Evan Roth Keynote Speaker

Evan Roth is a US artist who explores the relationship between misuse and empowerment and the effect that philosophies from hacker communities can have when applied to digital and non-digital systems. Creating prints, sculptures, videos and websites, his work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art NYC and has been exhibited at various institutions, including the Centre Pompidou, the Kunsthalle Wien, the Tate and the front page of Youtube.

Evan helped found the Graffiti Research Lab in 2005, an artist group that has undertaken projects like tagging the Brooklyn Bridge in light with laser and tossing projectile LEDs onto city buildings. In 2007, Evan co-founded the Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab), an Internet-based art-and-technology collective dedicated to the intersection of open-source hacking and popular culture. He believes in the idea of maximising cultural impact with the least amount of effort – an idea that came from code.

Working in collaboration with TEMPT1, a Los Angeles-based graffiti artist and activist who was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Evan was part of the team that developed the EyeWriter – eyeglasses with eye-tracking technology and custom software that could capture eye movements. From TEMPT1’s hospital room, the artist could draw his tag and have it projected on buildings at a superhuman scale in real time, so viewers could see the glowing graffiti as it was created.

Evan has received numerous awards, including the Golden Nica from Prix Ars Electronica, Rhizome/The New Museum commissions and the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award.