قلب is a programming language exploring the role of human culture in coding. Code is written entirely in Arabic, highlighting cultural biases of computer science and challenging the assumptions we make about programming. It is implemented as a tree-walking language interpreter in JavsScript.

All modern programming tools are based on the ASCII character set, which encodes Latin Characters and was originally based on the English Language. As a result, programming has become tied to a single written culture. It carries with it a cultural bias that favors those who grew up reading and writing in that cultural. قلب explores and challenges that by presenting a language that deviates almost entirely from ASCII.

In addition to the language and its interpreter, the قلب project includes a calligraphy series. Traditional Computer Science algorithms are implemented in قلب, and the resulting Arabic source code is used as the content of calligraphy pieces, in effect treating the algorithms as high poetry. The traditions of the Arabs merge seamlessly with the traditions of the hackers, bridging millenia of creative practice. The three pieces completed for the 2013 Artist Showcase were Hello World, Fibonacci, and Conway’s Game of Life, and were all done in the Square Kufic style.

I think hackers, artists, activists, and community organizers should work together to make affordable housing in every neighborhood. I want to commit to one neighborhood for life, knowing that my neighbors are allies in a struggle to keep real estate speculation down and increase affordable housing instead. I want to build lasting relationships of trust and share resources: cooking, childcare, knowledge-sharing, and healing practices. What if hackers built software for the building? What if artists made site-specific art, clothing, and furniture for the building? What if community organizers connected people and facilitated conversations across race and class? 

I am working towards a Hacker House, a community land trust (CLT) for hackers, artists, and community organizers. A CLT is a non-profit organization that owns property, traditionally land, and leases it for affordable housing. The deed to the land, the CLT by-laws, and the lease all require that the housing be permanently affordable. The land can never be traded or sold to the highest bidder on the private market.

The $30,000 I received as a Fellowship stipend at Eyebeam is seed funding towards a CLT for rigorous, generous people in New York City. I built out and co-managed an 8,000 square foot studio space for 40 artists from 2008-2013 off the L train, but our 5-year lease is up. I know what I'm getting in to. I still want more collective spaces! I am currently looking for partners, advisors, and supporters. I know who the first round of artists and hackers will be, but I am still seeking appropriate community organizrers (based on the neighborhood that makes sense). Please contact me if you are interested in this idea: caroline@eyebeam.org

One million Americans are sorted by political affiliation and exposed to public persecution in the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election. The data was harvested from Twitter.com and recontextualized on Persecuting.US, which offers a platform where everyone can take part in a participatory model pushed to extremes, engaging people in surveying and persecuting each other in a form of info-civil-war of political polarization.

This project breaks boundaries in art transgression with a Social Sculptural Performance made by a mass of people arranged and involved in an artwork without their permission. The accidental participants become part of a transformative spectacle with an unsettling narrative.

The offline art installation evokes the activity of wiretapping the Internet to identify political activities. Through an audio installation the audience at the exhibition space can listen to an over fifty days-long track of robotic voices reading selected statements of Americans sorted by their political involvement.

Computational Fashion in New York is an Eyebeam initiative bringing together artists, scientists, technologists and the fashion industry to explore possibilities at the convergence of fashion and creative technology. The lead consultant is Dr. Sabine Seymour, owner of Moondial and professor of Fashionable Technology at Parsons The New School for Design.

The goal of the project is to support research, collaboration, and the presentation of experimental and cutting edge technology that can be applied to all aspects of the fashion industry. The project includes artist commissions, bi-monthly meetings and workshops, a toolkit on new techniques and materials, and a culminating symposium and exhibition of work developed over the course of the project.

Four artist/scientist collaborations will be supported by the project, two a year.

2012-3 Computational Fashion Fellows

Sculptor and interactive installation artist Carrie Mae Rose is collaborating with Dr. Dan Steingart, Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at CCNY and the CUNY Energy Institute, and an expert on highly flexible, printed alkaline batteries. Carrie Mae Rose is developing a series of wearable sculptures that visualize the movement of subtle electric circulations around the physical body and how they interact with the pulse, breath and voice.  Dr. Steingart and his graduate assistant, Abhinav Gaikward, will be building custom battery fabric that will be underneath or embedded in textiles to power LED lights, sensors, and circuits.

Artist/Game Designer Kaho Abe is collaborating with Dr. Katherine Isbister, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU, to explore how wearable technology can act as both game controller and costume, in order to create a far richer, more immersive game experience. Abe and Isbister will build and design games that utilize various sensors, and switches, and other embedded technology in wearable controllers to enhance game play and playful interaction.

2013-4 Fellows will be chosen through an open call for proposals. Check back later in 2013 for further announcements.

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Computational Fashion is supported in part by the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Cultural Innovation Fund.