Tag Archives: residency program

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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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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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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Mobile Content & Urban Surgery

Mobile Content and Urban Surgery

Residencies and workshops in Helsinki and throughout the Baltic region before, during and after ISEA2004

ISEA2004HelResidencies

Screen Shot 2013-02-16 at 4.26.38 PMLifeboatScreen Shot 2013-02-16 at 4.24.26 PM

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deep immersion: scientific serendipity

deep immersion: scientific serendipity

Justine Cooper (NSW) at Museum of Natural History, New York

Justine Cooper (NSW) at Museum of Natural History, New York

In 1998, ANAT initiated Scientific Serendipity, a program which focussed on the interaction between art and science, providing a framework for the development of projects and commissions which directly engage with science, scientific visualisation techniques and technologies. This project initiated a number of residencies/research projects for Australian artists hosted by Australian and international scientific organisations. The aim of the residencies was to investigate the discrete discourses surrounding sciences and media arts and encourage the generation of unexpected and ‘alchemic’ outcomes.

Four residencies were held over 1999 – 2001. The host organisation provided a work space, some technical support and the critical context of a science research community. ANAT provided artist fees, materials support and some travel and living expenses. Three of the residencies (Oron Catts & Ionat Zurrr, Justine Cooper and Adam Donovan) were hosted in science institutions and the fourth by David Rogers was conducted independently with some support from members of the scientific community.

The program was initially conceived as part of the extended programming series deep immersion, developed in collaboration with Francesca da Rimini.

The deep immersion series also included deep immersion: creative collaboration, a series of online virtual collaborative residencies; deep immersion: regional realities a program which looked to develop networks between artists in Australia and Asia; and deep immersion: theology, a experimental research thread (led by Samara Mitchell) examining the crossroads of science, technology, ethics and religion within contemporary cultural practices and social structures.

deep immersion: scientific serendipity was further developed and refined in collaboration with Honor Harger and co-curated with Linda Cooper.

More information about the scientific serendipity residencies is available here.

A publication documenting the program, edited by Julianne Pierce, artist interviews conducted by Kathy Cleland plus illustrations, statements from host organisations, and with contributions by Linda Cooper, Terry Cutler and a commentary by Rich Gold is available to read on the ANAT web site here.

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deep immersion: creative collaborations

ANAT ONLINE RESIDENCIES

To follow are a range of online residencies I conceived and developed at the Australian Network for Art and Technology from 1997 – 1999. This page is still a work in progress, and some links may be broken as these are historic projects.

deep immersion: creative collaborations

In 1997 ANAT with support from the Australia Council, activated the deep immersion project with a series of online residencies ‘deep immersion: creative collaborations’.One of ANAT’s primary aims since its inception has been to facilitate situations whereby artists can spend concentrated periods of time researching new ideas, acquiring new skills, forming fruitful collaborations, playing with new media and developing new bodies of work.

The overall intention was to foster and facilitate placements and relationships whereby artists can come together (flesh meeting or remote mind links) to germinate and hothouse their ideas, test their hypotheses, develop new processes and create new works through a period of ‘deep immersion’ in a suitable ideas/technology culture.

The first two residencies within this framework of this project were undertaken in 1997 by Terri-ann White and Keith Netto. In 1998 the final two residencies were undertaken by low key operations and nude productions and elendil.

On October 25, the deep immersion: creative collaborations initiative was officially launched at an event at the Mercury Cinema in Adelaide, the central website linking to the four individual projects was unveiled at an event featuring artists presentations by Keith Netto and elendil. The two projects by low key operations and nude productions and Terri-Ann White were available for viewing in the foyer of the Cinema.

This project was curated by ANAT’s Director, Amanda McDonald Crowley, and conceived in collaboration with Francesca da Rimini.

 

Terry Ann White, Trace, 1997

Terry Ann White, Trace, 1997

 

Terri Anne White: Terri Ann White of Perth, WA undertook a residency in 1997 with trAce (Nottingham, UK) who provides information about writing resources of all kinds and offers an arena for literary debate between writers and readers working in cyberspace and beyond.

