James Powderly just returned from being detained in Beijing. Having spoken to James, this short video is really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a bit more at artnet, and the Brooklyn Paper and more to be published in the days to come.

James is one of the founders of the Graffiti Research Lab and an Anti-Advertising Agency collaborator.

Related posts:

1. GRL’s James Powderly Detained in Beijing
2. G.R.L. Screening at MoMA – May 4th
3. Eyebeam Fellowship Apps Due Aug. 6

EYEBEAM PRESS RELEASE:
No word from the American artist 24 hours after being taken into Chinese custody.
Powderly was in Beijing to unveil a project made with pro-Tibet activist group.

New York City, August 19, 2008, 7:30PM EST- Artist and Eyebeam alum James Powderly was detained by Chinese authorities in Beijing early Wednesday, according to a message received by Students for a Free Tibet around 5PM Beijing Standard Time, said an SFT spokesperson. The message, sent through the social networking site Twitter, read “held since 3AM”, said friend and SFT board member Nathan Dorjee. Powderly has not been heard from since-more than 24 hours later-and his whereabouts remain unknown, he said.

“Freedom of speech has always been central to James’ practice, and we support this commitment. Most importantly, we hope for his quick release,” said Eyebeam Executive Director Amanda McDonald Crowley. Powderly was a fellow in Eyebeam’s R&D OpenLab in 2005-2006, and a senior fellow in the OpenLab from 2006-2007.

Powderly is also co-founder of the Grafitti Research Lab, a project developed during his fellowship at Eyebeam. He was in Beijing collaborating with the activists to project messages onto the facades of prominent Beijing buildings using a laser beam and stencils. The artist was detained before the planned launch of the project-dubbed the “Green Chinese Lantern”-in which a beam of light would be used to display graphics and text on structures up to two stories high, said Dorjee. It is unclear how Chinese authorities learned of the plan.

Also today, five activists with Students for a Free Tibet were detained after displaying a banner that spelled out “Free Tibet” in LED Throwies, the open source technology pioneered by the Grafitti Research Lab and popularized online and worldwide. This brings the number of SFT protestors detained in Beijing to 42. In the majority of these cases, the individuals were heard from and deported within 6-12 hours of their arrest, said Dorjee.

Upon learning of the detention, fellow artist, collaborator, and current Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert said, “He’s an amazing, entertaining, brilliant, and committed person. Not all of us have the courage to travel to China to make such a statement at a key time like this. He’s a great friend and obviously, like so many others, I’m concerned about his well-being. I hope he’s allowed to return home as soon as possible.”

The L.A.S.E.R. Stencil technology is a modification of the GRL’s L.A.S.E.R. Tag, which was featured in the 2007 Eyebeam exhibition Open City. This portable, updated version is the size of a flashlight, requires one person to operate, and is intended for use with homemade micro-stencils.

Students for a Free Tibet, a group with more than 700 chapters worldwide, has been staging protests in Beijing over the course of the past two weeks. According to Dorjee, who is also the group’s technical advisor, GRL technology was an ideal fit for the spectacle of the Olympics, and called the GRL the “go-to group for open source urban expression”.

For the latest information and images, please visit the website of Students for a Free Tibet. Additional images for download:

The Grafitti Research Lab, with images made using the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil (in the US)
LED Throwies

Additional coverage:

Boing Boing
The Washington Post
Gothamist
Associated Press

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Related posts:

1. GRL Movie: Torrent It.
2. Eyebeam Fellowship Apps Due Aug. 6
3. GRL at MoMA on Sunday

Add-Art is the web browser plugin that replaces advertising on the web with art from a curated database. I have been working on with a team of volunteer open-source developers off and on for the past year. As with most open-source projects it’s a work in progress – for example you’ll notice the site is rather plain – but we’re preparing for a more public announcement Friday. More on Add-Art then…

Rhizome Commissions 08
Conversation with eteam, Steve Lambert, Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth, and Rafael Rozendaal

$6 members, $8 general public

The Rhizome Commissions Program was founded in 2001 to provide support to emerging artists working with new technologies. The forty-four works commissioned to date represent some of the most innovative, pioneering efforts in the field. Tonight, artists eteam (Hajoe Moderegger and Franziska Lamprecht), Steve Lambert, Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth, and Rafael Rozendaal, who received support in the 2008 cycle, present their finished projects as well as other select projects. Additional Rhizome Commissions will be presented in August and October.

2008 Commissioned projects:
http://www.rhizome.org/commissions/2008/

1. Steve Lambert with Alan Abel and Ron English
2. Steve Lambert at Versionfest 06
3. G.R.L. Screening at MoMA – May 4th

This five minute excerpt has ads, but you can get the whole DVD – with no ads – as a torrent – start here.

