Eyebeam moved to Sunset Park

Groundbreaking art and technology institution, Eyebeam, is moving out of Chelsea and making its way to Sunset Park. In fact, it’s already there, though the organization still has some unpacking to do.

The stay in Sunset Park is temporary, however. Eyebeam’s ultimate destination is Downtown Brooklyn, which is quickly becoming an arts nexus, with institutions like BRIC, Mark Morris Dance and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It’s all part of the NYCEDC‘s plan for a Downtown Brooklyn Cultural District.

Founded in 1997, the organization has been a fixture in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood for years now. Benton-C Bainbridge helped to create a multimedia event to mark the closure of the Chelsea space. “Chelsea is residential, and no longer the experimental art neighborhood. Maybe it’s time to find a new frontier,” he told the Wall Street Journal. We first met Bainbridge at a preview of Kaki King‘s video performance.

Eyebeam recently collaborated with Mozilla (makers of Firefox and advocates for technological empowerment) on artworks inspired by the open web. The research initiative was called Open(Art).

The group also has a Computational Fashion research initiative, which includes at least two Brooklyn based projects: DuKode Studio‘s MindRider Helmet (which we covered here) and Kathryn Isbister and Kaho Abe‘s explorations of costumes as game controllers.

Not a group to let a transition take place without engaging it artistically, the organization is in the middle of closing up applications for its most recent residency, “Eyebeam on the Move.”