Terri Ann worked from Perth, and in discussion with Sue Thomas of trAce developed ways for other contributors to trAce to participate in this project in the spirit of collaboration, critique and exploration of the online environment. One of Terri Ann’s aims was to explore ideas about memory, from the individual act of memory to its transmutation into collective memory, and especially to the complexion that collective memory acquires through social symbolism, ritual, and tradition.

LowKeyNudeScreengrab

 

Michael Hogg and Claire McGrogan, aka low key operations and nude productions developed work entitled please press play, with AltX in Colorado, USA. Combining their respective individual areas of practice, the two artists created a hybrid work combining elements of music, poetry and the spoken word.

SonicForm, was a web based sound project by Keith Netto who worked with Electric.Music.Group [EMG], an experimental web project, online since 1995. It was set up as an outlet for artists working in a range of technologies who wanted to extend their work to the Internet.

SonicForm, was a platform for web participants to become integrally involved in the project by inviting them to go out into their local environment to source sounds for submission to SonicForm. These sounds, will be combined with those sourced from others in the SonicForm ‘community’, to become part of the online environment: this is a project premised on collaboration.

Says Netto of the project “We wander across the expanse of the net, one hyperlink to the next, in search of the next quick fix, the html-hit that provides us with transitory info bliss. The net is a place designed for the immediate satisfaction of individual desire. It’s culture has become dominated by the forces of edutainment and commerce. My intention is to create a space which can expand and deepen; a place for the reinvention of the idea of creative interactive community. Net based communities need not be bound by culture, geography or lifestyle, they can span these boundaries as conduits of communication. I intend to use SonicForm as a vehicle to explore the notion of an online communities combined with Artificial Life to create something that is a living expression of a net community.”

*Water writes always in *plural, 1997

ANAT, as a joint initiative with the Adelaide based Electronic Writing and Research Ensemble, commissioned Perth based writer Josephine Wilson and Brisbane writer Linda Carroli to undertake ‘virtual’ residencies simultaneously in 1997.water-always-writes-in-plural_1997-300x300

The intention was that the writers worked collaboratively via the internet to produce work hypertextually. The writers/ artists worked at their own location and were therefore in-residence virtually. The Perth Institute for Contemporary Art and the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane are providing the writers with computer and internet access and the environment from which to work.

Carroli a freelance journalist, arts writer, essayist and researcher, has published in a range of art journals including Eyeline, RealTime, and Periphery and has curated a number of exhibitions, most recently as the Exhibitions Coordinator at Metro Arts in Brisbane. “I am hoping to extend my writing practice by addressing, in the context of writing and virtuality, contingent ideas about process, participation and performance. This project will provide me with a space in which to make connections between the theory and the practice, perhaps blurring a few boundaries in the process.”

Wilson’s recent work has been in two fields: narrative fiction and writing for performance. Her recent performance work The Geography of Haunted Places, which drew on post-colonial and feminist theory in dialogue with contemporary political issues received high acclaim when it toured recently throughout Australia and in London. Reviewing the play at the Performance Space, Stephen Dunne wrote “This is everything contemporary performance should be – playful, intelligent, self aware, technically superb and confronting.”

This project was collaboratively curated with Jyanni Steffensen and Linda Marie Walker of the Electronic Writing and Research Ensemble.

 

Francesca Da Rimini – Makrolab residency

Marko Peljhan’s Makrolab was installed on Rottnest Island off the coast of Fremantle (WA) as part of the Perth Festival of the Arts (February). Makrolab is a ‘self-sustaining survival environment’ which has radio signaling and tracking devices installed. Marko invited artists to submit proposals to be in residence for short terms during the project. ANAT worked with Marko to identify Australian artists and also provided small amounts of support for travel and living expenses whilst in residence in the lab. The two artists supported by ANAT to work at Makrolab were Francesca da Rimini and Leesa Willan.

Francesca da Rimini developed a poetic web diary Ghost Fields during her residency.

