During Tarek Atoui’s Museum as Hub residency in New York , he continued his Empty Cans project, conducting a two-week music and technology workshop with New York City teenagers from the New Museum’s high school program, G:Class, in collaboration with New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. On August 8th 2009 was the culmination of this workshop, in which the participants present work they have created using Wii controllers to manipulate original video in live performance.
Atoui initiated his practice of working with youth in France in 2005 with Empty Cans, a music and video workshop for teenagers based on Atoui’s software program of the same name. Atoui developed the performance software Empty Cans as a tool that is accessible and easy for youth. The application runs synchronized music and video manipulated with Sony PlayStation or Nintendo Wii controllers. He subsequently brought the project to several groups of Palestinian teenagers in refugee camps in Lebanon, and has since realized workshops in the Netherlands, France, and Egypt.
Atoui’s final work from this workshop as well as documentation of the performance, was included in the Museum as Hub “In and Out of Context” project during August 2009.