As we look at 2009, there is real uncertainty about our organization’s survival. Faced with rapidly declining funds, we must either require a membership fee — thereby blocking public access to our sites; or we must take them all offline: Turbulence.org, Networked_Performance, Networked_Music_Review, and New American Radio.

We do not wish to do either.

At this point our only hope is that those of you who have not yet contributed to our Campaign for Sustainability will decide to do so.

Networked_Performance alone is accessed by 32,000 unique visitors per month; many of you return three or more times. If each of you were to give $5.00, we could continue to make our sites freely available.

Please act now. Pay via PayPal here or mail a check to:

New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.
124 Bourne Street
Roslindale
MA 02131

Thanks.

Helen and Jo
***********

The following interview with Salvatore Iaconesi and penelope.di.pixel, hosted on artsblog.it, details our understanding and experience of new media arts funding in the U.S. It is is the first in a series of interviews that analyze some of the issues of the rising financial crisis. Marc Garrett of Furtherfield and Simona Lodi of Torino Share Festival have also been interviewed. Go
here or here, or read below:

Helen Thorington, Jo-Anne Green and Turbulence.org: let’s begin with a short introduction for the reader…

New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) was founded in 1981– almost 28 years ago. At that time and until 1998, it commissioned artists to create original work for the public radio system (now some 797 public stations across the country). Our series, New American Radio (NAR), was a weekly national series which, in hindsight, was probably better known among radio art enthusiasts in Europe (thanks to the efforts of its then associate director, Regine Beyer) than in the US, where bottom line thinking (does this program bring in enough money?) had already infected the public system.

Note: In the United States, the public radio and television systems are not supported by annual license fees. Touted as commercial free, a small percentage of their budgets come from the federal government; the remainder from corporate “sponsors”, private foundation grants, individual donations and underwriting spots (resembling advertisements on commercial broadcasting).

Because of public radio’s dependent status, New American Radio (1987-1998) was classified early on as “minority programming” (translation: it didn’t have a large, well-to-do audience that donated substantially to the broadcasting stations); over the years the number of stations airing the programs declined; money became scarce; and in 1998 we let it go. 300 works from the series are now archived in Wesleyan University’s World Music Archive in Connecticut; 140 works are available for audition on the New American Radio.

In anticipation of NAR’s end, we extended the organizations mandate to include commissioning artists to create new work (net/web art) for the Internet, and in early 1996, launched the Turbulence website (http://turbulence.org). Funded by government and private foundations, Turbulence, like NAR, has been free to the public since its inception.

In 2002 Jo-Anne Green joined the organization as co-director. It is to her that we owe the studios, spotlight, and guest curator’s sections and — of even greater significance today — the research and blogging that makes possible the world-famous Networked_Performance blog, and (with Helen and Peter Traub) Networked_Music_Review. She also started Upgrade! Boston, one of 32 nodes comprising Upgrade! International. Jo-Anne’s most recent Turbulence project is “Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art)”.

NRPA is also responsible for co-organizing and co-presenting: the annual “Floating Points” speaker series on networked art at Emerson College in Boston, MA; a series of symposia on “Programmable Media” at Pace University in New York City; and several exceptional exhibitions, including “Mixed Realities”, which explored the convergence — through cyberspace — of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks.

During these months Europe began confronting the financial crisis that is spreading out from american markets: what are the characteristics of this crisis in the USA and which are the most clearly visible damages and repercussions, starting from your direct experience in Turbulence?

First a little history:

The United States’ support for the arts declined dramatically sixteen years ago, when right wing politicians objected to tax payer money being granted to performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes. The Republican Party legislated that the federal arts funding agency could no longer provide grants to individual artists; during the Clinton administration, they attempted to abolish the agency altogether.

The following details a part of the context in which we live today.

A little over a year ago, the Guardian reported that Arts Council England funding would increase from £417m (2007) to £467m in 2010-11. Astonished by this news, we immediately compared these figures with those of our own federal agency, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). We found that the 2007 NEA appropriation was $125 million (£61m) for a population of over 300 million. Arts Council England’s 2007 appropriation of £417m ($855 million) was for a population of 61 million.

Intrigued by the post on Networked_Music_Review, a blogger by the name of Robin took the exercise one step further. He added Ireland and Canada to the comparison and created a chart (http://noisetheatre.blogspot.com/2007/10/comparing-national-arts-budgets.html). The results in € per person: US: .286 Canada: 3.96 UK: 9.86 Ireland: 18.6. Robin concluded “So, in the United States they’ll flip you a quarter and say “good luck”, in the UK you’ll get a tenner, but in Ireland each person has 19 euros of their tax money put towards the arts.”

