James Powderly Explained

James Powderly
Birth Place:Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States
Field:Street Art, Robotics, and Internet Art
Training:New York University, Interactive Telecommunications Program
Works:L.A.S.E.R. Tag, LED Throwies
Awards:2010 Japan New Media Art Festival Excellence Prize, 2010 Ars Electronica Golden Nica in Interactive Art, 2010 Design Museum Brit Insurance Design of the Year in Interactive Art, 2010 Future Everything Award, 2006–2007 Eyebeam OpenLab Senior Fellowship, 2006 Ars Electronica Award of Distinction, 2006, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Off the Record Commission, 2005–2006 Eyebeam OpenLab Fellowship, 2005 Eyebeam Artist in Residence

James Powderly (born 1976 in Chattanooga, Tennessee) is an American artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing robots and augmented reality platforms,[1] and promoting open source culture.

Biography

Powderly studied music composition at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. After college, he received a master's degree from New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. James worked at Honeybee Robotics and was part of the team that worked on the Mars Exploration Rovers Rock Abrasion Tool. As the collaborative team Robot Clothes, Powderly and artist Michelle Kempner, received an artist residency at Eyebeam for its project, Automated Biography. The project used small robots to tell the "personal story about a sick person and their partner".[2]

In 2005, Powderly became a Research and Development Fellow at Eyebeam where he began collaborating with Evan Roth. Working as the Graffiti Research Lab, Roth and Powderly developed open source tools for graffiti writers and activists, such as LED Throwies and L.A.S.E.R. Tag.[3] Together, they also founded the Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab). Most recently, Powderly has won awards for his work on the EyeWriter project, including the 2009 Design of the Year in Interactive Art from the Design Museum, London, the 2010 Prix Ars Electronica,[4] the 2010 FutureEverything Award[5] and featured on NPR[6] and TED.[7]

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions, screenings and performances include:

Detention in China

In June 2008, before the 2008 Summer Olympics, Powderly was contacted by Students for a Free Tibet who wanted to use his laser stencil invention, which can laser project simple stencils up to 2 km away, to project the words "Free Tibet" on a Beijing landmark, without acquiring any permission from the local authority. He said, "My understanding of the Tibetan issue was not in depth," but that he wanted to make "a general statement about freedom of speech". After practicing his message projection out of an apartment,[22] he and two other protesters were arrested,[23] interrogated, and detained at Chongwen Detention Center and given 10 days for "disrupting public order", which is unusual for American activists detained in China.[22] He was released on the closing day of the Olympics, on August 24.

See also

References

  1. Web site: Learn Magic Leap. creator.magicleap.com. 2019-06-29.
  2. Web site: Robot Clothes . January 25, 2008 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20061001164349/http://www.eyebeam.org/engage/exhibitions.php?subid=91&id=84 . October 1, 2006 .
  3. News: Dayal . Geeta . High-Tech Graffiti: Spray Paint Is So 20th Century . . June 25, 2006 . January 25, 2008 .
  4. Web site: Prixars . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20101025080659/http://www.aec.at/prix_history_en.php?year=2010 . October 25, 2010 .
  5. Web site: The Eyewriter. FutureEverything. November 4, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20111006235101/http://2010.futureeverything.org/abouttheawards/eyewriter2. October 6, 2011. dead. mdy-all.
  6. Web site: Paralyzed Graffiti Artist Draws With His Eyes . NPR . March 21, 2010 . November 4, 2011.
  7. Web site: Mick Ebeling: The invention that unlocked a locked-in artist . TED . November 4, 2011.
  8. Web site: ArtBots . 2009-10-06 . https://web.archive.org/web/20081006222933/http://artbots.org/2004/participants/WildflowerMeadowGlacier . 2008-10-06 . dead .
  9. http://www.sundance.org/festival/film_events/new_frontier_on_main.asp#Graffiti%20Research%20Lab Graffiti Research Lab
  10. https://web.archive.org/web/20080901171207/http://www.dac.tw/daf07/openplay_en/exhibition.html OpenPlay
  11. http://www.microwavefest.net/festival2007/events/events16.html Luminous Echo
  12. http://artbots.org/2007_phila/ Artbots
  13. http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=84 Open City
  14. https://web.archive.org/web/20081204013451/http://efa1.org/gallery/beyond-a-memorable-fancy/ Beyond a Memorable Fancy
  15. https://web.archive.org/web/20081217121937/http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=11123 Rough Cut: Design Takes a Sharp Edge
  16. http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/126/ Design and the Elastic Mind
  17. https://web.archive.org/web/20081014232333/http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/thelongweekend2008/15238.htm Street Art
  18. Web site: Steal From Work . 2009-10-06 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160303222854/http://www.stealfromwork.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39:street-art-dealer-news&catid=12:archived-news . 2016-03-03 . dead .
  19. http://moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/talktome/objects/145518/ "EyeWriter"
  20. http://wiki.ljudmila.org/Artist-in-Residence:_James_Powderly_%26_Eun-Jung_Son_(en) "Artist-in-Residence: James Powderly & Eun-Jung Son"
  21. https://web.archive.org/web/20150305065255/http://www.eyebeam.org/events/fat-gold F.A.T. GOLD
  22. Web site: Artist Tells all about Time in Chinese Jail . ArtNet . August 27, 2012 . September 2, 2008 .
  23. Web site: Beijing: Artist James Powderly, Detained . August 19, 2008 . September 2, 2008 . Freetibet2008 . https://web.archive.org/web/20080902071712/http://freetibet2008.org/globalactions/jamespowderly/ . September 2, 2008 . dead . mdy-all .
    - Web site: How to get thrown into a Chinese prison . Cnet . Elsa Wenzel . August 30, 2008 . August 30, 2008 .

External links

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