MTV Puts Geeks in Brooklyn Loft for Project Runway of Digital Art

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While we were all moaning and groaning about MTV bringing the Real World to Brooklyn, the network was producing their own Project Runway-type show in a Real World setting: a renovated loft in Dumbo. Today’s New York Times reports about MTV’s new show Engine Room, in which four teams of digital designers from four continents compete in creative, digital art challenges. Wait, why isn’t this on Bravo?

The New York Times reports:

Beginning on Monday, MTV and its mtvU channel, which is aimed at college and university students, will join forces with Hewlett-Packard to present “Engine Room,” an original series that will follow the 16 contestants, divided into four teams, as they produce digital art using — of course — PCs, work stations, monitors and other products sold by H.P.

The kids were holed up at 155 Water Street in Dumbo, working on their designs (here’s photos of the space before the renovation on the Engine Room blog). Their Tim Gunn is apparently hottie MTV news correspondent SuChin Pak and they were judged by "a diverse panel that included musicians, filmmakers, museum curators, a physicist, a tattoo artist, critics and Pete Connolly, an art director from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the Hewlett-Packard creative agency," according to NYT. Even Moby and Kevin Smith swung by!

Each episode is from five to seven minutes and each and will air for seven weeks. For the finale, one team will win $400,000 in cash and a chance to program whatever they want on the giant MTV screen in Times Square for a night (no naked pictures, we assume).

MTV will premiere the show on Sept. 15 on their main channel and MTVu. MTV Puts Geeks in Brooklyn Loft for Project Runway of Digital Art

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