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Eyebeam is a not-for-profit art and technology center in New York City, founded by
John Seward Johnson III John Seward Johnson III (born September 2, 1966) is an American filmmaker, philanthropist and entrepreneur. He is a great-grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I (co-founder of Johnson & Johnson) and the son of artist John Seward Johnson II. He is the ...
with co-founders David S. Johnson and Roderic R. Richardson. Originally conceived as a digital effects and coding
atelier An atelier () is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or v ...
and center for youth education, Eyebeam has become a center for the research, development, and curation of
new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...
works of art and
open source technology Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
. Eyebeam annually hosts up to 20 residents and co-produces youth educational programs, exhibitions, performances, symposia, workshops,
hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. Th ...
s and other events with these residents as well as with partner organizations. Projects developed at Eyebeam have received awards and recognition including
Webby Awards The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories include ...
,
Guggenheim Fellowships Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
, and the
Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) ...
.


History

Eyebeam, originally called Eyebeam Atelier, was first conceived as a collaboration between David S. Johnson, a digital artist, and John Seward Johnson III, a filmmaker and philanthropist. The two were introduced by Roderic R. Richardson, a mutual friend who recognized their shared interests and helped establish the new venture in its early stages. The inspiration to name the project Eyebeam Atelier came partly from the sculpture atelier of John Johnson's father,
John Seward Johnson II John Seward Johnson II (April 16, 1930 – March 10, 2020), also known as J. Seward Johnson Jr. and Seward Johnson, was an American artist known for ''trompe-l'œil'' painted bronze statues. He was a grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, the co-fou ...
and the
Experiments in Art and Technology Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit and tax-exempt organization, was established in 1967 to develop collaborations between artists and engineers. The group operated by facilitating person-to-person contacts between artists and e ...
collective, although David Johnson had also used the name Eyebeam Simulations for a start-up location-based VR entertainment concept before meeting Roderic or John Johnson. After observing
new media New media describes communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for ...
as a growing genre, the co-founders were motivated to create a similar studio. They recognized a need to provide artists and digital film artists access to new technology and a shared workspace. In addition to offering resources for new media artists, Johnson saw a need to provide middle and high school students with educational and artistic opportunities. Digital Day Camp, the first youth program which catered to new media education, was founded in 1998; in the pilot program, New York-based high school students learned web development and design. Future sessions included project-based learning around themes of bioart,
urban interventionism Urban Interventionism is a name sometimes given to a number of different kinds of activist design and art practices, art that typically responds to the social community, locational identity, the built environment, and public places. The goals are of ...
,
game design Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...
, and
wearable technology Wearable technology is any technology that is designed to be used while worn. Common types of wearable technology include smartwatches and smartglasses. Wearable electronic devices are often close to or on the surface of the skin, where they detec ...
. Eyebeam's first forum, "Interaction", took place online in the summer of 1998 and was curated by
UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...
professor Jordan Crandall. The forum, an email list called , was hosted by
Brian Holmes Brian Holmes is a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he teaches an intensive summer seminar. He has worked with the French graphics collective Ne Pas Plier (Do Not Bend) from 1999 to 2001 and th ...
,
Olu Oguibe Olu Oguibe (born 14 October 1964) is a Nigerian-born American artist and academic.Olu Oguibe
Retrieve ...
, and
Gregory Ulmer Gregory Leland Ulmer (born December 23, 1944) is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Florida ( Gainesville) and a professor of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. ...
, and included
Lev Manovich Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computin ...
,
N. Katherine Hayles Nancy Katherine Hayles (born December 16, 1943) is an American postmodern literary critic, most notable for her contribution to the fields of literature and science, electronic literature, and American literature. She is the James B. Duke Di ...
,
Saskia Sassen Saskia Sassen (born January 5, 1947) is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration. She is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in New York City, and Centennial ...
, Matthew Slotover,
Ken Goldberg Kenneth Yigael Goldberg (born 1961) is an American artist, writer, inventor, and researcher in the field of robotics and automation. He is professor and chair of the industrial engineering and operations research department at the University of C ...
,
Geert Lovink Geert Lovink (born 1959, Amsterdam) is the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, whose goals are to explore, document and feed the potential for socio-economical change of the new media field through events, publications and open ...
,
Knowbotic Research Knowbotic Research is a German-Swiss electronic art group, established in 1991. Its members are Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler and Alexander Tuchacek. They hold a professorship for Art and Media at the University of the Arts in Zurich. History ...
,
Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...
,
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger (born March 23, 1948) is an Israeli artist, painter and writer, visual analyst, psychoanalyst and philosopher, living and working in Paris and Tel Aviv. She is regarded as a major French feminist theorist and pr ...
,
Mark Tribe Mark Tribe (born 1966) is an American artist. He is the founder of Rhizome, a not-for-profit arts organization based in New York City. In 2013, he was appointed chair of the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Formerly, h ...
, and
Critical Art Ensemble Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. For CAE, tactical media is situat ...
among the participating artists, educators, new media and internet theorists, and technologists (cite). The discussions spurred by were compiled into a book titled ''Interaction: Artistic Practice on the Network'' and published in 2001. In addition to funding artistic research, Johnson hoped to develop Eyebeam as a space that would also function as a museum devoted to new media works. In 2000, Eyebeam announced an international architectural competition to construct a space devoted to the dialog between art and technology, with the design firm Diller + Scofidio's "Olympic class" design named the winner of the competition. Eyebeam held its first open studios for artists in residence and fellows in 2002. Alexander R. Galloway,
G. H. Hovagimyan G. H. Hovagimyan (aka Gerry Hovagimyan) is an American experimental cross-media, new media art and performance artist who lives and works in New York City. Formation and early work Hovagimyan was born 1950 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1972, h ...
, Tony Martin,
Yael Kanarek Yael Kanarek (born 1967) is an Israeli American artist based in New York City that is known for pioneering use of the Internet and of multilingualism in work of art. Background Born in New York and raised in Israel, Kanarek returned to New York ...
, MTAA, John Klima,
Jem Cohen Jem Alan Cohen (born 1962) is an Afghan-born American filmmaker based in New York City. Cohen is especially known for his observational portraits of urban landscapes, blending of media formats ( sixteen-millimetre, Super 8, videotape) and collab ...
,
