I <3 Classroom Artist Talks

Here’s my dirty secret. If you pay me a small stipend, I will come to your class and talk about my artwork. It’s one of my favorite things to do.

Last week, it was Jenny Odell’s class at the San Francisco Art Institute: Probing Social Networks. Her work is smart and I’ve been a fan, so perhaps it’s the case of the mutual admiration society. The two of us finally met in person at an opening at Recology San Francisco, where I was once an artist-in-residence (2011) and where she will soon spend some time digging through trash.

My “playlist” covered more of the internet-art projects with some discussion of imaginary objects and virtual data:

No Matter (2008)
Second Front (2006-)
Wikipedia Art (2009)
Tweets in Space (2012)
Playing Duchamp (2009)
Data Crystals (2014)
Water Works (2014)
EquityBot (2014)

The classroon talks are relatively easy to do. Very little prep is required since I’ve spoken about all these project oodles of times. I do these talks mostly, because I remember so many of the artists that came through my MFA grad program and each and every one of them helped me develop my art practice. I want to return the favor.

With a high-level class like this, you always get some good questions. The one project that the students seemed most engaged by was EquityBot, which was both surprising — since it’s a stock-investment algorithm and inspiring since it’s my latest project.