Open Studios May 2009

Eyebeam will hold Open Studios for Artists In Residence and Senior Fellows
Friday, May 15 and Saturday, May 16, from 3-6pm on both dates.
A two-day presentation allowing a rare inside look at the current state of research at Eyebeam

Eyebeam is pleased to host Open Studios for its 2009 Senior Fellowships and Winter/Spring Residencies at Eyebeam’s state-of-the-art new media design, digital research, and fabrication studio; showcasing work in the areas of  performance, experimental film, wearable technologies, open culture and sustainable art.

EYEBEAM WINTER/SPRING 2009 ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
Eyebeam’s residents are selected from two yearly open calls of emerging artists, technologists and engineers for a six-month residency, which includes a stipend as well as access to Eyebeam’s facilities, equipment, and opportunities for collaboration and presentation of work. This group of five residents was selected from a group of 144 applicants.

Selection panelists included Eyebeam alum Robert Ransick (Bennington College, VT); Erika Dalya Muhammad (the Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC); Eyebeam senior fellow Michael Mandiberg (College of Staten Island/CUNY, NYC); Paul Amitai (Eyebeam programming coordinator); and Amanda McDonald Crowley, executive director of Eyebeam, with moderation by Roddy Schrock, production coordinator at Eyebeam.

Di Mainstone
Through a hands-on choreography of fashion, technology and performance, Di Mainstone creates playful adornments that roam the body, hiding and revealing tales that are close to her heart. For the Eyebeam residency, Di will prototype a set of wearable structures that question both our sense of interconnectivity as well as our understanding personal space within the city environment.
http://sharewear.projects.v2.nl
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7kc41dKjA1c

Reid Farrington
Reid Farrington is a director of work for the stage. He has worked as a technical artist for The Wooster Group in NYC for eight years, with which he has toured internationally. He has also shown his work widely, both in the US and abroad. Reid is proud to be joining the ranks of Eyebeam residents to develop a software program to run the technical elements of his next piece Gin and “It”, which will premiere at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, in March 2010. The NYC premiere will take place in May 2010 at Performance Space 122.
http://www.reidfarrington.com/

Jon Cohrs
Jon Cohrs is a recording engineer and visual/sound artist who lives in Brooklyn. He has worked at the Guggenheim Museum as a new media art installer, and is currently employed by the artist Laurie Anderson. Jon also runs a successful recording business, Spleenless Mastering. His work has focused on exploring technology and how it can foster connections that invoke a sense of nurturing and growth.

At Eyebeam this spring, Jon will create a new form of TV by using the abandoned analog bandwidth ditched in the digital transfer. Jon will attempt to invert traditional television programming and replace it with user-generated and pirated content to address the evolution of media.
http://www.splnlss.com/

Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley
Rebecca and Britta are artists who have set out to start a NYC window-farm craze. They will work with agricultural, architectural, and other specialists to create high-profile prototype window farms and the means for sharing design ideas to meet the varying local environments of the city. Rebecca and Britta’s inspiration for community involvement derives from concepts of local production (think of the coming network of 3-D multi-material printers), mass customization, and mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0.

They envision the DIY aspects as a futuristic infrastructure-light alternative to large-scale R&D. Through a combination of social media, and good old window advertising, they hope to frame a movement where people feel welcome to take part in the effort to turn scientific breakthroughs into actionable local tasks.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/190769734188064212/

Kenseth Armstead
Kenseth is a multimedia installation artist. His works have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Berlin VideoFest; and MIT List Visual Arts Center. His videos, drawings and sculptures are included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, African American Museum, and numerous public and private collections.

While at Eyebeam, Kenseth will work on his ongoing HD digital video production environment that utilizes hand-made sets and an open source casting methodology to create the footage for the narrative feature-film Spook 1781. The film, which is based on a true story, relates the incredible tale of the spy/slave James Armistead Lafayette and his role in ending the American Revolution.
http://www.kensetharmstead.com/

SENIOR FELLOWS 2009
Senior fellows are former fellows who are invited to continue their research at Eyebeam as well as serve as mentors for incoming residents. These individuals are selected in recognition of their exceptional talent and the belief that a sustained research period is critical for the development of new ideas and innovative work—goals central to Eyebeam’s mission. All of the current senior fellows teach at graduate and undergraduate programs throughout New York City, have received numerous awards for their work, and are regularly invited to speak at conferences and take part in exhibitions both in the US and beyond.