Cory Arcangel Cory Arcangel (born May 25, 1978) is an American post-conceptual artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance art, and video game modifications, for which he is best known. Arcangel often uses the ...
, and Michael Bell-Smith were among the inaugural exhibitors. Among the projects on display was Galloway's Carnivore, a
Processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...
library that allowed for the creative misuse of data surveillance created in tandem with other members of Radical Software Group. Carnivore takes its name and function from DCS1000, a surveillance system used by the United States
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
. Carnivore was awarded the
Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) ...
Golden Nica the same year. Residents Yury Gitman and Carlos Gomez de Llarena's Noderunner, a scavenger hunt based on
Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...
sharing, received the 2003
Prix Ars Electronica The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the best known and longest running yearly prizes in the field of electronic and interactive art, computer animation, digital culture and music. It has been awarded since 1987 by Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria) ...
Golden Nica. Fundrace.org, a site which allows visitors to track campaign contributions through
geocoding Address geocoding, or simply geocoding, is the process of taking a text-based description of a location, such as an address or the name of a place, and returning geographic coordinates, frequently latitude/longitude pair, to identify a locatio ...
, was developed by
Jonah Peretti Jonah H. Peretti (born January 1, 1974) is an Internet entrepreneur, a co-founder and the CEO of BuzzFeed, co-founder of ''The Huffington Post'', and developer of reblogging under the project "Reblog". Education and early career Peretti was b ...
, then-director of Research and Development at Eyebeam, and later adapted into a permanent feature on the Huffington Post. Peretti, together with Alexander Galloway, collaborated on ReBlog, one of the first blogging platform which allows users to filter and publish content from many RSS feeds. Beginning in 2005, the Eyebeam ReBlog began to feature the Eyebeam Journal, a series of in-depth writings and interviews with resident artists, research fellows, and guest contributors. During their R&D Fellowships,
Theo Watson Theo Watson is a British artist and programmer. His art work includes interactive video, large-scale public projections, computer vision projects, and interactive sound recordings which have featured in museums and galleries across the world i ...
and
Zachary Lieberman Zachary Lieberman is an American new media artist, designer, computer programmer, and educator. Early life and education Born in 1977, Lieberman holds a B.A. in Fine Arts from Hunter College and both a B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Design and Technology f ...
continued to develop
openFrameworks openFrameworks is an open source toolkit designed for creative coding founded by Zachary Lieberman, Theo Watson and Arturo Castro. OpenFrameworks is written in C++ and built on top of OpenGL. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, ...
, a C/C++ library originally created at
Parsons Parsons may refer to: Places In the United States: * Parsons, Kansas, a city * Parsons, Missouri, an unincorporated community * Parsons, Tennessee, a city * Parsons, West Virginia, a town * Camp Parsons, a Boy Scout camp in the state of Washingt ...
. Together with
Processing Processing is a free graphical library and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts, new media art, and visual design communities with the purpose of teaching non-programmers the fundamentals of computer programming ...
, openFrameworks became one of the most popular platforms for
creative coding Creative coding is a type of computer programming in which the goal is to create something expressive instead of something functional. It is used to create live visuals and for VJing, as well as creating visual art and design, entertainment (e.g. ...
. The Eyebeam OpenLab served as the birthplace of the
Graffiti Research Lab Graffiti Research Lab is an art project founded by Evan Roth and James Powderly James Powderly (born 1976) is an artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing ro ...
. Founded by
James Powderly James Powderly (born 1976) is an artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing robots and augmented reality platforms, and promoting open source culture. Biography ...
and
Evan Roth Evan Roth (born 1978) is an American artist who applies a hacker philosophy to an art practice that visualizes transient moments in public space, online and in popular culture. Biography Evan Roth received a degree in architecture from Universi ...
during their OpenLab fellowships in 2005, the GRL was envisioned as a nonprofit design studio for creating experimental technologies with street art applications. While at Eyebeam, Powderly and Roth developed a method for creating graffiti messages in individual LED lights and a system for projecting shapes drawn with a handheld laser in real time. Powderly and Roth later founded the F.A.T. (Free Art and Technology) Lab, a collective dedicated to the merging of
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
technology and
popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
, with
Theo Watson Theo Watson is a British artist and programmer. His art work includes interactive video, large-scale public projections, computer vision projects, and interactive sound recordings which have featured in museums and galleries across the world i ...
, Chris Sugrue, and others. Eyebeam expanded its programmatic lineup of exhibitions and workshops with MIXER, a series dedicated to showcasing leading performance artists in the field of live video and audio, in late 2007. The inaugural event, "Brother Islands (Places to Lose People)", was focused around an immersive experimental documentary of North Brother Island and
Wards Island Randalls Island (sometimes called Randall's Island) and Wards Island are conjoined islands, collectively called Randalls and Wards Islands, in New York County, New York City,
by media artist
Benton C Bainbridge Benton C Bainbridge (born January 22, 1966) is an American media artist known for creating single channel video, interactive artworks, immersive installations and live visual performances with custom digital, analog and optical systems of his ow ...
. MIXER events were organized around themes as disparate as the World's Fair, the 2010 Winter Olympics, and New York City's underground and featured interactive installations alongside performances by musicians and performance artists including DāM-FunK, Extreme Animals,
CHERYL Cheryl is a female given name common in English speaking countries. There are several prevailing theories about its etymology. The most common is that it has Italo-Celtic roots and is an Anglicised version of either the French name Cherie (from ...
, and
D-Fuse AV D-Fuse are a London-based audiovisual artist collective, who use emerging creative technologies to explore social and environmental issues. Background Founded in the mid 1990s by Michael Faulkner,Faulkner, M. (2006). "VJ: Audiovisual Art + VJ ...
. That same year, fellows and resident artists began organizing mobile workshops and talks. In 2011, several Eyebeam residents, fellows, and alumni participated in ''Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects'' at the
Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York City. Eyebeam Fellow Ayah Bdeir's littleBits, a DIY kit of open source pre-assembled circuits, was among the projects displayed and was acquired by the MoMA as part of their permanent collection. In February 2014 the first ever Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon was hosted at Eyebeam and co-organized by fellow
Laurel Ptak Laurel Ptak is an artist, curator, writer and educator based in New York City. Career She previously served as director and curator of the artist-founded non-profit organization Art in General in New York City from 2017 to 2020. A multidisciplin ...
in conjunction with more than 30 satellite edit-a-thons internationally across the United States, Canada, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Since November 2017 Eyebeam has been located at 199 Cook Street in Brooklyn. This coincides with their 20th anniversary as an organization which was celebrated in Spring 2018.