Not sure? Here’s a well written review of the movie from Kevin Flanagan of the P2P Foundation:

My computer finished downloading the Graffiti Research Lab Movie Sunday morning. I stuck it on for a quick look and ended up watching the whole thing. The film is a testament to the cultural value of the hacker ethic and a free and open source approach in cultural production. GRL are an art group dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, artists and protesters with open source technologies for urban communication. After quiting their ‘proper jobs’ Evan Roth and James Powderly founded The Graffiti Research Lab while working together at the Eyebeam OpenLab.

Eyebeam Mission Statement
“Eyebeam is an art and technology center that provides a fertile context and state-of-the-art tools for digital research and experimentation. It is a lively incubator of creativity and thought, where artists and technologists actively engage with culture, addressing the issues and concerns of our time. Eyebeam challenges convention, celebrates the hack, educates the next generation, encourages collaboration, freely offers its contributions to the community, and invites the public to share in a spirit of openness: open source, open content and open distribution.”

The Graffiti Research Lab approach the idea of graffiti in its widest sense. To give an example they make a really nice analogy in the film between street artists and hackers. “Hackers treat software the way street artists treat the city, they look for these systems they identify them then flip them a little bit to tell something that the city didn’t intend to tell”. Disrupting the flows of everyday life through creative and playful intervention, without seeeking permission.

In the spirit of openess the GRL publish the instructions and source code for their projects on the GRL website. The site lists many projects, some of the better known being ‘Throwies’ and ‘Laser Tagging’.
GRL invented ‘throwies’ a simple combination of an l.e.d with a battery and a magnet, colourful little lights that can be thrown in large amounts onto metal surfaces in public spaces, they can also be used to make images or text.

GRL also developed the amazing laser tagging system which allows for street artists to write or draw straight over the entire surface of a large building using a laser and a projector.

Publishing, sharing the know how to these projects online, putting it in peoples hands the projects and ideas take on and evolve a life of their own. This is one of the greatest things about the free and open source approach. However there is a flip side to this, which has been discussed on this blog before, that is the problem of the appropriation of commons based production by commercial interest. In the movie GRL discuss how big business has appropriated their projects for advertising and commercial purposes. Marketing strategists deperately looking for novel and fashoinable trends to associate their products with, paid to tune into whats happening on the ’street’ twist what begin as antagonisitc counter cultural strategies to serve commercial interests. As soon as anything goes public it becomes vulnerable to appropriation and exploitation. Its perfectly legal for corporations to take innovations from the commons and alter it to suit their interests, but the opposite is true for the public for whom remixing innovation from the IP regulated domain of the corporations is illegal. This is not a two way conversation. Public space is contested space which in actuality is not public at all, but commercial space regulated on behalf of commercial interests. This needs to be challenged. GRL responds to this with further counter strategies and have declared a war for open urban space, on the logic that if street art and graffiti are illegal then advertising which appropriates the aesthetics of these art forms should be made illegal too.

Creative subversion of the status quo and the magical transformation of the everyday must go on.

To download the film and find out more about the GRL check out http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

Related posts:

1. G.R.L. Screening at MoMA – May 4th
2. GRL at MoMA on Sunday
3. Free Shopdropping Workshop at Eyebeam NYC

G.R.L. The Complee7 First Season (Trailer) from fi5e on Vimeo.

GRL: The Complete First Season screens this Sunday, May 4th @ 8PM at the MoMA. After the flick, talk with artists featured in the film, including Mark Jenkins, Leon Reid, Steve Lambert, the GRL and special guests + party to the music of Javelin.

Get your tickets here!

– Download the torrent of the unofficial DVD here.
– For more GRL @ the MoMA with NYC’s finest look here, leap there or go thither.

Related posts:

1. G.R.L. Screening at MoMA – May 4th
2. AAA at Conflux 2006
3. Urban Visions Panel at CCA (SF)

Anti-Advertising Agency cohorts, the Graffiti Research Lab are premiering their “Complete First Season” as part of PopRally at the Museum of Modern Art on May 4th @ 8PM + PARTY after with Javelin and special guests.

A panel after the film include Evan Roth, James Powderly, Steve Lambert, Bennett4$enate, and surprise guests.

GET TICKETS NOW

(P.S. if you know command line wizardry, how to concat and use parity files, the whole DVD can be downloaded from our server 50mb at a time. Otherwise it’s on Pirate Bay.)

Official Announcement after the jump: PopRally invites you to a screening of Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season, a film documenting the adventures of an architect and an engineer who quit their day jobs to develop high-tech tools for the art underground. Featuring insightful and humorous commentary by GRL founders James Powderly and Evan Roth, The Complete First Season argues for free speech in public, open source in pop culture, the hacker spirit in graffiti, and not asking permission in general. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with the Graffiti Research Lab and surprise guests.

Stay for the party afterwards, featuring music by Javelin and a final chance to see MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition, which includes the work of the GRL.

Related posts:

1. Eyebeam Fellowship Apps Due Aug. 6
2. Oprah, baby, please let me DeTouch you…
3. If only we’d thought of it…

In early 2006, the Graffiti Research Lab began, as it says on their site:

outfitting graffiti writers, artists and protesters with open source tools for urban communication. The goal of the G.R.L. is to technologically empower individuals to creatively alter and reclaim their surroundings from commercial and corporate culture.