But there is more.

In his first interview on “Meet the Press” since winning the election, President-elect Barack Obama discussed his plans to make an impact through arts and culture at the White House, saying that they are “thinking about the diversity of our culture and inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians and poetry readings in the White House so that, once again, we appreciate this incredible tapestry that’s America.” While this support is unprecedented, the tapestry to which it refers is conspicuously lacking in any but traditional forms.

We write this because it underlines an additional two-fold problem for us – one that existed here before the economic crisis occurred.

1) Funding organizations are largely comprised of staff — whose backgrounds are in the traditional arts — who bring together panels largely comprised of individuals with backgrounds in the traditional arts. For two years in a row now, Turbulence has gone unfunded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) because the panelists have not known how to navigate a website. Each year we write more detailed instructions: do this, do that…look for this, look for that. Each year the Endowment asks us to do still more. This year’s suggestion: make a film of one of us navigating through the proposed artist’s site, so panelists can view the work in a traditional form (video).

2) Creative practice on the Internet has blurred distinctions between one form of practice and another. Nima Motamedi developed “Keep in Touch” and “Stay in Touch” as part of his thesis at Simon Frasier University (Vancouver, BC); he calls it research, not art. Martin Wattenberg divides his work into two categories: art and research. Have a look and see if you can tell the difference. This ongoing convergence, which we delight in, does nothing but baffle the uninitiated. The work is not art when viewed through their perceptually backward-looking eyes. Or, more simply put, as Australian friend Cass Meers writes, “there is a lag between new modes of practice and the implementation of new systems that can support this practice.” That lag is very much in evidence here in the US.

When you add the current economic crisis to these pre-existing conditions, you have to know that only serious financial trouble awaits the unaffiliated, non-institutionalized, not-for-profit with a mandate to commission creative work for the Internet, and hybrid work with a presence both on the net and in physical space and/or in virtual worlds.

This came in a recent email from one of Turbulence’s funders: “The trust has lost a huge amount of money, and I cannot be sure there will be funds for the arts this year. I’ll let you know.”

Other funders are also waiting. In New York State where arts organizations are many and united in securing support for their activities, the Governor proposed eliminating the remainder of the New York State Council on the Arts’ 2008 budget; in less than 72 hours 14,000+ emails were sent to the Governor and Legislators. The Governor’s proposal has remained unchanged.

What about the 2009 budget? No one knows for sure. A 20% cut in grant dollars has been proposed for the upcoming budget, starting April 1, 2009, but with the economic situation worsening every day, the cut may be a good deal more. Either way, those of us who have relied on it for some part of our operating support will find ourselves operating on much less - or out of luck altogether. At best NRPA can expect $12,000 from this source to meet the expenses of its staff and its operating costs for a year.

We foresee 2-5 hard years ahead in which both of us will have to find other sources of income to survive. We are both looking for work now.

Paradoxes: while we question ourselves about the crisis, a painting by Kostabi manages to get a 3 million euros price tag (and it is also not the most sensational case, either). Is the Art System really in a crisis?

With regard to your question about the art system; NRPA, unlike some arts organizations and artists, is less interested in being a part of the “artworld” (aka the art market) than in acknowledging innovation as an emergent property of digital networks and commissioning creative people from the truly impressive numbers participating in new media practice today.

The artworld reflects older and more accepted cultural hierarchies and values. Through Sotherby’s, Christie’s and high-end galleries, it caters to the wealthiest individuals who are the least affected by recessions. These individuals buy art because of its investment value; some because of the celebrity status of the artist (often, they go hand-in-hand). The artmarket has little to do with art; for it, art is just another commodity to be bought and sold at maximum profit.

New Media Art breaks copyright rules, erases the classical concept of “authorship”, is hardly collectable and, in general, it shows a somewhat “genetic” incompatibility towards reproduction/exhibition in classical museum and gallery contexts: is there a connection between these new ways of producing art and the crisi? Can the research on new media art have a heuristic role in the process of understanding and handling the crisi itself?

As you say: New Media Art breaks copyright rules, erases the classical concept of “authorship”, is hardly collectable and, in general, shows a somewhat “genetic” incompatibility towards reproduction/exhibition in classical museum and gallery contexts.”

