performance art - The Art of the Prank

March 12, 2012December 15, 2023

Improv Everywhere: Spinning Beach Ball of Death

For our latest mission, a presenter at the TED conference has his talk interrupted by the Mac spinning wait cursor, commonly known as the “Spinning Beach Ball of Death.” As he stands awkwardly and waits, things get weird.

Enjoy the video first and then go behind the scenes with our report.

For the uninitiated, TED is an annual conference in Long Beach, California that focuses on “Ideas Worth Sharing.” I gave a talk at a TEDx event last year that was promoted to TED.com. For the conference this year, the TED curators approached me about staging something unexpected to surprise their audience. We had previously staged a musical prank at a conference, but I wanted to do something new and different for TED. I came up with the idea to have a fake speaker give a talk and make it seem like his big moment in the spotlight had been ruined by a computer crash. Apple users love to hate the notorious Spinning Beach Ball of Death. I started with that image and set out to heighten it to absurdity.

Produced by: Charlie Todd and Cody Lindquist; Shot & Edited by: TED; Starring: Eugene Cordero as Colin Robertson; Animation by: Bob Bonniol; Song by: Tyler Walker; Still Photos: James Duncan Davidson, Charlie Todd

Click here for more about Improv Everywhere.

December 5, 2011December 15, 2023

Improv Everywhere: No Pants Subway Ride 2012 Scheduled for Jan 8

From Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere:

SAVE THE DATE!

The 11th Annual No Pants Subway Ride will take place on January 8 in New
York and other cities around the world.

More info is on our site here:
http://improveverywhere.com/2011/12/05/save-the-date-no-pants-subway-ride-2012/

If you are unfamiliar with this tradition, you can read the history here: The No Pants Subway Ride.

November 8, 2011December 15, 2023

Herman Cain, Performance Artist

Rachel Maddow figures out the true nature of Herman Cain’s presidential candidacy: It’s performance art!

Rachel Maddow: Herman Cain’s Candidacy is an “Art Project”
msnbc.com
November 5, 2011

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

August 2, 2011December 15, 2023

Artist Zefrey Throwall Loses His Shirt on Wall Street

From Tim Jackson: “Putting it all on the line – a fine performance!”

A Bare Market Lasts One Morning
by Melena Ryzik
The New York Times
August 1, 2011

It was an early Monday morning like any other on Wall Street. Before most of the blue-shirted financiers descended, there came an army of helpers: the custodians and coffee fetchers, personal trainers and headsetted assistants who make the money street run smoothly. They marched along the sidewalks, in a hurry to start their workweek.

Zefrey Throwell, who devised the project, speaking with a police officer on Wall Street. Mr. Throwell also participated in “Ocularpation,” playing the part of a hot dog vendor.

Here and there, though, a few people were slowing down, like the trader barking into his cellphone in the calm before the market opened. He paused to loosen his tie. Unbutton his shirt. Take off his pants.

“He”s buck-naked “” Lord have mercy!” a woman said, stopping to gawk at, loudly judge and then photograph a sudden expanse of flesh. Continue reading “Artist Zefrey Throwall Loses His Shirt on Wall Street”

July 22, 2011December 15, 2023

Chain World Videogame – Holy Performance Art

Bigger Than Jesus
by Jason Fagone
Wired
July 15, 2011

When Jason Rohrer created his Chain World videogame, he intended it to be a religion. He just didn’t expect a hold war.

Jason Rohrer is known as much for his eccentric lifestyle as for the brilliant, unusual games he designs. He lives mostly off the grid in the desert town of Las Cruces, New Mexico. He doesn”t own a car or believe in vaccination. The 33-year-old works out of a home office, typing code in a duct-taped chair. He takes his son Mez to gymnastics and acting class on his lime-green recumbent bicycle, and on weekends he paints with his son Ayza. (He got Mez”s name from a license plate, and Ayza”s by mixing up Scrabble tiles.)

On the morning of February 24, Rohrer took a break from coding and pedaled to the local Best Buy. He paid $19.99 for a 4-gigabyte USB memory stick sheathed in black plastic. The next day he sanded off the memory stick”s logos, giving it a brushed-metal texture that reminded him of something out of Mad Max. Then, using his kids” acrylics, he painted a unique pattern on both sides, a chain of dots that resembled a piece of Aboriginal art he had seen.

The stick would soon hold a videogame unlike any other ever created. It would exist on the memory stick and nowhere else. According to a set of rules defined by Rohrer, only one person on earth could play the game at a time. The player would modify the game”s environment as they moved through it. Then, after the player died in the game, they would pass the memory stick to the next person, who would play in the digital terrain altered by their predecessor””and on and on for years, decades, generations, epochs. In Rohrer”s mind, his game would share many qualities with religion””a holy ark, a set of commandments, a sense of secrecy and mortality and mystical anticipation. This was the idea, anyway, before things started to get weird. Before Chain World, like religion itself, mutated out of control. Continue reading “Chain World Videogame – Holy Performance Art”