"Creatomatic" is a piece of software designed to accelerate the imagination and prompt new inventions. It works by randomly juxtaposing diagrams of two everyday objects from a selection of hundreds. Through free association, the two objects can prompt the invention of an entirely new object, which can be practical or nonsensical. Inspired by the accidental nature of creativity, the "Creatomatic" uses the technique of surprise to overcome habitual ways of thinking and short circuit rational control.
Eye To Eyebeam is a series on Eyebeam's residents and fellows. It includes interviews, photos, and other news and is authored by Eyebeam intern Katherine DiPierro. These interactive posts offer visitors the opportunity to learn more about Eyebeam's diverse community of creative practitioners.
Each week, you'll see interviews profiling individual Eyebeamers. Artists who have already engaged in conversation about their projects include:
In the summer of 2011, Eyebeam Fellow Taeyoon Choi organized a tour to South Korean rivers in development with a group of five artists who are also fellows at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York and about ten artists and activists from South Korea. The tour was designed in collaboration with an activist groups “Listen to the city” and lead by environmental activists and local communities, and hosted by Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul. The purpose of the tour was to experience urbanization and river development in first hand and to initiate creative dialogue between international artists and activists to imagine alternative future of our relationship to the cities and natural resources. Through 6 day tour and other events that proceeded over the course of 10 days, the roadshow team learned a great deal about the issue, strategies of participation and the limits of translating cultural context.
Ideogenetic Machine is an interactive application that incorporates portraits of participants into an algorithmically generated comic book. The comic is created live through custom software using portraits of participants captured with a Kinect camera and a database of drawings by the artist illustrating speculative narratives based on current news and events. Participants are invited to actively respond to the emerging story through performance and collaboration. The layout and configuration of images from which new narratives continuously form never repeats. The software also adds blank speech bubbles into the composition, which participants can later fill with their own invented dialogue. Thus, each participant is transformed into the protagonist and the creator of a unique comic book. During the comic book making party, the artist will help participants print and bind their comics into zines.
http://www.novajiang.com/installations/ideogenetic-machine