But there is no causal connection of which we are aware between the changing landscape wrought by new media and the financial crisis. There is, however, a definite connection between the explosion of online content, the availability of media publishing platforms, music-making platforms, video publishing platforms, the hundreds of millions who are uploading and downloading video, audio and photographs all the time – and the future of what we call “art”.

Crisis or possibility? What tools can we use to confront it?

As Clay Shirky said in Here Comes Everybody, “Where a particular capability [such as creative production] moves from a group of professionals [call them artists] to become embedded in society itself, ubiquitously, available to a majority of citizens, [as the ability to produce and distribute one’s own creative work is now available to all with a computer and access to the Internet], you can expect a major change in the status of the profession.” (Shirky was writing about newspaper journalism)

In the Internet we have a many-to-many technology that allows us all to exercise our imaginations in a very public way; in time the exclusiveness and elitism that has shaped the artworld must pass away.

Lucid Possession, the uncanny manifestation of a virtual multiple personality, combines music, text, dimensional robotic screens and projections to create a character, like an instrument, that speaks, sings, and dances. On-stage performers Toni Dove and composer, Mari Kimura control the entity’s physical and virtual movements, singing and speaking databases, in a form like cinematic bunraku. This short demo is a trio for two humans and one virtual entity. Lucid Possession is Winner of The Eugene McDermott Award, M.I.T.

Jan 15: Shared program with Alchemy of Light with Ruth Sergel and Peter von Salis. Jan 16: Showcase followed by Interactive Lecture Demonstration with Toni Dove and Mari Kimura.

The organization in charge of running the Tower gave us access to the monument to document it’s ambient acoustics and vibrations - the intrinsic sounds of 7300 tons of 2,500,000 rivets and 18,038 pieces of steel moving in the wind and in response to environmental changes, as well as the sonic environment of the 30,000 people who visit it daily as they move from the ground to the pinnacle.

The vibrations of the structure were captured by geophone (a seismic microphone used to record earthquakes). With these microphones we documented the sound of the wind against the surfaces of the steel, the intermittent rumbles as the elevators moved up and down as well as the vibrations from people walking. We used binaural in-ear microphones to capture the ambient soundscape. More about the process here.

China Blue is an internationally exhibiting artist who pursues the intersection of sound and architecture. She is an adjunct professor and fellow at Brown University in the United States. Her work has been shown, galleries and non-profit spaces in Finland, Sweden, France and the US. She has shown at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia and the Armory Fair in New York. Her work has been reviewed by the New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, artCritical, NY Arts to name a few. She has been interviewed by France 3 (TV), for the film “Com-mu-nity” produced by the Architecture Institute of America and was the featured artist for the 2006 annual meeting of the Acoustic Society of America.

Composer / guitarist Bryce Dessner, lead guitarist in The National and The Clogs, and acclaimed visual artist Matthew Ritchie join forces for two events that blur the lines between indie rock, ambient music, contemporary classical music, and installation art. They will be joined by sound designer David Sheppard, guitarist Aaron Dessner, composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, and student musicians from MIT and Wellesley College.

On January 28 Dessner & Ritchie will present Darkness Visible, a lecture/performance concerning their recent collaboration, The Morning Line. Commissioned by Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary, this massive installation, an outdoor ‘anti-pavilion’ laced with 58 sound speakers, was the sensation of the 2008 Venice Architecture Bienalle and Seville Biennale and will continue traveling the world in 2009-2010. Ritchie describes the piece as “an anti-pavilion, not an enclosure, but an opening of space, a conversion of place into language.” For the Seville Biennale, Dessner, Sheppard and Ziporyn created Propolis, a 25-minute spatial work for live and pre-recorded bass clarinet and real-time sound processing. On January 28, Darkness Visible will include a live performance of Propolis, slides and footage of Morning Line, and a chance to interact with the artists in extended dialogue and question-and-answer period.

A concert of Dessner’s music will take place the following evening, January 29, at 8 pm. This will include the Boston-area premiere of Dessner & Ritchie’s Raphael, a multi-media work featuring video by Ritchie, and live music performed by fellow National guitarist Aaron Dessner and a chamber orchestra of MIT & Wellesley students, performing on electric guitars and amplified strings. The concert will also include Dessner’s Blind Willy for electric guitar and string quartet, as well as duos by the Dessner brothers and live sound processing by David Sheppard.

