Eyebeam alum artist Valencia James. Still from the artist’s workshop, “Ways of Relating: Artifice & Intelligence” symposium co-presented by Eyebeam and Department of Transformation, Flea Theatre, NYC, January 23, 2025. Photo credit: Whitney Legge.
As we wrote to you in Feed last month, we are in a moment of reflection and introspection. We want to listen and build upon what we have heard from many of you over the last few years. And while we will always invest in artists who create with tech and explore how it influences the way we live now, we are interested in the ways Eyebeam shifts and adapts to our work to address community’s concerns, issues, and ideas.
We recently kicked off a community listening and engagement campaign with FLOX Studio, a community design and strategy studio rooted in Black feminist theory, Afrofuturism, and social justice. The purpose of this engagement was to assist us in alumni and community listening to ensure that Eyebeam’s next chapter is supportive, caring, nourishing, and explores the question, “How shall we move forward together?”
Guiding the co-design of this listening campaign, community designer, educator, and artist, Sloan Leo Cowan, alongside members of FLOX studio, is mindfully steering Eyebeam in a proactive process of re-engaging us with our vast artist and alumni community. Cowan shares,
“For the past few months, FLOX Studio has been working with Eyebeam to ensure a process that is rooted in Eyebeam’s history. The decision to conduct a listening campaign and to build the organization’s capacity to engage in this type of work for the long term is the type of investment that signals a real commitment to community.”
Sloan Leo Cowan of FLOX Studio gathers with Eyebeam and community, photo credit: Whitney Legge.
This is a moment in our youthful, adventurous history to recommit to our values and responsibility as an organization. At Eyebeam, we serve you, our community, and we are interested in your perspective so that together we can continue to shape an Eyebeam that is grounded, responsive, and visionary.
As of this post, 15% of our artists and alumni network have been sent a community mapping survey, which participants have completed and returned to us. FLOX studio is now conducting one-on-one interviews with alumni. The process will conclude in a Town Hall hosted in New York City, where FLOX studio will present a digest of the take-aways gathered from our community that can help us delineate our strengths, identify areas of improvement, and gain insight into potential organizational responses to opportunities and field-wide challenges facing the broader art and technology community.
We are asking alumni to articulate the world Eyebeam is now operating in and what is important and pressing as we mark our twenty-five years and contemplate the next decade of experimentation. We look forward to engaging with anyone interested in this process and sharing the campaign results in the coming months.
Art and invention can make a better world, and we will continue to center you, our community, in everything we do. We are committed to communication and transparency, and we welcome your questions, concerns, and ideas. Please feel free to write to us at eyebeamnyc@pm.me.
Warmly,
The staff of Eyebeam
