We come in several original summer flavorsIt’s the end of June and Eyebeam is about to burst with interactive activity with the launch of Interactivos?@Eyebeam, Summer School and Digital Day Camp. You can also catch the tail end of the Dewar’s commission for resident artists show Tourists and Travelers, and get a tour with Charlie the robotic duck to Central Park before we kiss our Spring 2008 residents goodbye, and usher in the Summer 2008 residents. And for the memories, hot MIXER pics are online now. Summer is finally HERE kids!
This Week at Eyebeam:June 26: Upgrade! launches Interactivos? June 27: Interactivos? workshop and public skill-share begins June 28: Camerautomata Charlie walking tour July 1: Eyebeam Summer School is in session July 7: Digital Day Camp begins New from our Labs: June – August 10: Sarah Cook presents Broadcast Yourself at Cornerhouse June: TouchKit API version 2.0 to be released June: Ayah Bdeir’s littleBits in BerlinJuly 5: Anti-Advertising Agency’s OFFFice in Chicago On the road again: The Eyebeam Roadshow call for Fall 2008 hosts Eyebeam community news: HeHe’s Pollstream – Nuage Vert wins 2008 Golden Nica
Upgrade!
Date: Thursday, June 26, 7PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
Cost: Free Join us on Thursday, June 26 at 7PM for the Upgrade! New York launch of Interactivos?: Better Than the Real Thing. R&D OpenLab fellow Zach Lieberman will set the scene with a presentation about Interactivos? and its beginnings at Medialab-Prado. Discussions of the real, the fake, and spoofing will ensue, with a presentation by The Yes Men. Informal discussion and a reception will follow. Eyebeam projects on display, that evening, will include BoozBot by Eyebeam senior fellow Jeff Crouse and Eyebeam Production Lab fellow David Jimison. Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Upgrade! New York has been in existence since April 1999 and partnered with Eyebeam in March 2000. Upgrade! meetings present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists. top
Interactivos?: Better Than the Real Thing
Dates: June 27 – July 12, 12 – 6PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
Cost: Free
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=interactivos
Stay tuned for the official Interactivos? project website launch! Join us daily between June 27 and July 12, from 12 – 6PM to witness the transformation of Eyebeam’s main space into a lab for the creation of interactive art projects. From an open-call, Eyebeam selected nine new projects to be realized by artists from around the world, with the collaboration of Eyebeam resident artists and fellows and over two dozen very skilled artists, engineers, musicians, programmers, designers, and hackers (also selected from an open call). The projects investigate interactivity in all of its forms, and usually feature a mix of hardware tinkering, software coding, and conceptual hacking. During the intensive two-week Interactivos? workshop, the lab will be open and the public are welcome to drop in, see the artists and collaborators at work, and participate in discussions, critiques, and other social activities investigating interactivity in the context of this year’s Interactivos? theme: the blurry line between the real and the fake. A full schedule of events will follow. On July 12 the lab will be transformed into an exhibition, Double Take, which will be on view through August 9. Interactivos? was initiated two years ago by the Medialab-Prado program and the Madrid City Council. This is the first time it has taken place outside Spain. The full list of projects can be found here:
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=interactivos
and an additional Interactivos? project website will be launched during the next two weeks. top
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2:30PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
As part of the Tourists and Travelers exhibition and in conjunction with Interactivos?: Better than the real thing, come see how a robotic duck can take better tourist photos than you can. Join the guided tour of tourist sites with the magical image-digesting robotic duck Charlie. The tour will start at Eyebeam at 2:30PM (participants are encouraged to check out the exhibition before setting off!) when they’ll join the artist and the duck as they walk and take public transportation to Bethesda Terrace, Central Park, where they will then wander around the park with other tourists. The tour will take about 2 hours. Participants may also meet the group at the Bethesda Terrace at around 4PM. top
Dates: July 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 19, 22, 6PM
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=workshops Eyebeam Summer School is an annual adult workshop series designed to encourage the creative use of technologies for personal expression, activism, communication and community involvement. For more information and to register, email: bookstore AT eyebeam DOT org. Tuesday, June 1: Illegal Billboard Workshop with IllegalSigns.ca and The Anti-Advertising Agency. Presenter: Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert. Activists estimate that half the billboards in New York City are illegal. Worth millions in profit, outdoor advertising has become a corporate black market that doesn’t stop short of breaking the law to get your attention. On July 1, the Anti-Advertising Agency and Rami Tabello of IllegalSigns.ca will lead a free workshop on how to identify illegal advertising and get it taken down. Canadian activist group IllegalSigns.ca is responsible for the removal of more than over 100 illegal billboards in Toronto. Rami Tabello will reveal how the billboard industry gets away with breaking the law and will offer suggestions on what New Yorkers can do to stop it locally. To sign up, email: workshop AT antiadvertisingagency DOT com Thursday, July 3: Eyebeam senior fellows Steve Lambert and Jeff Crouse will lead a workshop on A Basic Sentence Markup Language (ABSML)—an artist statement generator—and a new email spam-inspired project to Keep an Army Recruiter Busy. Tuesday, July 8: New Tools for Collaborative Practice. Presenters: Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert; Mushon Zer Aviv and Dan Pfeiffer; NOR_/D: Eyebeam Production Lab fellow Addie Wagenknecht with Stefan Hechenberger. - Subversion (SVN): a version control system used to maintain current and historical versions of files for source code, web pages, and/or documentation—like a wiki, but for code.
- Shiftspace: an open source layer above any website. It seeks to expand the creative possibilities currently provided through the web, allowing for the creation of online contexts built in and on top of websites.
