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david byrne does powerpoint

From “David Byrne’s Alternate PowerPoint Universe”:

To view the medium creatively, he says, “You have to try to think like the guy in Redmond or Silicon Valley. You feel that your mind is suddenly molded by the thinking of some unknown programmer. It’s a collaboration, but it’s not reciprocal.”

Starting with parody, he adds, even incompetent imitations, is a legitimate first step. Eventually, if you persevere, the obsessive nature of the process yields unexpectedly beautiful results. For him, then, the challenge became “taking a form that’s purportedly logic and rational and making it poetic.”

Yet one suspects that there is another agenda behind his attempt to subvert the global uniformity of PowerPoint. “Corporate culture,” he says wistfully. “What if I could set it free?”

Amazon currently has E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information) for $56 bucks, a whopping $24 off the cover price. Not bad for a book and DVD boxed set, especially not one by David Byrne. If you don’t have the cash or just don’t want to spend it, and you happen to live in New York, his “End of Reason” (a four-minute long Powerpoint presentation with new music by Byrne) will be at 4 Times Square from September 10-17.
The gallery LipajePuntin has lots of images of Byrne’s previous work, for those of you who haven’t seen much of it. Good stuff.

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