Artist Lecture: Steve Lambert

            On February 20, I attended a lecture at the University of Nevada, Reno with my boyfriend. The lecturer was Steve Lambert. Before this lecture, I had never heard of Steve Lambert aside from announcements stating that he would be visiting our university.         

Steve Lambert's "Capitalism Works For Me! True/False"

      
             Lambert opened his lecture by telling everyone to close their eyes. He then told us to visualize what it would be like to be a superhero. The only power we were give, though, was the power to put 3 thoughts into a person's head. It was only the power to put thoughts into someone's head and not make them take action due to these thoughts. Whether they acted upon these thoughts we had placed was up to them.  This activity definitely sparked the curiosity of the audience, but Lambert said we would come back to it later.

            After the introduction activity, Lambert went on to discuss some of his work he had done in the past. He mainly focused on two of his projects: The 2008 U.S. Election with the New York Times "Special Edition" and "Capitalism Works for Me!". Despite these two project being some of his largest and most popular works, some of the smaller projects he had done in the past caught my interest. For example, I enjoyed the fact that Steve created useful extensions and programs that people can use in their everyday lives as a form of art. The two that spoke to me the most were "Self-Control" and "Add-Art". Self-Control is a program for that will clock access to incoming and/or outgoing mail servers for a period of time. Once the timer is set, there is no way to stop these sites from being blocked. "Add-art" is a Firefox plug-in that replaces advertisements with various pictures of art. I already use AdBlock and it's a great program, but I feel like replacing ads with art would make for a more fun overall experience as opposed to a to of white space.  

            Overall, Steve Lambert's lecture was fun, entertaining, and insight.  When I asked my boyfriend what he remembered about Steve Lambert, he replied with, "Is he the guy with the beard and the signs?" and "Uh, he was a pretty laid back guy who had an interesting outlook on how art can affect people in modern day settings." That's high praise coming from a biology major! At the end of Lambert's lecture, he revealed that the superpower we were given at the beginning, is actually what art does every day. We have the power to make art that inspires and provokes thought among the general public. We can't control the actions of the people who are affected by our art, but hopefully it will give them new perspective on life and inspire change in society.