Schedule

EYEBEAM SUMMER SCHOOL

Digital Day Camp

Dates: July 7 – July 27, Final event July 28
Days: Monday – Thursday
Hours: 1:30–5:30PM

Theme: This summer’s theme will focus on creative activism in an urban environment. Students will work with urban planners, software designers, activists, video artists, and even a couple of activist gardeners to dig a little deeper into the fabric of our city, to learn more about how can creatively activate it, and how we can use art and technology to change it for the better. Each student has been selected for their special talents as visual artists, writers, musicians, dancers, or performers to contribute to a final project.

Superstructure:

* Week 1: Research and Resources, Prototyping and Adventuring
* Week 2: Audience development, participation
* Week 3: Building and Going Public
* Week 4: Final touches and Event!

Day-by-Day Schedule:

Day 1: Tuesday, July 7
• Artist: Jon Cohrs (Eyebeam Resident): Recording engineer and visual/sound artist
• Workshop: Part performative and part DIY culture, this workshop will expose students to hacking electronics and urban exploration. Much like Gold, the value of Black Gold, or oil has grown rapidly for the last 50 years. In many urban areas, industry has left behind resources that are written off as toxic spills. We’re going to prospect our urban environment using DIY urban prospecting tools. Put on your rubber boots and lets get knee deep in urban toxic wealth.
• Critical Frameworks: Urban research, creative intervention, hacking, performance
• Resources: Urban Prospecting http://urbanprospecting.net/

Day 2: Wednesday, July 8
• Artist: Ava Bromberg (participant, Eyebeam’s College of Tactical Culture): Urban Planning PhD candidate at UCLA
• Workshop: Students will learn about how cities get made, what they’re for, and how public space gets made from a policy perspective. Students will then consider spaces familiar to them, how they might transform those spaces for creative or civic engagement.
• Critical Frameworks: Urban research, creative intervention, personal perspectives, built environment, public / private space
• Resources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2GfOhFZkY8&feature=related

Day 3: Thursday, July 9
• Artist: Di Mainstone (Eyebeam Resident): Fashion Technologist + Jason Lim (Eyebeam Intern): Architect
• Workshop: Exploring the link between clothing and architecture, Di Mainstone (wearable artist) and Jason Lim (architect) will observe the body from an architectural perspective. Exploring connections between our bodies and our urban environment Di and Jason will commence by referencing the recent Skin and Bones exhibition. Participants (pioneers) will then be asked to examine their own relationship with New York City, and observe the behaviors of their fellow urbanites. Following a series of exercises involving language, observation and narrative, pioneers will physically think through the creation of a wearable structure that connects our bodies with the urban space. We will change the urban experience through wearing and installing a structure within public space. We also hope to push the boundaries of instinctual creativity through on-the-spot prototyping. Following a series of urban interventions, during which pioneers will be asked to install themselves within the space, we will explore personal and social response. How did the installation change? How does it change their vision of the space?
• Critical Frameworks: narrative, social interactions, urban research, rapid prototyping, architecture, built environment
• Resources: TBD

Day 4: Monday, July 13
• Artist: Jeff Crouse (Eyebeam Senior Fellow): Interactive narrative, software development
• Workshop: Students will work in familiar and new social media platforms, with an eye towards activist interventions, finding humor, and craze making.
• Critical Frameworks: Communication, audience development, narrative
• Resources: Potentially…Carnivore, Reamweaver, Tor, TheyRule, Fundrace, Cory Archangel, Evan Roth, Ze Frank, Facebook and/or MySpace, Twitter, etc.


Day 5: Tuesday, July 14
• Artists: Britta Riley & Rebecca Bray (Eyebeam Residents): working to create crowdsourced R&D solutions for environmental issues. Current project: http://www.windowfarms.org
• Workshop: DDC students will team up with students from the Whitney’s Teen program to learn about Rebecca & Britta’s Window Farms project (currently installed at Eyebeam), and then join their design team to help them with their goal of starting a window farming craze.
• Critical Frameworks: Social networks, audience development & participation, DIY, public / private space
• Resources:

Day 6: Wednesday, July 15
• Artist: Daniel Perlin: Creates sound, video, objects and installations. Today is Daniel’s birthday!
• Workshop: Students will participate in a deep listening walk. Walks will first be led as a group, such that listening to one’s environment may be discussed, and then done privately. The private walk will allow students to explore the city through their own ears. We will the discuss the politics of noise and concepts of listening as strategies for artistic an social production. It will be fun, and a nice way to train urban ears.
• Critical Frameworks: Students will learn to ‘listen,’ and start gearing up for next week’s exploration of the Highline – we will draw on discussions about observing the spaces we occupy with a keener eye, and a collectivist spirit. Urban research, public / private space, personal perspectives.
• Resources: TBD

Day 7: Thursday, July 16
• Artist: FIELDTRIP: Sculpture Center in Long Island City. Exhibition: University of Trash & Socrates Sculpture Park
• Workshop: Students will meet at the Sculpture center to check out their current installation and participate in activity led by Sculpture Center – “The University of Trash is an experiment in alternative architecture, urbanism, and pedagogy taking place in SculptureCenter’s main space. Drawing from utopian ideals and radical urban projects undertaken since the 1960s, the artists will create an installation that functions as a temporary, makeshift University – hosting courses, lectures, presentations, and workshops. A Free Skool program will operate within the University, offering the public the opportunity to propose their own courses – open and free for all who sign up and attend throughout the duration of the exhibition.”
• Critical Frameworks: The show has been (a) partially built by high school students, (b) is about artist enacted social / creative interventions into public space, using found materials, performance, participant driven events.
• Resources: Research on Univ Trash, other participant driven schools such as Sundown Salon.

Day 8: Monday, July 20
• Artist: Sarah Cook (Eyebeam Research Partner, Curatorial Masterclass organizer): Curator
• Workshop: Students will discuss and learn about curatorial considerations for planning an event or exhibition. We might curate the window gallery at Eyebeam, using creations and documentation from the previous two weeks, and then plan for the coming final presentation.
• Critical Frameworks: Packaging your art, dissemination, production, publication, audience communication.
• Resources: TBD

Day 9, 10, 11: Tuesday, July 21 – Thursday, July 23
• Artist: Adriana Young (artist researcher / activist) + Christina Kral (digital and interactive narrative, Eyebeam Alum)
• Workshop: Research history of and making of the High Line in its current form. Students will then consider missing elements, and rewrite the narrative by creating a Mid Line. This aspect of DDC will include a strong emphasis on documentation.
• Critical Frameworks: Urban research, creative use of public space
• Resources: – http://guerrillagardening.org/ – Mobile Art: http://www.artshantyprojects.org – http://www.huongngo.com/ – http://unhoused.livejournal.com/ – Shelter Corps (part of Version09 – http://www.versionfest.org/) http://bit.ly/shelter-corps

Day 12: Monday, July 27
• Workshop: Continue with ideas from previous days with Sarah, Adriana, and Christina, emphasis on building, videos, documentation, and final projects
• Critical Frameworks: Planning for public reveal!
• Resources: Museum as medium, performances, spectacle:

•••

Final Presentation: Tuesday, July 28. 6-8pm.
Artist: Adriana Young + Christina Kral
Workshop: Working with students on final action
Critical Frameworks: Public intervention.
Location: TBA

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