Powerpoint Extreme: Groups and Spaces

In addition to being really excited about InCubate, I was also pleased to discover that some friends of mine, Josh Ipple and Charlie Roderick of Hideous Beast were the current artists in residence, and that they were organizing an evening of Powerpoint presentations by an assortment of artist groups and people who run arts spaces in Chicago. It was almost as if they had curated the evening just for me - I spent last year geeking out on animated Powerpoint presentations and arts groups. I'll post some pictures and short descriptions below.


Bonnie Fortune, a graduate student at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, started things off with heavy metal music (complete with high-volume amplifier), tie-dye graphics, flashing lightning bolts and images from books published in the 1960-70's addressing large-scale ideological wars, energy crises, environmental devastation, and destructive global capitalism. These images were culled from an online library, The Library of Radiant Optimism that she is compiling with her husband (and Temporary Services collaborator) Brett Bloom on a website called letsremake.info.



Bryce Dwyer who runs the residency program at InCubate gave a much more linear and methodical presentation on how to run your own residency program. Just follow The Five Steps, and you'll be set! (By the way, they're looking for residents now here.)



Members of a gallery space called Green Lantern gave a talk on the trials and tribulations of the Kennedy Family over the years. I wasn't sure how this fit in with what they do.



Linsey Caplice ran a presentation about her group, the Honor the Cheifbot Society's suggested replacement for the current controversial University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign mascot, Chief Illiniwak. The proposed replacement, the Chiefbot, would be nine feet tall, made of cardboard, and shoot clouds of glitter from its head. The Society's top three reasons why it's a robot:

Here's a link to the full presentation in case you're interested. It doesn't read in robot voice like the presentation I saw did, but it still rocks. Link.