Bryce Dessner, primarily known for his work in indie rock, is a classically trained guitarist and composer whose work has been featured in film, installation art, and new music venues including the Kitchen and the New York Guitar Festival. An avid promoter of boundary-crossing musical innovation, he is founder and artistic director of Cincinnati’s Music Now Festival, where he has brought together such diverse artists as Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors, the Bang on a Can All-stars, Benjamin Verdery and Grizzly Bear. As co-founder of Brassland Records, he has provided a haven for such artists as Doveman, Nico Muhly, and Erik Friedlander. Equally at home in concert halls and rock clubs, equally adept at performing complex musical scores and rocking out, he represents the new breed of American musician in the 21st century.

Matthew Ritchie exploded onto the art scene at the 1997 Whitney Biennial: the Boston Globe describes his work as ‘mind-bending.” His work has been featured at the Houston Contemporary and MassMOCA, and his Games of Chance and Skill,’ commissioned by MIT’s Percent-for-Art program, is a permanent work at MIT’s Zesiger Center. Evan Ziporyn is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars and Artistic Director of Gamelan Galak Tika. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT.

This residency is sponsored by MIT Music and Theater Arts, with additional support from MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. BOTH EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. For more information, please write info [at] beelinefestival.com or call 617-452-2302.

Werwolf is an exhibition that includes drawings after Heiner Müller’s texts naïvely depicting werewolves. A noise performance, working tremblings and vibrations, will open the exhibition. Treated voices coming from the German radio in 1943, from some recordings found at the Deutsche Rundfunkarchiv of Frankfurt am Main will be used. Werwolf is also a contribution to Art’s Birthday 2009, the performance will be live-streaming from Naples to the international projects website. “Art’s Birthday” is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.

LargoBaracche is an artistic laboratory gallery situated in the heart of the Spanish Quarters, a free, dynamic space, that it half employs the true and fundamental art like of territorial development, using the folklore like a fort point of reference, in order to transform it in work, that also it is produced cultural, exportable and recognizable, to national and international levels.

Werwolf (German for “Werewolf”, the spelling “Wehrwolf” is incorrect) was the name given to a last-ditch Nazi plan, developed during the closing months of the Second World War, to create a German commando force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through the territory of Germany itself.

The world “Werwolf” also reminds to “Wehrwolf”, “Wehr” meaning “defense” in german (all the german military forces were called “Wehrmacht”, which means “defense force”).

At the beginning, Werwolf had 5000 members from the SS (Schutzstaffel) and from H (Hitler Jugend). Those recruits was prepared especially on guerrilla tactics. At one point Operation Werwolf turned in a terroristic organization, and during the last weeks of the war it was completely broke up by Heinrich Himmler and Wilhelm Keitel. On march 23, 1945 Joseph Goebbels gave a speech - known as the “Werwolf Speech” - in which he urged every German to fight to the death.

The partial dismantling of the organised Werwolf, combined with the effects of the “Werwolf” speech, caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were actually carried out by Werwolf members, as opposed to solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS.

From August 18 to September 6, 1997, Australia’s The Listening Room presented Sensorium Connect / Body Morph, a generative composition by Andrew Garton and comprised of sounds sampled from performances by Stelarc. Sensorium Connect was the first Listening Room project entirely produced for online and was streamed for its entire six week duration.

On January 11, KunstRadio broadcasts an entirely new version of this work. Sensorium Re-Connected commemorates the work of The Listening Room and the contribution this piece made to furthering radio and sound art online in Australia.

Sensorium Re-Connected is both composition and process. The composition is comprised of sounds created by the artist, Stelarc, in collaboration with Rainer Linz, in performances of Ping BodyAmplified Body from the series. The sounds include brain waves, heartbeat and blood flow. The sounds of Stelarc’s third mechanical hand are also amplified.

Sensorium Re-Connected also includes sampled sounds triggered from an angle transducer that measures the bending angle of the legs and a sensor that monitors CO2 in the breathing. “These variations make it a much less predictable signal and a much more beautiful resulting sound. The sounds that are indicative of the physiological function of the body, and the mechanical operation of the third hand are rendered neutral in their associations so that they don’t sound like a musical instrument or natural sound or some kind of other technological object that we know and identify with”. (Stelarc, 1996)

Acoustically what’s happening in Stelarc’s performances is a kind of aura is generated around the body. “When internal body signals are amplified they are, in a sense, emptied from the body into the room within which the body is performing. The humanoid shape of the body that originally contains the sound now becomes the cuboid space of the room”. (Stelarc, 1996)

In Sensorium Re-Connected, these sounds are further emptied into the radio broadcast spectrum and further, into what may be referred to as the suspended ever-evolving space of the Internet: an acoustical landscape translating from humanoid form to cuboid space to space as instrument.