- TouchKit: a modular multitouch development kit with the aim to make multitouch readily available in an open source fashion. Learn the basics of how to set up your own multitouch system, the supplies you need and where to get them. We supply the open source API, schematics, source code and demo applications.
Thursday, July 10: What do artists and audiences think of interactivity? Presenter: Beryl Graham. As part of Interactivos?, and in preparation for the opening of the exhibition Double Take, we present a lecture on how artists and audiences consider interactivity, led by Professor of New Media, Beryl Graham. Examples of high and low-tech projects in gallery and publically-sited contexts will be shown, and a rousing discussion with artists based on their own experiences will follow. This evening is in conjunction with Eyebeam research partner CRUMB, the resource for curators of new media art, based in the UK. top
Dates: July 7 – 25, Monday – Thursday, 1 – 5PM in the Education Lab
Location: Eyebeam, 540 W. 21st St., NYC
http://www.eyebeam.org/learning/learning.php?page=ddc In July 2008, Eyebeam will produce its ninth annual Digital Day Camp (DDC) program for NYC public high school students. DDC is a paid three-week summer intensive program, this year focused on the theme of Better Than the Real Thing—taking off from the Interactivos? workshop series. Selected participants will explore the tension in distinguishing “real” from “fake”. Among the questions to be addressed: What is authentic in the real of the digital? Can something be so fake that it becomes real? How can hoaxes, recreations, and illusions be used aesthetically and critically? DDC 2008 will investivage this through the creation of interactive art projects, which will join the projects produced during Interactivos? in the exhibition, Double Take, July 29 – August 9. DDC participants will publicly present their final projects on July 29, 7PM at Eyebeam. top
New from our Labs:
June: Sarah Cook presents Broadcast Yourself at CornerhouseBroadcast Yourself
Date: June – August 10
Location: Cornerhouse. 70 Oxford St., Manchester, UK
http://www.broadcastyourself.net Broadcast Yourself is an international group exhibition of artists’ interventions into television and strategies for self-broadcasting from the 1970s to today, co-curated by Kathy Rae Huffman and Eyebeam curatorial fellow Sarah Cook. Artists include: Active Ingredient (Rachel Jacobs / Matt Watkins); Shaina Anand; Ian Breakwell; Chris Burden; Stan Douglas; Alistair Gentry; Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Adriene Jenik; Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter; Joanie 4 Jackie (Miranda July et al.); Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup; TV swansong (curated by Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie); Bill Viola; Van Gogh TV; 56KTV Bastard Channel (curated by Reinhard Storz / xcult.org). top
The Opensource Multitouch software development kit TouchKit developed in part by Eyebeam Production Lab fellow Addie Wagenknecht will be released as the API version 2.0 in the coming two weeks. Sign up for the mailing list: http://nortd.com/touchkit/list.html to be the first to know when the newest versions and updates go live, and stay on top of upcoming free workshops around the US! top
Eyebeam R&D OpenLab fellow Ayah Bdeir is participating in the Friends of Fritzing Summit in Berlin, where she will present an early prototype of littleBits: a library of discrete electronic components pre-assembled in tiny, magnetic circuit boards. The project is in collaboration with Jeff Hoefs: http://www.jeffhoefs.com, and Smart Design: http://www.smartdesignworldwide.com. http://www.fritzing.org/events/friends-of-fritzing-summit-08
http://www.ayahbdeir.com/littleBits top
The Foundation For Freedom (Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert) is thrilled to announce our new temporary world headquarters at 6932 North Glenwood Avenue in Chicago. Starting today, and over the next four weeks, we’ll bring our mission and services to all the brilliant Chicagoland advertisers, marketers, and PR people ready to contribute to society in a meaningful way. The oFFFice will be open weekdays from 9AM to 4PM, through July 15 Brazil time, in solidarity with the visionaries who banned outdoor advertising (11AM to 6PM CST). We’re holding several events in our first week to celebrate! Come by and learn more: http://antiadvertisingagency.com/news/offfice-hours Steve also has drawings at the Haterdorn Museum in New Jersey: http://visitsteve.com/news/hunterdon-museum-the-house-that-sprawl-built/ top
The Eyebeam Roadshow is looking for hosts for its Fall 2008 tour. The Eyebeam Roadshow consists of a vibrant series of mini-lectures and skill-share workshops, from the distinguished roster of artists who have worked within Eyebeam’s Labs. Lecture topics may include: art and technology; copyright; open-source hardware and software; public space; hacking as an art form; how to write the world’s worst artist statement; creating tools for dissent; and other nascent projects developed at Eyebeam. If you are interested in hosting The Eyebeam Roadshow, please contact the Eyebeam production manager Stephanie Hunt: stephanie AT eyebeam DOT org with possible dates. More information about the Roadshow visit: http://roadshow.eyebeam.org top
Community news:
HeHe (Eyebeam alumni Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) Pollstream – Nuage Vert: http://www.nuagevert.orghttp//www.nuagevert.org transforms clouds into projection surfaces. As such, these indefinable, constantly and chaotically changing products of the condensation of water vapor become media bearing political ideas and messages. Or aestheticized symbols of environmental pollution caused by carbon emissions. Pollstream – Nuage Vert was developed in collaboration with experts in laser technology, computer science, electrical engineering, energy generation and air quality monitoring. Development commenced in 2002 and concluded in February 2008 with a performance in Helsinki that demonstrated how art is capable of encompassing an entire city—its public sphere, its industry and its inhabitants—and unfolding sociopolitical relevance. Pollstream – Nuage Vert is the recipient of the Prix Ars Electronica 2008 Golden Nica in the Hybrid Art category. top | 
