A video gets popular on YouTube, gets passed around, makes it to your must watch list. You watch, enjoy, pass along or don’t pass along. Months later you go to a lecture at a place you’ve never been before. You go with great trepidation because artists are intimidating. As the first one starts to talk you realize that, “OMG YOU DID THAT VIDEO!?!?!?!”
Ahem.
Replace you with I and you’ll have my night last night. Dubi and I went to The Mess Hall to see a lecture by artists and developers from EyeBeam in New York. Eyebeam is home to the Graffiti Research Lab and the first artist/developer up was Steve Lambert who did this video.
I saw it months ago, filed it away in my brain under “cool” and neverlooked for any additional information. The next four artists/hackers/developers were just as cool. We both wished that they had broken into more of a cocktail party schmoozefest afterwards instead of having a group discussion. Sorry folks, the group discussion veered far off course and our bellies were empty. We left first and headed to Leona’s for a very late dinner.
However the artists/hackers/developers were….
Steve Lambert discussing his graffiti research and asking is the blight on the landscape graffiti or advertising. He also has conversation booths with the offer to talk to you about whatever you want to talk about. He sets it up next to booths where people want to talk to you about what they want to talk about.
Jeff Crouse is a hacker who makes things out of the Internet. His rojects include both art pieces and software development, but most all somewhere in between. http://jeffcrouse.info
Jamie O’Shea is doing a project with Placebo brand Placebo. An inert pill that does nothing, but as we’ve seen through years of testing, does something. His poetic failures can be seen at http:// w ww.livenudemachines.com
Stephanie Rothenberg is doing a project focusing on the invisible parts of the gaming industry. Virtual Sweatshops where people in Mexico play games to get gold for first world players. The towns with waste dumps made from our computers. http://www.pan- o-matic.com
Jamie Wilkinson is way too fucking smart. Okay, he isn’t, but he is really smart. He’s the one that made me say, “Man, I wish I could program or code or hack.” Dubi asked me what I would do if I could, “I don’t know, but I wish I could.” His projects include the Cyberdissidence Toolkit, the Music Blackhole, and the “Know Who You Bank With” ATM Traffic Analysis project. http://tramchase.com
Comments