A not-for-profit organization, open source, empowering individuals, reclaiming surroundings – these are all great things. The rub with open source is that there is no copyright, no patent, in fact, no license at all. Anyone is free to use, modify, and create with those tools. And sure enough a marketing firm called Interference Inc. saw money in the kernel of a G.R.L. project called the Night Writer.

The G.R.L. Night Writer is done with materials bought at a hardware store. It’s made with cheap LED’s, tape, and magnets. It’s designed to be a low-cost, small scale project with a strong visual impact. It works well, but it takes about an hour to make if you are experienced, work quickly, and have some help. This wouldn’t work for mass production, so Interference Inc built on the idea, adding a custom designed and manufactured circuit board, a photo cell, wiring, resistors, and large D cell batteries. Arguably a better design if you are producing 400 at a time to distribute around the country and you have backing funds from Turner Broadcasting.

The Interference Inc signs were hung in major cities around the US. The marketing firm even documented their work with videos and photos posted on YouTube and Flickr hoping it would “go viral“. Going so far as to editing their videos in the style of the Graffiti Research Lab and citing them as inspiration in the credits – perhaps to gain credibility among street artists and glean off the popularity of the the G.R.L. (Note: at the time of this writing the Flickr photos and youtube video have been pulled by the poster. Fortunately the GRL had archived the video in their own files and reposted it on their site earlier today.)

Again and again, as advertisers desperately try to break through the clutter they create, they try more desperate methods. The perfect irony to this story is that advertisers can’t get it right. What attracted the attention of the bomb squad was the wiring, circuitry, and large batteries that Interference Inc. added to the G.R.L.s original design in order to be more financially efficient. Once it was discovered as harmless, Interfrence’s next problem was the media’s derision because it was yet another desperate attempt to put advertising in front of people’s eyes.

Our posting of the Light Criticism piece last week was fortunate in its timing to say the least. Is there now any doubt that advertising has become the vandalism of the Fortune 500? Each week it becomes more clear in the media that advertising is using illegal methods, yet the fines and arrests remain disproportionately on graffiti writers and activists. We hope more people will see the hypocrisy of arresting, jailing, and fining individual expression of people like BORF, countless street artists, RNC protesters, and cyclists from critical mass, when there has still been zero jail time for CEOs of advertising and marketing firms that knowingly and repeatedly break the law promoting corporate products. Once every permit is approved with the city, and every advertising regulation is being adhered to, when all the corporate graffiti is gone, then begin to go after the individuals.

Tonight Boston police have arrested one person, Peter Berdovsky, a 27 year old “artist.” It’s obvious the guy had less money than conscience and was “in the employ of other individuals.” But it’s early in this tale. Let’s see if Attorney General Coakley gets anywhere near the top of this one. The CEO of Interference Incorporated is Sam Travis Ewen. If anyone sees Ewen in cuffs, I will personally promise to send roses to Attorney General Coakley and a bakers dozen to the Boston P.D.

UPDATE: Police have arrested another pawn employee, Sean Stevens, 28. Word is that CEO, Sam Travis Ewen is out of town until Thursday.

Berdovsky is claiming it’s art. When someone from an advertising firm is paying you to do something that is their idea, it’s not art.

UPDATE 2/1 11:29pm: The Globe has a new story up. If it wasn’t clear that Berdovsky and Stevens are pawns before, it certainly is now. Also, I may actually have to buy roses and donuts. If Sam Travis Ewen is actually arrested, it will certainly be a first. Some selections:

“The executive [at Interference Inc.] asked Peter Berdovsky to ‘pretty please keep everything on the dl,…’Peter was terrified at this point,’ one friend, Toshi Hoo, said in an interview. ‘He was expecting them to handle it, but they weren’t handling it. They let the entire country stay on terror alert.’ The e-mail suggests that the creators of the marketing blitz were trying to hide their involvement and doing nothing to stop the scare.

Yesterday, Interference’s chief executive, Sam Ewen, hung up when reached on his cellphone and did not respond to e-mails and phone messages. His office in SoHo was locked, and there was no answer at his home in Brooklyn.

Berdovsky told investigators that the two men were each paid $300 to place 40 devices throughout metropolitan Boston, according to a police report filed today in court. Berdovsky had met someone named “John” at a party in Brooklyn, N.Y., in November 2006 who worked for Interference Marketing and asked if he would be interested in helping with a “promotional stunt.” Berdovsky told police he recruited his long-time friend Stevens to help. The company shipped Berdovsky 40 of the magnetic lights. Adrienne Yee from Interference e-mailed him a list of Do’s and Don’ts. According to the police report, the preferable locations for the devices included: “Train stations, over passes, hip and trendy areas, high traffic areas of high visibility.”

Related posts:

1. Wired News: Sony Graffiti