Brooklyn, New York–March 13, 2025–Eyebeam Executive Director Roddy Schrock, who has led the organization for a decade, will step down at the end of June to pursue a new venture. Schrock and the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Eyebeam Board of Directors today shared the news with the Eyebeam community in special messages on eyebeam.org, here and here. An advocate for the role of the artist in society, his leadership of Eyebeam is distinguished by an adventurous arc of support for artists who work with technology, spanning multi-faceted residencies, symposia, exhibitions, and bold initiatives. A digital and sound artist, Schrock refocused the organization in the 2010s to provide robust direct support for artists while increasing the number of artists who receive fellowships. He continuously launched new programs and platforms to elevate their voices, from experimental forums for convening to making resources available to artists who make investigative journalism. In recent years, he led a successful transformation of the organization into a more nimble, agile, socially concerned model through ambitious funding cycles to empower artists and amplify their work and ideas. 

“We are deeply grateful to Roddy for his vision, leadership, curatorial practice, and unflagging commitment to Eyebeam. His persistent belief that art and invention can make a better world has helped center artists in the cultural conversation,” said Emma Canarick, Chair of the Board of Directors. “Eyebeam was founded as an independent arts lab and a resource for artists to work in an experimental setting, and Roddy has both significantly elevated Eyebeam and expanded on that early ethos to encourage a sense of urgency around the infiltration of technology into our lives and the value of artistic practice to tackle this pressing societal issue.”

“It has been tremendously exciting to build on Eyebeam’s youthful, renegade legacy and guiding it into growing from this ‘crazy, raw laboratory’ into an agile, radical 21st century incubator for art, ideas, and social engagement. Eyebeam will always have a piece of my heart,” said Schrock. “This year marks a quarter century since Eyebeam was launched, and we have laid the foundation for its next and ambitious chapter. This is the right time for me to embark on a new and fresh phase of my life.”

Schrock arrived at Eyebeam in 2009, overseeing its residency program, at a time when the organization was located in West Chelsea, a neighborhood that rarely made space for digital work. After a temporary move to Industry City, he helped lead the organization’s subsequent move to Bushwick, initiating a new chapter for Eyebeam within a street level public storefront that included a sweep of exhibitions, public programming, and initiatives to give artists voice in a changing world, including Re-Figuring the Future (2019), an exhibition, symposium, and scholarly text that looked at the social impact of contemporary technology on human life, and the Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism, an experimental, first of its kind grant-making program that supports digital artists producing revelatory journalistic work. Schrock successfully steered the organization through the pandemic, pausing its flagship residency for the first time in the organization’s history and launching Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future (2020), an open, international call for radical, visionary projects that aimed to exit surveillance capitalism. The program supported 30 groundbreaking projects, culminating in an ambitious digital/hybrid convening that launched artist projects and proposals incubated at Eyebeam. This highly concentrated period of artistic activity marked an expansion of Eyebeam supporting a broad and diverse community of artists, technologists, engineers, and activists anywhere in the world, digitally, along with robust financial support and professional development. In 2022, Eyebeam debuted an all new eyebeam.org, an expansive, accessible platform that vividly showcases artist projects and supports Eyebeam’s alumni community of more than 500 artists through a growing artist directory, and contributes new ideas via Feed, a continuous selection of artist interviews, essays, and criticism.

During Schrock’s tenure, the flagship fellowship program at Eyebeam became a catalyst for artists in critical moments in their practices and careers. A champion for artists who invent, make, and confront the forces and structures that threaten and affect contemporary life, Schrock provided early financial support to a number of artists who have developed art practices that navigate the realities of the digital experience with lived experience.

Schrock coupled creative program design with significant growth in the organization’s annual operating budget and secured the organization’s first ever, transformational gifts from Arison Arts Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations, among others. And he has built new partnerships and alliances with leading, like minded art and technology institutions, such as Switzerland-based La Becque, that joined the working group for Rapid Response (2020), to Hyundai ArtLab, that partners with Eyebeam to discover, support, and showcase emerging and new media Asian artists with finalists receiving the opportunity to participate in an online residency program hosted by Eyebeam.

“Eyebeam is a place where many firsts took place, and Roddy has evolved Eyebeam into the present beyond our wildest dreams,” said Kenyatta Cheese, Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors. “Roddy has left an indelible mark on our young history, and we are a more dynamic, established, and active entity in the field of art and technology because of his tireless vision and energy. As we honor our 25th anniversary this year, we are deeply grateful to Roddy and we look forward to our next chapter with great enthusiasm.”

Taking its 25th anniversary this year as a period of reflection and visioning for the future, Eyebeam has engaged FLOX Studio, a community design and strategy consultancy, to lead an alumni and community listening campaign to gather feedback and assess new opportunities to ensure the next phase of Eyebeam’s evolution continues to support experimentation, innovations and creativity for artists and creatives.

“More than two decades after its founding, Eyebeam remains a power station, supporting resourcing, and nourishing artists who offer new visions for what can be, in service to building a more humane world. As I transition to a new vocation, I am nourished by their ideas,” added Schrock, who will launch a holistic healing practice. “I have long held an interest in holistic healing. Over the past five years, I have been studying homeopathy, a treatment with emerging research in quantum biology. With this new chapter, I intend to open access and build community for this creative form of healing technology.”

Interview requests, Brent Foster Jones, (917) 280-6217, press@eyebeam.org