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David Byrne Subverts PowerPoint

Posted by timothy on from the office-cowboy dept.

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.

11 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. A cheap publicity stunt by zecg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A publicity stunt and a cheap one, at that. Someone is beginning to realize that the really important channels of information on the Internet are controlled by nerds and so washed-out artists are starting to jump on the fad train.

    This "DVD", it is obvious, is a cheap and quick way to get his name in the papers, if not to make a few bucks. The symbols that are described (such as Dolly the sheep enclosed on a PowerPoint page in quotation marks) sound... well, again, cheap.

    --
    .i lu doi ringos.star. xu do puku'aroroi dunli dopecaku leni virnu li'u
    1. Re:A cheap publicity stunt by NoData · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I doubt it. Byrne's pretty much an icon in art music, he just doesn't need cheap publicity. I think he's just wacky and quirky.

      And if there's anyone who's a "nerd" in music, it's Byrne. The new wave art rockers of the 80s were the nerds of music. Of his contemporaries, he's third in nerdiness only to maybe Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo or Thomas Dolby (She Binded Me With Science), who went on to form an interactive music software company in the 90s.

  2. Re:Why not Coka Cola, Daimler Benz and Microsoft? by NoData · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Three words:

    Warhol..Campbell's Soup.

    It's called "pop art." It's commentary. Not my favorite, but there it is.

  3. its been already done, last year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Jemma at

    http://www.prate.com
    (well known in net-art circles)

    has done a few projects as .ppt the medium chosen is part of the artistic statement

  4. old news by SteelRat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    see the wired article from about two months ago.

    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt1.ht ml

  5. Gettysburg Address PowerPoint by ty_kramer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here's the famous, early take on PowerPoint being bad.

  6. PowerSpeak by sjames · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Powerpoint is newspeak for presentations. That is, because of it's dumbed down simplicity, making simple things effortless and everything else nearly impossible, it constrains what may be said. At the same time, by being so easy to use, it lulls the user into a sense that it is powerful and expressive to the point that they don't realize what it is that they can't say with it.

    Byrne is a linguist who finds himself in a world that speaks only newspeak. He is examining the logical limits of it's expressivity to determine what it absolutely can't say at all.

    It's an artistic challenge to express as much as possible in an artificially limited medium. It's a new take on a common theme in art.

    To reduce all of that to 'Byrne has become a Powerpoint fanboy' is to completely miss the point.

    Powerpoint is an ideal tool for modern sales technique in that it allows the user to say absolutely nothing but make it sound like a good thing.

  7. I've seen his PowerPoint presentations by smitty45 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    and they are hilarious, well done, and much different from what anyone would think of as a PowerPoint presentation.

    For those people who have only read the article, his "presentations" (if you can call them that) are cooler than I doubt any Microsoft or Apple could put together.

    Smarten up, folks...forget the medium, it's his content that is genius.

  8. Content vs Medium by jamesl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Saying PowerPoint is bad because people give mindless presentations with it is like saying newspapers are bad because all you've read is the National Enquirer

  9. Excel subverted to run pacman by baywulf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.geocities.jp/nchikada/pac/

  10. both sort of right by TooLazyToLogon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Microsoft spokesman Simon Marks wouldn't comment on whether PowerPoint has debased society but said in an e-mail, "PowerPoint continues to evolve to make it easier for customers to present their information in the style that best suits the content and the audience."

    So PowerPoint doesn't make you stupid. It just makes it easier to show how stupid you are. Used by a genius and the result is art. Used by the average Joe and the result inspires books like "PowerPoint Makes You Dumb". Both Byrne and Tufte are almost right. Their mistake was they focused on the tool not the user.