Generative music is algorithmically driven to produce variation, ongoing evolution and development of sounds. The process of creation, performance and distribution of music is changing. The Internet is an amorphous infrastructure for the liberation of creative ideas and is no doubt influencing the work of artists the world over. It is a time of enriching exploration and discovery that is akin to the period during which Francesco Pierro was to discover perspective and the body’s relationship to space. — Andrew Garton 1997

For more information including the paper Breaking The Loop: Music is Dead, see the wiki.

Andrew Garton lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is a composer, performer, and Internet artist with an extensive background in experimental electronic composition and the performing and digital arts. He has a strong interest in public communications, with many years’ experience working on public access computer network projects in Australia, Southeast Asia and Indochina. In recent years Garton has merged his Internet activities with his interest in computer-based music systems and has been commissioned to create numerous networked sound pieces and installations, both streaming and generative compositions. Garton is co-founder of the Web production house, Toy Satellite, principal artist of Secession Records, and a director of Community Communications Online (c2o), a member of the UN-affiliated Association for Progressive Communications. Recent work explores the reclamation of public space via generative sound-scapes and the Internet as theatre of suspended space. Garton performs solo and collaborative works under the names, “lost_time_accident”, “Fierce Throat” and the “Electro Pathological Consort”.

Telematic Skip, instigated by Dan Godston (CHICAGO - Brown Rice), involves performers who are in remote locations with a live audio and video feed between those locations. The initial plan is to use Skype but this could change to another live medium for communication depending on the circumstances — stay tuned. Telematic Skip will be broadcast live, at live.

BOSTON at Mobius: Bob Raymond, video; Lewis Gesner, toothpicks; Tom Plsek, trombone; Jane Wang, double bass and toys, possible guest: Grant Smith, toys.

TAIWAN at Taipei Artist Village: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, vocals; Hui-Chun Lin, cello; Elita Lin, dance.

CHICAGO at Brown Rice: Brent Gutzeit, electronics, guitar; Dan Godston, trumpet, small instruments; Steve Maxwell Jr., drums; Patrick Dinnen, upright bass, with tech support by Chad Clark.

Mills College celebrates 80 years of musical innovation as it reopens the historic Mills Concert Hall after an extensive 18-month renovation with a music festival featuring some of the world’s leading contemporary musicians. The six-concert series, Giving Free Play to the Imagination, will include musical innovators such as Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Joan Jeanrenaud, Roscoe Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams, the Arditti Quartet, and Fred Frith, among many others, and will celebrate Mills College’s leadership in defining contemporary music.

At the heart of the aesthetic and educational mission of music at Mills is a tradition of experimentalism. Breaking free from preconceived notions about music, Mills composers and performers embrace new sounds and musical forms while pursuing creative, exploratory, and individual approaches to music. It is this unique approach that has made Mills College the destination for sonic pioneers. And it is why some of the top names in contemporary music—Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, Joëlle Léandre, Phil Lesh, John Cage, Anthony Braxton, and Pauline Oliveros, to name just a few—have been part of the faculty and student population at Mills.

“Because of our long history of support for an experimentalist tradition across barriers of genre, cultural identity, or perceived hierarchy, Mills is uniquely placed to cultivate, appreciate, and celebrate musical pioneers,” said Fred Frith, head of the Music Department and internationally known composer, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser.

Mills music faculty, students, and visiting artists from varied musical traditions come from as far away as Argentina, China, France, and Turkey to study musical forms from electronic music to classical performance to jazz improvisation.

“Ever since renowned French classical composer and Mills’ professor Darius Milhaud encouraged soon-to-be-renowned jazz pianist composer and Mills’ student Dave Brubeck to ‘be himself,’ our students have been discovering how to ‘be themselves’ with single-handed determination,” said Frith. “As a Music Department that encourages experimentation while respecting tradition, we are second to none.”

“We are continually inspired by the influence and impact of our music graduates in their artistic pursuits,” said Janet L. Holmgren, president of Mills College. “Whether they are composers, performers, professors, or music producers or whether they are working in the film, video game, or music industries, or in leading technology and digital media companies, our graduates reflect the College’s mission to encourage creativity and experimentation, all within a global context.”

