Eyebeam will open Double Take, an exhibition of interactive collaborative projects commissioned and created during an intensive two-week workshop at Eyebeam as part of [email protected]

These projects-nine in all, made by thirteen artists and designers from across the US, the UK, Germany and Korea, along with more than twenty NYC collaborators-challenge viewers to reconsider what we take for granted as reality in our technologically-mediated lives. Double Take is curated in collaboration with with Sarah Cook, Eyebeam’s visiting curatorial fellow, and will be on display from July 12 – August 9.

Interactivos? is a hybrid workshop, exhibition and seminar that was initiated by the Madrid City Council’s Medialab-Prado program in 2006. As with previous Interactivos? workshops held in Spain, the nine projects on view here-a mix of hardware tinkering, software coding and conceptual hacking-were selected from an open call for project proposals on this year’s theme: the blurry line between the real and the fake. The resulting interactive art installations are very much works-in-progress: prototypes that are contingent on your participation for their success and further elaboration.

These interactions could be as simple as sitting at a table and watching shadows come to life (Hye Yeon Nam’s Dinner Party), or as complex as positioning your body to match that of a kung fu fighter in a popular film in order to keep the film rolling (Justin Downs and Ruycl Mills, Watch What You Are).

The title Double Take prods the viewer to closely observe how the works themselves respond to her presence. (To what extent can we rely on our direct observation or, more to the point, what falls into this category?) The title also references the preoccupation that many artists today have-namely, how we are perceived-reflected-through the many mirrors within society which are mediated by technology: the webcam, the social networking site, the mainstream media. For instance, Andrew Mahon’ s project digitallyFit enables participants to manipulate and modify a projected image of themselves; to generate a virtual body type in real time.

On view alongside the projects are documents, posters, diagrams and videos that illustrate the process of their making. Former Eyebeam resident artist Dan Torop has captured the flavor of the workshops in his 35mm photographs, also on display.

New interactive projects by New York City public high school students in Eyebeam’s 2008 Digital Day Camp, also on the theme “better than the real thing”, will be added to the show on July 29, with a reception at 7PM

[email protected]: Participants and Projects

Justin Downs and Rucyl Mills (New York): Watch What You Are is an immersive computer vision system that links the 2-D virtual world of movies and television to the 3-D reality of the user. http://www.johnhenryshammer.com/projects/WatchWhat

Alex Kurina (Toronto): UnReality allows its users to interact with live television through the tactile manipulation of physical objects and motion sensors. http://www.playairways.com/vrc

Miseong Lee (Seoul): Through Time Tunnel is an interactive installation that slices captured video footage to allow participants to see themselves travel backwards and forwards through time.

Ai Chen Lin (New York): I Believe In… is a video projection of content generated through a collective storytelling process. http://www.aichenlin.com/index.html

Andrew Mahon (New York): digitallyFit explores vanity in the context of digital existence by enabling participants to interact with projected images of themselves, in real-time. http://projects.andrewmahon.info/digitallyFit

Hye Yeon Nam (New York): Dinner Party is a projection-based work that explores the daily activity of eating. http://www.hynam.org/HY/Int/dir.htm

Artemis Papageorgiou (London): Wii/nd Chime uses Nintendo Wii remote controls to produce both wind and sound. http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/%7Ema701ap

Tine Papendick (Berlin): Digital Puppetry is an interactive animated installation in which participants design characters and manipulate them on screen using their own bodies.

Daniel Wilcox aka Danomatika (Hunstville, AL): An Unreal Touch Experience is a simple system that turns any conductive surface into a conduit for unexpected sound generation. http://danomatika.robotcowboy.com

Lead tutors: Taeyoon Choi, Eyebeam commissioned resident artist Friedrich Kirschner, Eyebeam R&D OpenLab fellow Zachary Lieberman, Eyebeam R&D OpenLab fellow

Participating artists and staff: Paul Amitai, Eyebeam program and events coordinator Jessica Banks, Eyebeam R&D OpenLab fellow Dylan Begneaud, Eyebeam intern (documentation) Sarah Cook, Eyebeam curatorial fellow Jon Cohrs, Eyebeam interim technical manager Jeff Crouse, Eyebeam senior fellow Laura Fernández, Medialab-Prado Marcos Garcia, Medialab-Prado Verina Gfader, post-doctoral researcher, CRUMB Beryl Graham, professor of media art, University of Sunderland JooYoun Paek, Eyebeam alum Liz Slagus, Eyebeam director of education and public programs Dan Torop, Eyebeam alum Gustavo Valera, technical manager, Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial (Laboral)

Collaborators: Eugene Ahn, Brian Ballantine, Jonathan P. Berger, Reid Bingham, Leigh Brodie, Samuel Brodsky, Cameron Browning, Crystal Campbell, Hector Canonge, Laura D’Amore, Patrick Grizzard, Brian Gustafson, Jeff Howard, Daniel Iglesia, Carolyn Kane, Jeremy Keenan Haeyoung Kim, Sunghun Kim, Qian Le, Phoebe Legere, Sarah Leitten, Kueiju Lin, John Lui, Maria Mendez, Eric Mika, Martín Nadal, Alex Orlov, Benedetta Piantella, Dan Ribando, Marti Sanchez, Rory Solomon, Debra Swack, Subalekha Udayasankar, Lucas Vickers, Lee von Kraus, LeAnne Wagner, Tobi X.