Directors

*
John Seward Johnson III John Seward Johnson III (born September 2, 1966) is an American filmmaker, philanthropist and entrepreneur. He is a great-grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I (co-founder of Johnson & Johnson) and the son of artist John Seward Johnson II. He is the ...
: 1997–2004 * Steven Tremble: 2004–2005 *
Amanda McDonald Crowley Amanda McDonald Crowley is a New York-based Australian curator and arts administrator who has created exhibitions and events focused on new media art, contemporary art, and transdisciplinary work. She has served as the executive director of Eye ...
: 2005–2011 * Patricia C. Jones: 2011–2015 *
Roddy Schrock Roderick Schrock is an arts executive and curator. He has been the Executive Director at Eyebeam (organization), Eyebeam since July, 2015. Biography Schrock received an MFA in electronic music and recording media from Mills College, and a certifi ...
: 2015–present


See also

*
Ars Electronica Center Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in the ...
*
Center for Art and Media The ZKM , Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (until March 2016: ZKM Center for Art and Media Technology), a cultural institution, was founded in 1989. and since 1997 is located in a listed industrial building in Karlsruhe, Germany, a former muni ...
*
EyeWriter The EyeWriter is a low-cost eye tracking system originally designed for paralyzed graffiti artist Tempt1. The EyeWriter system uses inexpensive cameras and open-source computer vision software to track the wearer's eye movements. EyeWriter was c ...
* Free Art and Technology Lab (aka "FAT Lab") *
Graffiti Research Lab Graffiti Research Lab is an art project founded by Evan Roth and James Powderly James Powderly (born 1976) is an artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing ro ...
* Kitchen Budapest *
openFrameworks openFrameworks is an open source toolkit designed for creative coding founded by Zachary Lieberman, Theo Watson and Arturo Castro. OpenFrameworks is written in C++ and built on top of OpenGL. It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, ...
*
V2 Institute for the Unstable Media V2_, Lab for the Unstable Media, founded in 1981, is an interdisciplinary center for art and media technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.Stephen Wilson, ''Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology'', MIT Press, 2002, p. 8 ...


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eyebeam Art And Technology Center Computer art Non-profit organizations based in New York City Arts organizations based in New York City Arts organizations established in 1997 1997 establishments in New York City Hackerspaces