(Slovenian artist Marko Peljan first came to Australia as part of ANAT’s Code Red project, undertaken in collaboration with The Performance Space and curated by Julianne Pierce. Marko traveled to Brisbane after the Makrolab project, to participate in the Alchemy Masterclass.)

 

LOGIN: IMMERSIVE RESIDENCIES

LOGIN was a series of residencies for emerging visual artists to develop web-based projects.

In 1998, the pilot year of the project involved four residencies for Australian artists, run in partnership with members of the Contemporary Art Organisations (CAOs) network. 200 Gertrude Street (Melbourne), 24 Hour Art (Darwin), Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Boomalli (Sydney) hosted the physical component of the residencies.

The LOGIN: residencies provided the participating artists with access computers and the internet, as well as the critical and cultural context of the host arts organisations. The artists also had access to server space, some technical support and the support of an online community. The online environment is currently a site of some of the most politically challenging and aesthetically innovative art projects. It’s a context where traditional artforms meld and mutate, and where traditional notions of authorship, exhibition and publishing dissolve into and out of each other.

The intention of LOGIN: was to provide emerging artists with an opportunity to explore, experiment and participate in the connectivity of the internet. Artists were given opportunities to develop new skills and create new works, which may encompass web-based interactive artworks, virtual environments, web-tv programs, web-based software or artificial life projects, CUSeeMe and Real Audio performances.

Lisa Beilby, a new media artist who works with photographic media and the internet, completed her residency with 24 Hr Art in Darwin in January 1999. Lisa  created a work entitled thing, a constantly evolving reactive multimedia virtual space, thing prods, cajoles and quizzes the interactor/s into a meandering network of shifting pathways made of lush and challenging sound, visuals and intellectual / psychological adventures.

Beilby describes the website as ‘something which exploits the more insidious aspects of human nature and human psyche with and without the Interactor/s consent‘.

http://login.anat.org.au/anat-lisa/index.html

 

For her residency, Anita Kocsis, an artist who works in installation and painting within a digital context, began an adjunct to an architectural model of her mind processes, called Photonpsycho (a visual protoplasm). Her residency project was undertaken in collaboration with Melbourne organisation, 200 Gertrude Street. Her project, Neonverte, is a web based installation, built as a Garden. The installation component of the project featured elements from the site as well as a VRML glide-through of areas of Neonverte.

She wrote of the project, “My main methodology has to do with an interest in a multidimensional transformative practice rather than adhering to the transcriptive language the web provides. These ideas also intersect within the constructs of the net-collaborations. The outcome is continual.”

Dysfunctional, unpredictable and rapidly growing, the internet is drawn into the funnelweb of Kocsis’ garden site. As Anita stated: ‘to climb to the top of a tree is no easy task. The kids in Enid Blytons ‘Folk of the Faraway Tree’ knew it. They had to contend with interruptions. Yet they still climbed to see what new land had arrived. As far as I can recall some of the lands were shockers, like the ‘land of smacks’. The minute they got there they wanted to get out. Yet it was never so easy.’

http://www.neonverte.com/

http://login.anat.org.au/anat_anita/neonverte/index.html

Michael Barac is an artist and programmer who has used digital media technologies to create works for web, video and photographic environments. His residency was undertaken in collaboration with Canberra Contemporary Art Space, during which Barac explored contemporary political debates regarding Australia’s constitution, focusing the pragmatic
representation of Australia as a Republic. He focused particularly on the icon of the flag, constructing an alternative flag forum, where internet users can partake in the creation of a flag that evolves with time.

His aim was that once audience members have created their flag they can submit it via a form button in Netscape and it is automatically added to a web page. He says, ‘It’s my hope to monitor votes from visitors to the site and have a program generate a flag in a quasi-democratic way. Either votes are collected or you add the details of the flag that you made to a grand pool of details where the most popular characteristics generate a collective flag.’

Web participants may determine each mutation of the ever metamorphosing flag, by voting, or intermingling different designs. He says of the project, “I would like people to participate and have fun in some way. It would be an opportunity for people to feel involved…creating more discussion, particularly about what it means to be Australian“.

 

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