David Byrne Subverts PowerPoint

NoData writes "The AP is reporting that David Byrne, visionary musician and frontman for 80s New Wave art band 'Talking Heads,' has turned Powerpoint into a visual art medium in a (satiric) DVD/Book combo. Says Byrne in the article: 'The genius of it is that it was designed for any idiot to use.'" Shades of Edward Tufte ("PowerPoint Makes You Dumb"), as the article points out. The book is published by high-end German publisher Steidl.

Comments

Is it surprising...

[Mavic'A]

...if you're featured on the Windows XP CD?

All You Young Guys Don't Get It

[RobotRunAmok]

The Marketing here is wa-a-a-a-y more insidious than you think. Back in the Day, when I was awakening in pools of someone else's vomit curbside in front of CBGB's to the encore strains of "Pscho Killer.... Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa... Better run run run run Run Away!" David Byrne was der shizznitz... or whatever ridiculous phrase has replaced the ridiculous phrase "da bomb" in modern parlance.

20-somethings don't make decisions regarding what presentation software is loaded across an enterprise; we 40-somethings have that dubious honor. And all we hear these days is how Powerpoint is, well, so 1996, and un-cool. Who better to convince us otherwise? The lead singer from ColdPlay (am I spelling that correctly?)? No, young man,it's the guy in the big white suit who defined counterculture 'art' way back when the current generation of marketing "grown-ups" were actually artistic.

Funny thing is, I kinda remember how, back in the early '90s, marketing campaigns similarly co-copted Andy Warhol imagery to "artistically connect with" a previous generation who now found themselves in Brooks Brothers suits. I thought that was bogus then, but I think using Byrne is clever. Thanks, Slashdot, for pointing out how I've become what I once loathed.

All of which brings the lyrics to a Byrne song crashing home to me here on a Sunday morning as the children quietly watch a Strawberry Shortcake video in the next room:

" And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?...

"And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?"

Tufte is for Masses Byrne for Classes

[leoaugust]

Tufte is for the Masses, and Brnes for a thin Slice of the Masses (the Classes) -

1. What Tufte is saying (and I did attend one of his Seminars which was impressive more for the breath of his examples rather than the depth of his analysis) is meant for the masses - majority of the people who are going to be making presentations.
2. What Byrne is saying is mainly for a thin slice of the masses (the classes) who can overcome the limitations of the tool to create something really "interesting."
3. To put it bluntly, when a hundred kids are allowed to play Guitars, 99 of them should follow Tufte, and only one should follow Byrne - because 99 are not going to make careers as rock stars while one of them may. Only 1 out of 100 will learn to overcome the limitations imposed by the 6 strings and frets to create something that shall move audiences - the rest won't be able to do so.

Byrne does does talk about the limitations of Powerpoint

• "It communicates within certain limited parameters really well and very easily. The genius of it is that it was designed for any idiot to use. I learned it in a few hours, and that's the idea." ...
• "Software constraints are only confining if you use them for what they're intended to be used for," Byrne said in a phone interview.
• "PowerPoint may not be of any use for you in a presentation, but it may liberate you in another way, an artistic way. Who knows."

But Byrne is an 'artist" and has been able to "overcome the limitations" in his own whimsical way. Most of what he does would not work in 99 % of the typical presentations.

Again, from the article ... and while reading it just imagine how many people could do then and then "sell" the shit ...

• The book includes mostly lucid musings on how PowerPoint has ushered in "the end of reason," with pictures of bar charts gone hideously astray, fields of curved arrows that point at nothing, disturbing close-ups of wax hands and eyebrows, and a photo of Dolly the cloned sheep enclosed by punctuation brackets.
• The 20-minute DVD, encased in the navy blue hardback cover, features the same abstractions in motion. Byrne wrote most of the music. How many people giving typical presentations can write "music"
• The overall tone of this compilation is somewhat like a sales pitch - whimsical and upbeat. Many people have to go for years to School to learn how to make a "sales pitch."

So, what I am trying to say is that Powerpoint has many many (some Terrible) limitations. Byrne has learnt to overcome some of them in a whimsical and creative way. His "artistic" talent is not present in most of the people making presentations. (I did write earlier on /. about Art and Overcoming limitations here)

So, most of the people should not follow his example or philosophy. And, to draw general conclusions from one odd data point (outlier) about the nature of data is pretty naive. On the Bell curve, he would be on one end of a tail ....

What Tufte is saying holds for the masses. What Byrne represents is for a thin slice (the classes) and the masses should not read too much into it.

I don't think you get it.

[mlc]

The point is not that PowerPoint qua software is bad, and that we should seek clones of it to do the same job. Rather, the point is that PowerPoint-style presentations are (usually) stupid and stupifying, regardless of the software used to create them. Do the places in which you give lectures have a whiteboard? Or select some other means of giving a convincing presentation.