PowerPoint ‘Stops Making Sense’
December 30th, 2003David Byrne is still one of rock’s pre-eminent artistic minds. With his book/DVD entitled Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (or E.E.E.I for short), he loftily explores an unlikely artistic arena — that of a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. But within this seemingly innocuous concept dwells enough cause to provoke actual dialogue and philosophical debate concerning things like software hegemony, human cognitive structure, and the process of creativity itself. While he dismisses this work as not a "serious statement about anything," I can’t help but think that the amount of attention it’s getting is proof that the software medium has been long overdue such heady inspections.