Evan Roth inspires again...IN PERSON

::Evan Roth at Hofstra::

Evan Roth spoke at Hofstra today, and partially due to me I believe, as I prompted my Professor to invite him to "Not All Artists are Starving" in March. Although he couldn't make it because he was in Paris, he offered to speak when he was in NYC for the Seven on Seven event at the New Museum...thus...TODAY happened.

::Major Points::

"Weekend Projects"

Good ideas can happen in a short amount of time and be published in a day or two. Quick projects can have big impacts on people. Think smarter not harder.

Publishing online early and often is extremely important. Because of stuff being online, people can easily see what you've done. In other words, having an online presence! (dont have one? check out promoteYOU!)

Always continue to publish. Worried about people stealing your work?...don't. Sharing ideas is really important, and projects develop of life of their own.

Use social media to your advantage. In his class, Viral Media for Artists...they learn about making/packaging things in a way where people will find your work. For example, at Boing Boing, a popular blog, you can suggest a link. They tell you how to, and this good start to getting through to any blog publisher.

Tying into mainstream press and the blogging world can help market your projects. Look for memes (internet/pop culture topic trends). No big companies know how to do this...they spend money on viral ad campaigns trying to look sincere, but people see through the bullshit.

::Projects by Evan Roth::

His earliest inspiration was hearing "Straight outta Compton"...and curse words...He used this inspiration for a project while he was at Grad school at Parsons. It was a reduction project...he took all the words out at the album Straight outta Compton" and only left the swears...there was about 6 minutes of explicit content left. He eventually got a cease and desist letter.

Graffiti Taxonomy...

Inspired by Edward Tufte, who did research on typography and was recently hired by Obama to do information graphics to demonstrate the financial situation we are in now.

Collected data (photographed tags in NYC), cleaned then up in photoshop, isolated letters, put them in a new format...a poster, and wheat pasted them in the location that the data was collected. This enable people who aren't familiar with graffiti to see it in a different way...and appreciate it.

Started the Graffiti Research Lab...combining graffiti and technology. First project was LED throwies....the videos and project turned into contagious media...ending in open source, and a how-to on instructables.

He also started the Free Art and Technology Lab...combining pop culture with open source culture.

F.A.T. presents Fuck Google -- at Transmedia in Berlin.

"We all love their products, but no one corporation should own all of our data."

BAD ASS MOTHER FUCKER project (in playing with SEO)

It only took Evan Roth 13 days to get his website the number one hit for bad ass mother fucker.

Tech note: the title tag and H1 tag are most important to getting google analytics to put up your site. Key words associated with URL also help.

USA USB. Experiment using memes to promote a project. It worked...he released this around 9/11 and it got a lot of publicity.