Here’s an interview of The Art of the Prank contributor Steve Lambert in this month’s Proximity Magazine:
Steve Lambert
by James H. Ewert, Jr.
Proximity Magazine, Issue #3
December 11, 2008
Sure, you could call Steve Lambert a prankster, but that would be too simple a title. Lambert”™s shenanigans are intelligent. They have the viewer, victim, participant, or unwitting citizen question something, then answer it as well. Questioning, Lambert believes, is only the beginning. He”™s far more interested in what happens afterwards.
In one project, Lambert manned a table on the campus of UC Davis, among other organizations campaigning for different political and religious causes. His cause was simply stated on a sign, “I WILL TALK WITH ANYONE ABOUT ANYTHING.” In another project, Lambert shut down every McDonald”™s restaurant in Manhattan by having volunteers fan out across the city and place his handmade “Closed for evaluation” signs on all the front doors. Whether it is just initiating dialogue with a stranger, closing a restaurant chain, or creating a video game that rewards players for relaxing, Lambert”™s work has consistently served as a bridge for people to walk across and experience an entirely different world – one less concerned with the passivity of everyday life as it is the domino effect of action.
So yes, Steve Lambert is a prankster some of the time, but he”™s also an artist, an adjunct-lecturer, former class president of a high school he never graduated from, vintage scooter enthusiast, and an anti-advertising executive. Judging by the careful planning and execution of his projects, however, a more apt title might be “scientist.”
Read the entire interview here.