Jeff Crouse
Jeff Crouse creates software and installations that combine, in equal parts, humor, absurdity and technology. Jeff’s previous work includes YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych creator; Invisible Threads, a virtual jeans factory in Second Life; and James Chimpton, a robotic monkey that interviewed the artists of the 2008 Whitney Biennial. He is currently developing BoozBot, a bar tending robot/puppet; and DeleteCity, a WordPress plug-in that finds and republishes content that has been taken down from sites such as Flickr and YouTube. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, the Futuresonic festival in Manchester, UK, the DC FilmFest, and the Come Out and Play Festival in Amsterdam.

Jeff received his MS from the Digital Media program at Georgia Tech in 2006 and joined Eyebeam as a production fellow in 2007. He is currently an adjunct professor at the IMA program at Hunter College, and a freelance programmer.
http://www.brooklynartscouncil.org/artists/29201

Steve Lambert
Steve Lambert was born in California and is currently based in NYC. His father, a former Franciscan monk, and mother, and ex-Dominican nun, imbued the values of dedication, study, poverty, and service to others—qualities that prepared him for life as an artist. Steve uses popular culture and humor in a variety of media including drawing, performance, and video to deal with issues of public space, social controls, and commerce.

Steve is the founder of the Anti-Advertising Agency, and a creator of Add-Art, a browser plug-in that replaces ads on the Internet with art. Steve’s projects and art works have won awards from Rhizome/The New Museum, Turbulence, the Creative Work Fund, Adbusters Media Foundation, the California Arts Council, the Belle Foundation, and others. His work has been shown internationally. Writings about his work have appeared in multiple publications such as the New York Times, Punk Planet, GOOD, Newsweek Magazine, and NPR.

He currently teaches at Parsons/The New School and Hunter College.
http://visitsteve.com/

Ayah Bdeir
Ayah Bdeir is an artist, engineer, and interaction designer. She graduated from the MIT Media Lab with a Masters of Media Arts and Sciences after studying Computer & Communication Engineering and Sociology in the American University of Beirut. With an upbringing spanning Lebanon, Canada and the US, Ayah’s work uses technology to look at cross cultural dialogue and media representation of the Middle East and its identities. Through mixing and matching tools and materials, Ayah experiments with animating classically static objects and putting technology where it typically doesn’t belong—from kitschy underwear, to design furniture, to electro-phobic art supply stores.

Her work has been published and exhibited in conferences, festivals and galleries in Amsterdam, Paris, New York, Rhode Island, Boston, Sao Paolo and others. Ayah teaches at Parsons and The New School with her colleague, Eyebeam alum Zach Lieberman.
http://www.ayahbdeir.com

Michael Mandiberg
Michael Mandiberg is an artist, programmer, designer, and educator. His work includes: the web applications about environmental impact, Real Costs, and Oil Standard; a textbook, Digital Foundations, that combines the historic design principles with modern software; and laser-cut lampshades for compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

Michael is an Assistant Professor at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He lives in, and rides his bicycle around, Brooklyn.
http://Mandiberg.com

 

Projects: Add-Art, BoozBot, DeleteCity, Digital Foundations, Gin and It, Invisible Threads, James Chimpton, littleBits, Oil Standard, OMG I’m on .TV, Shareware, Spook 1781, The Real Costs, Window Farms, youThreebe
People: Ayah Bdeir, Di Mainstone, Jeff Crouse, Jon Cohrs, Kenseth Armstead, Michael Mandiberg, Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, Reid Farrington, Steve Lambert
Research: Education, Middle East, Open Culture, Sustainability, Urban Research
Tags: residents, senior fellows