Eyebeam: Rapid Response Fellow

During the height of the pandemic, Eyebeam launched a new programme, Rapid Response for A Better Digital Future. I’m really happy and proud to announce that I have been selected for the phase one via the La Becque partnership.

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Created out of an overwhelming desire to lift the voices of artists in a time of crisis and systemic collapse, this initiative arose quickly from conversations at the outbreak of the global pandemic, when Eyebeam paused its highly distinguished flagship residency for the first time in its history and closed its physical space in order to support New York City’s effort to contain Covid-19.

In the hope of invigorating artistic creation of digital futures at this moment of systemic collapse, we chose 30 daring challengers and transformers, and they will carve out a path towards a more humane vision for the future.

The participating international artists are active and engaged in variety of milieu, movements, and contexts and their proposals range in focus from free and widely available artificial intelligence that supports Black health and healing, to addressing the devasting financial consequences of the surveillance of safe and consensual online sex workers during Covid-19.

For more info about Eyebeam Rapid Response for A Better Digital Future you can clik here.

During phase one, I will develop a project called an Intimacy Machine. This project stems from an ethnography which investigates the forthcoming of eletronic monitored hives (E.M.H.s) within the field of beekeeping. What is an E.M.H.? To avoid misconception, this is not a newly designed hive but an electronic monitoring system that can potentially go inside any type of beehive with the aim of tracking, monitoring and recording bee behaviour in order to develop a less intrusive and time-consuming beekeeping practice. However, the embedded technology has a clear political aim: rationalise beekeeping practice to make it more profitable and in some scenarios take the beekeeper out the equation. In reaction, the Intimacy Machine proposes to hack and transform the very idea of an E.M.H. into a machine which rejects quantitive data about colony management, in favour of generating qualitative data, enabling beekeepers and humans to share sensibilities and be more curious about the world of bees.

More info to come in the project section really soon!