This was inevitable: Take MTV’s wildly successful ‘The Real World’ series, mix 16 digital artists and toss in a major technology company (Hewlett-Packard) as a sponsor and, presto, you have the “Engine Room.” Starting Monday, MTV and its mtvU channel — aimed at the college crowd — will debut “Engine Room,” an original series that follows 16 contestants, divided into four groups, as they produce digital art using PCs, work stations, monitors and other products sold by HP. Episodes will run from five to seven minutes each, and the series is scheduled to last seven weeks. The winning team gets $400,000 in cash and a chance to program the giant MTV screen in Times Square for a night.
