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

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, and wearable technology. Eyebeam's first forum, "Interaction", took place online in the summer of 1998 and was curated by UCSD professor Jordan Crandall. The forum, an email list called , was hosted by Brian Holmes, Olu Oguibe, and Gregory Ulmer, and included Lev Manovich, N. Katherine Hayles, Saskia Sassen, Matthew Slotover, Ken Goldberg, Geert Lovink, Knowbotic Research, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Mark Tribe, and Critical Art Ensemble 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 + Renfro, 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, Tony Martin (artist), Tony Martin, Yael Kanarek, M.River & T.Whid Art Associates, MTAA, John Klima (artist), John Klima, Jem Cohen, Cory Arcangel, and Michael Bell-Smith were among the inaugural exhibitors. Among the projects on display was Galloway's Carnivore, a Processing (programming language), Processing 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 Carnivore (software), DCS1000, a surveillance system used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. Carnivore was awarded the

Golden Nica the same year. Residents Yury Gitman and Carlos Gomez de Llarena's Noderunner, a scavenger hunt based on Wi-Fi sharing, received the 2003

Golden Nica. Fundrace.org, a site which allows visitors to track campaign contributions through geocoding, was developed by Jonah Peretti, 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 and Zachary Lieberman continued to develop openFrameworks, a C/C++ library originally created at Parsons The New School for Design, Parsons. Together with Processing (programming language), Processing, openFrameworks became one of the most popular platforms for creative coding. The Eyebeam OpenLab served as the birthplace of the Graffiti Research Lab. Founded by James Powderly and Evan Roth 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 FAT Lab, F.A.T. (Free Art and Technology) Lab, a collective dedicated to the merging of Open-source model, open source technology and popular culture, with Theo Watson, 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, East River, North Brother Island and Wards Island by media artist Benton C Bainbridge. 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 Dam Funk, DāM-FunK, Paper Rad, Extreme Animals, CHERYL, and D-Fuse AV. 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 (exhibition), ''Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects'' at the MoMA, Museum of Modern Art 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 Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism, Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-A-Thon was hosted at Eyebeam and co-organized by fellow Laurel Ptak 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

: 1997–2004 * Steven Tremble: 2004–2005 * Amanda McDonald Crowley: 2005–2011 * Patricia C. Jones: 2011–2015 * Roddy Schrock: 2015–present

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

History

Directors

See also

References

External links