Giving Free Play to the Imagination also marks the completion of the $11 million renovation of the Mills College Concert Hall, to be renamed for well-known Bay Area philanthropist and Mills alumna Jeannik Méquet Littlefield. Designed by noted California architect Walter Ratcliff Jr., the Mills Music Building has received widespread acclaim since its opening in 1928.

Improvements to the Concert Hall include new acoustic panels for enhanced sound quality, an expanded stage area for larger performances, installation of a dedicated mixing station, soundproofing for performance and recording quality, new seating and improved layout for a better audience experience. The multicolored frescoes and murals created by California painter Raymond Boynton were restored by two teams of art conservators to return them to their original vibrant colors.

The festival’s name, in fact, derives from Boynton’s vision for his murals, “to produce a scheme of decoration that would give free play to the imagination.”

MIXER, Eyebeam’s event series dedicated to showcasing leading artists in the fields of live video and audio performance, interactivity and participatory practice, will have its fifth iteration on Friday, when Eyebeam will play host to an exposition of party pavilions. A cluster of autonomous structures, each built according to their own unified concept or theme, will take over our rough-and-ready warehouse space for a two-night extravaganza.

MIXER | EXPO is a temporary village, a taxonomic display of speculative technologies and revisionist ideologies, and a utopian vision that in turn critiques utopian visions that are too often concocted in an exclusionary cultural vacuum. Each pod-like pavilion functions as its own intimate node as well as part of the larger network of social environments sited throughout Eyebeam’s public spaces. MIXER | EXPO encourages artists, musicians, designers, architects, engineers, hackers, and cultural anthropologists to team up and create their own pavilions and performances to become part of our alternative “World’s Fair”.

Proposals must include the following:

1. A brief description of the theme or concept behind the pavilion or performance. Be clear about how your idea relates to the overall theme of the event. Please see the online application for word count requirements (URL is listed below).

2. Project documentation. This can include sketches, images, mockups, elevations, and/or video/ audio clips of the proposed work (the more specific, the better). Please see the online application for more information on file format and size.

3. Contact information for project leader and collaborators, including the roles each will play Applicants making proposals for a pavilion are required to assemble a team of skilled collaborators that will be responsible for the following: purchasing, building, and installing all structural or architectural elements; purchasing, building, and installing all technical elements that Eyebeam is unable to provide; maintain and manage the pavilion throughout the duration of the event with some support from the Eyebeam staff. (Please see more information regarding technical support below).

4. Requested dimensions. Proposals for pavilions and performances must include information about the amount of space requested. The maximum size is 400 square feet, but the size must to be flexible/shrinkable to accommodate the needs of the overall event installation.

5. A description of audience engagement. How will an audience engage with your pavilion or performance – is it interactive, passive, responsive, kinetic, participatory, etc? Will guests move around the space, sit, lounge, or dance? Please note:
pavilions can also have (and are in fact encouraged to have) a performance component as part of it.

6. A description of materials and technologies that will be used to construct your pavilion or performance. Special consideration will be given to proposals that use open source tools/software; use recycled, repurposed, salvaged materials; are self- powered or use alternative energy sources to power aspects of the work; and include a plan for the materials’ post-event (re)use that doesn’t consist primarily of throwing it in the trash!

7. A production schedule and itemized budget. Eyebeam is able to provide a $150-$1,000 stipend per project depending on needs to cover artist/designer fees and materials costs.

Technical Support:

Eyebeam will be able to provide some technical support and possibly some equipment depending on the needs of the overall event installation. This includes theatrical lighting, LCD projectors, DVD players, USB media players, small powered audio speakers or sound system, some computers, Ethernet cable, etc. Please be incredibly specific regarding your technical requirements so that we can try to accommodate as much as possible. But be prepared to provide and install all necessary technical equipment.

Production Timeline:

Monday, January 26, 11:59pm: Deadline for Proposals
Monday, February 2: Announcement of Accepted Proposals
Saturday, February 28, Monday, March 2 – Thursday, March 5 (10a – 6p):
Installation: TBD: Deinstallation date & time

How to Submit a Proposal:

Proposals will only be accepted online. To create and submit an application, please visit the website.

You will be able to edit the application up until the deadline (Monday, January 26, 11:59pm), so you are encouraged to start an application right away!

Any questions can be directed to Paul Amitai, Program and Events Coordinator.
EMAIL: paul AT eyebeam DOT org
PHONE: 212-937-6580 x234

wind-up bird(s) from hc gilje on Vimeo. About >> [via Neural]