David Byrne ~ Bending Minds ~ With PowerPoint Art

Tuesday, 27 June 2006 10:33

PowerPoint is best known for mind-numbing presentations that transform bumbling salespeople into confident, corporate warriors.  But David Byrne used the software to produce evocative - and controversial - art.  Here are a few bullet points, as told to Blaise Zerega, of Wired about Byrne's PowerPoint conversion and his book/DVD Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information:

• A big part of American culture is business culture. I owe it to myself to acknowledge it, to say, OK, this is part of my life, part of my work, part of the world I live in.
• PowerPoint can make almost anything appear good and look professional.  Quite frankly, I find that a little bit frightening.
• Slickness is not always something that is desired.  It's just trying to knock you over, trying to hype you up. That's a danger if there's actually nothing there.
• Sometimes when you put on the mask or the clothes of a character, you take on some of the aspects of the character.  I guess that's what happened to me. I found that I was enjoying it.
• In one of my favorite images, lots of overlapping words are tightly layered on top of each other.  One of the few recognizable words is overwhelmed.
• Galleries are my obvious venue, but I find that my presentations work very well in public, non-art spaces, places where people who work in offices can interact with it.  They gasp and say, "Oh my god, that's done with PowerPoint!"

PowerPoint, Microsoft’s ubiquitous slideshow program, is used by business people all over the world to enliven their presentations -- and maybe keep listeners awake -- during long meetings.  It’s become part of our culture, and now it’s been turned into art.

David Byrne, best known as the lead singer for the '80s rock band Talking Heads, has collected his PowerPoint art into a book and DVD with original songs, Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information.

Reporter Debra Schifrin spoke with David Byrne about his new work.  The musician says he hadn’t planned to do an entire multimedia art project using the program, but he created a presentation a few years ago and says he was struck by the negative effect it had on the way people communicate. 

But despite his initial disdain for the program, Byrne became intrigued by its artistic potential.  He began turning PowerPoint's bars and lines, stock images and clichéd phrases into his creative playground.

The main idea, Byrne says, was to take the rational forms and structures of this business tool and use them in an irrational way.

"Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community," Byrne says. "So I have all kind of built in prejudices and suspicions that are working against me, that would naturally steer me away from anything like this.  That’s why I have to turn the steering wheel and go right into mind bending."

Byrne discovered artistic potential in PowerPoint’s bars, graphs and stock images, and phrases.  By turning the software’s rational, practical structures to irrational applications, he found he could create works that were delightful, funny, and even poignant and moving.  Byrne’s work has been exhibited in Tokyo, New York, and Los Angeles.