E Y E B E A M : R&D Areas of Research

Fundrace
Fundrace applies novel technologies such as geocoding to federal election information adding dimension to abstract, disparate data while highlighting trends and relationships. Contributions can be tracked by name or address providing unprecedented access to political contribution through FEC records. Created by R&D fellow Mike Frumin, Fundrace was intended to create greater transparency in the role of campaign finance while making an intervention into a relevant political debate. The New York Times said “national politics has rarely hit quite so close to home," while Newsweek said Fundrace marks the “beginning of the age of geo-voyeurism."

Contagious Media Showdown
The Showdown was an open competition to see who could make the most contagious website. All entries were launched on the official Contagious Media server and tracked over the three week contest period. The contest was complimented by a full day of workshops, a launch party, an awards event, and the Contagious Media exhibition at the New Museum. Final results for the contest and traffic statistics are available on the showdown web site.

ForwardTrack
The latest release from Eyebeam R&D is ForwardTrack, a system for tracking and mapping the circulation of email forwards, political calls-to-action and petitions. ForwardTrack is designed to encourage activism by graphically revealing the power of social-networks and demonstrating the impact of the individual's voice in the political process. ForwardTrack is currently being beta tested via Tom's Petition and is available to the public in an open source version at the ForwardTrack site.

Carnivore
Carnivore is a surveillance tool for data networks created by RSG featuring Eyebeam resident Alex Galloway. At the heart of the project is CarnivorePE, a software application that listens to all Internet traffic (email, web surfing, etc.) on a specific local network. Next, CarnivorePE serves this data stream to interfaces called "clients." These clients are designed to animate, diagnose, or interpret the network traffic in various ways. Use CarnivorePE to run Carnivore clients from your own desktop, or use it to make your own clients. Winner of the 2004 Golden Nica award for Net Vision for Ars Electronica.

VGMap
VGMap is a library that allows designers, developers, and mapping geeks to overlay data on top of Google Maps in a richer way than is possible using their standard system. The Google Maps API enables point and line data on their maps in the form of markers and polylines, which has yielded a lot of great mashup applications, but precludes its for more sophisticated GIS applications. Flash technology, on the other hand, provides vector drawing, as well as well-worn interactive and animation functionality. This VGMap library is simply the glue between Google Maps and Flash, which we hope will help to provide baseline technology for building open, web-based GIS applications using Google Maps as the base layer. The first application we developed with VGMap was an interactive New York city Subway Map.

Social Network Soiree
Eyebeam hosted an interdisciplinary panel discussion entitled Social Network Soir�e: Discussion, Champagne, Experiment. The discussion addressed the social dynamics that drive fashion trends, enable salacious gossip, fuel Internet crazes and sustain corporate power structures. Panelists used social network analysis to explain a transformation in art, technology, or culture. A cocktail party followed the discussion, where guests wore wireless badges called meme tags that track and analyze social interaction in real time. To participate in the experiment, guests mingled, listened to freshly spun electronica, and sipped complimentary mini-Moet champagne. Panelists included Malcom Gladwell, Natalie Jeremijenko, Josh On, Jonah Peretti, and Rick Borovoy.

ReBlog
ReBlog is a web site republishing the best blog posts from around the web utilizing the ReBlog software hack created by Eyebeam R&D. This program allows users to filter and republish relevant content from many RSS feeds, in effect curating information online. The ReBlog software is available as an open-source download and allows individuals and organizations to tap the contributions of members, friends, strangers, employees and communities-at-large in order to easily redistribute relevant content. Eyebeam's ReBlog web site features a constantly updating look at art, technology and popular culture selected by guest curators sharing their view of the best blog posts in the world.

EARTH, Discrete Terrains
Based on the EARTH dataset, individual terrain sections are printed with the 3d Systems solid object printer. These rapid prototyping prints then become the molds for archival plaster casts. The casts then become a projection surface for digital data from the specific locations. Using only a single 35mm slide projector, "Discrete Terrains" are the absolute simplest technological reduction reduction of the "EARTH" and "Terrain Machine" projects.

Contagious Media
Over the past three years, the Contagious Media Project has launched the Nike Sweatshop email forward, the New York City Rejection Line and the Black People Love Us website. These viral experiments illustrate the potential of concepts like emergence, six-degrees of separation and tipping points, to make an intervention in a relevant social, political or cultural debate. Eyebeam Contagious Media projects have been covered by the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN and elsewhere.

ACCESS
ACCESS lets you track anonymous individuals in public places, by pursuing them with a robotic spotlight and acoustic beam system. The work provokes questions about surveillance technology, contemporary advertising, and the entertainment industry. ACCESS was created by Eyebeam resident Marie Sester and is the winner of the 2004 Webby Award for Net Art.

Noderunner
Noderunner is a game that transforms a city into a playing field. Two teams race against time to access as many wireless Internet nodes as possible. To prove that they have successfully connected to an open node, each team must submit photographic proof to the Noderunner weblog. During game play, the weblog becomes a busy scoreboard tracking the competing teams in real time. After the game, the photos provide visual documentation of the path taken by each team and public spaces that have free wireless connectivity. Winner of the 2003 Golden Nica award for Net Vision from Ars Electronica.

We Love New York
This Celebration of New York City engaged in theory and practice about civil liberties and public space. Eyebeam sponsored an exhibition and a series of workshops that were free to the public. Visitors and participants learned about surveillance technology, the open wireless movement, tactical media and GIS mapping techniques.

Pizza Party
Pizza Party was commissioned by Eyebeam R&D for media artist Cory Arcangel as part of his work in the work in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and implemented by R&D Fellow Mike Frumin. It is a free text based software package for ordering pizza, or for throwing pizza parties. It has many features to make ordering pizza easy:

Can order pizza with only a few keystrokes.
Can save pizza preferences.
Can use batch files for ordering many pizzas.
Has easy to use flags for ordering different toppings.
Runs on most UNIX-like operating systems.
Supports most currently popular topings like "mushrooms", and "pepperoni"

Dirt Style Design
We are developing and researching design techniques inspired by the degraded aesthetic of the hobbyist, amateur and geek. This work re-imagines the original spirit of the Internet before the dotcom gold rush. The "Summer of HTML" Tour took Dirt Style Design on the road.

Robot
Our preliminary exploration into the field of robotics consisted of a robotics festival focused on the diversity of the field. The goal of the event was to identify promising areas for future research.