David Byrne ♥ PowerPoint

I noticed this very amusing photo on my friend Todd Lappin‘s Flickr page. Todd attended a presentation by David Byrne at Berkeley on Monday evening: David Byrne, Powerpoint and Art.

The slide shown in Todd’s Flickr picture is a “found slide”. The previous link takes you to a special web feature on the Cal site about the presentation. During his talk Byrne confessed “he loves the program not in spite of, but in some ways because of, its shortcomings.

‘I love not having an unlimited palette. In that sense it’s like a pencil. You don’t expect to have other typefaces or fonts; you have fun with what’s there,’ Byrne said. ‘Freedom – who needs it?’”

Byrne has a long-standing fascination with PowerPoint. He started playing around with it ten years ago, making art pieces from it. There is a book, which I imagine a lot of you have heard of but, hey it’s new to me! David Byrne: E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information). The title clearly being a reference to Edward Tufte who wrote famously about PowerPoint in his essay The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

There is lots of interesting stuff online debating the merits of PowerPoint. I’ll be back in a few minutes with more interesting links. First I need to go wrangle with my coffee maker and tend to my pooch. In the meanwhile, if you have any links to more PowerPoint gems please oh please, email them to jen AT unbeige DOT com.

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