fellow Michael Mandiberg and artist xtine burrough published Digital Foundations: an Intro to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Suite with AIGA Design Press/New Riders under a CC license (a first for the publisher.) Mandiberg was also a lead artist on writing Collaborative Futures, a book first created by 6 core collaborators, as an experimental five day Book Sprint in January 2010.

Resident artist Tahir Hemphill developed Hip Hop Word Count, a project which he used as a tool to establish the The Rap Research Lab as a place for teaching art, design, data analysis and data visualization to students using a project based curriculum that visualizes Hip Hop as a cultural indicator.

Exhibitions that explored Open Culture included: Open City: Tools for Public Action – a glimpse into the current media and tactics of artists who take their practices into the street,conceived and developed by Eyebeam Fellows Evan Roth and James Powderly of Graffiti Research Lab; and Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus, an exhibition which examined models of participation and participation as a model in art and activism, developed in collaboration with Not An Alternative, and Upgrade! NY.

Significant partnerships included: Open(Art) was a joint initiative launched by Eyebeam and Mozilla to support creativity at the intersection of art and the open web; The Data Viz Challenge, a call to designers and developers to visualize how our federal income taxes are spent, created by Eyebeam and Google; and events such as Data After Dark, with O’Reilly Media to share innovative ideas in a visualization showcase.

Following an Opening Hardware Workshop  hosted by Ayah Bdeir, the purpose of which was to create a direct dialogue between Creative Commons and key players in the Open Source Hardware Community, the group went on to draft a public definition of Open Hardware, and to establish the annual Open Hardware Summit as a venue to discuss and draw attention to the vibrant open source hardware movement. Founding partners were Buglabs, MakerFaire, Creative Commons, littleBits, Eyebeam, Htink.

Further projects and events can be found on the Eyebeam Open Culture and Open Lab pages.

 

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Interference

Interference

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part of the Eyebeam 10 Year Retrospective

Artists : Forays | Angie Eng | Jill Magid | Carrie Dashow | Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg | Trevor Paglen | neuroTransmitter | Robert Ransick | Yury Gitman | Carlos J. Gómez de Llarena | IAA | Graffiti Research Lab | Caspar Stracke | Eyebeam R&D Lab | Michael Frumin | Jonah Peretti

Interference was the second exhibition celebrating 10 years of Eyebeam support for artists experimenting with new technologies. Employing a diverse array of media and strategies, which includes data visualization, performance, community engagement and public intervention, the artists and collectives featured in Interference probe ideas of access and autonomy.

From the very public, but deliberately obscured, satellite surveillance data recorded in Paglen and IAA’s work tracking CIA aircraft, to the intimacy of Magid’s collaboration with a local NYC police officer; from Forays’ engagement with local community gardeners, to GRL, Gómez de Llarena and Gitman’s tools for communication in public space, the projects in Interference ask us to seriously consider concepts of communal space in an increasingly privatized public sphere.

-Amanda McDonald Crowley, Executive Director, Eyebeam

Interference public workshops and events.

Curators: Amanda McDonald Crowley, Liz Slagus, Paul Amitai
Exhibition Design: David Benjamin, Soo-in Yang
Technical Design + Installation: Emma Lloyd, Marko Tandefelt, Paul Amitai, Bryan Mesenbourg, Matt White, Jason Jones, Kory Hellebust, Dave McDermott, Jamie O’Shea, Craig Montoro, Jon Cohrs, Benjamin Leduc-Mills
Graphic Design + Marketing: Rebecca Cittadini
PR + Media Relations: Joanna Raczkiewicz

Download Press Release: PR_Interference_91607.

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Sustainability Research Group

Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group

 
165389751_a4e31b8df7As a cultural worker and curator, I am equally interested in providing contexts for artists to produce new work and research as I am in curating exhibition programs.

Eyebeam art and technology center had a brief to provide critical contexts for artists and technologists to  produce, and present new works and new research. Responding to the work being undertaken by artists at Eyebeam, I facilitated the establishment of the Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group in 2006. Initially managed by Rebecca Bray as part of a research internship, it comprised residents, fellows, alumni, and staff at Eyebeam. The structure was very loose and various artists used it as a platform to individually and collectively undertake research, develop projects, programs and exhibitions. As examples, in 2007 Michael Mandiberg, Brooke Singer, and Paul Amitai led an effort to establish an Eco-Vis Challenge; in 2008, Andrea Polli used the Group as a platform and to convene monthly discussions related to her research; the significant exhibition FEEDBACK was collectively conceived by the group in 2008; in 2011 resident artist Stefani Bardin used the group structure to convene conversations and around her research in the area of Food and Emerging Media, as well as a series of XLab Salon dinners. Projects were not specifically curated, rather the research themes at Eyebeam became factors in the selection process for fellowship and residency programs at Eyebeam, and the research structure provided a rich context to produce work. Occasionally larger collaborative public programs also emerged from the group.

Further information about artists, projects, and programs related to this research topic can be found at Eyebeam Sustainability Research Group.

 

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