The Free Art and Technology Lab a.k.a. F.A.T. Lab is a collective of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians, dedicated to the merging of popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

 with open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 technology. F.A.T. Lab is known for producing artwork critical of traditional Intellectual Property Law in the realm of new media art and technology. F.A.T. Lab has historically created work intended for the public domain, but has also released work under various open licenses. Their commitment is to support "open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents. F.A.T. Lab's mission has been approached through various methods of placing open ideals into the mainstream popular culture, including work with the New York Times, MTV, the front page of YouTube and in the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection."

History

The F.A.T. Lab was founded in 2007 by Evan Roth

Evan Roth

Evan Roth is an artist whose work focuses on tools of empowerment, open source and popular culture. He has previously released work under the name "fi5e".-Biography:...

 and James Powderly

James Powderly

James Powderly is an artist and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing robots and promoting open source culture.- Biography :...

 which are also known for the Graffiti Research Lab

Graffiti Research Lab

Graffiti Research Lab, founded by Evan Roth and James Powderly during their fellowships at the Eyebeam OpenLab, is an art group dedicated to outfitting graffiti writers, artists and protesters with open source technologies for urban communication. The members of the group experiment in a lab and in...

. A large part of its members were research fellows, artist in resident or otherwise affiliated with the New York-based Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in 2005–2008.
Most F.A.T. Lab members are based in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 as well as Central Europe

Central Europe

Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...

 and Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

. The F.A.T. Lab is fully international and Internet based. Due to the use of the Austrian Country code top-level domain

Country code top-level domain

A country code top-level domain is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, a sovereign state, or a dependent territory....

 '.at' many people imply the origin of F.A.T. in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 which is not the case. Connected through the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, its members cooperate on mostly digital and web-based art projects which are published on the F.A.T. website. Often its members also publish their own artistic work under the label of F.A.T.

F.A.T. Lab was nominated for the Transmediale Award 2010 at the media art festival Transmediale, Berlin, February 2–7, 2010.

Current members of F.A.T. Lab

Evan Roth

Evan Roth

Evan Roth is an artist whose work focuses on tools of empowerment, open source and popular culture. He has previously released work under the name "fi5e".-Biography:...

: Research Director (US)

James Powderly

James Powderly

James Powderly is an artist and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing robots and promoting open source culture.- Biography :...

: Research Director (US)

Theo Watson

Theo Watson

Theo Watson is a British artist and programmer. His art work includes interactive video, large-scale public projections, computer vision projects, and interactive sound recordings...

 : Virtual Research Fellow (UK)

Bennett Williamson : Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Mike Baca: Convicted Fellow (US)

Todd Polenberg: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Jamie Wilkinson

Jamie Wilkinson

Jamie “Dubs” Wilkinson is an internet culture researcher and software engineer. Wilkinson started Know Your Meme, a database of viral internet memes whilst working at Rocketboom in New York City...

: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Borna Sammak: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Tobias Leingruber: Virtual Research Fellow (DE)

Becky Stern

Becky Stern

Becky Stern is an American artist based in New York City. Her work combines traditional crafts like embroidery, knitting & jewelry-making with physical computing technologies like Arduino....

: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Michael Frumin: Chief Curmudgeonly Officer (US)

Steve Lambert: Communications Minister (US)

Jonah Peretti

Jonah Peretti

Jonah Peretti is an Internet entrepreneur and a founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post. The New York Times called him a "viral marketing hot dog."...

: Board Member (US)

John S. Johnson

John S. Johnson

John S. Johnson was an early American cyclist and speed skater. He was the first to bicycle 1-mile in less than two minutes, or 1:56.6. This happened in 1892 at a racing track in Independence, Iowa. Johnson was also a world record holder in speed skating, and won world championship titles in both...

: Adviser (US)

Randy Sarafan: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Aram Bartholl

Aram Bartholl

Aram Bartholl has been working in Berlin since 1995. He is known for his exploration of the relationship between the digital and physical world. In his play on video game adaptations he is connecting the virtual and real world in a new way...

: Real Research Fellow (DE)

Geraldine Juárez: Becaria de Investigación Virtual (MX)

Michelle Kempner: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Greg Leuch: Virtual Research Fellow (US)

Magnus Eriksson

Magnus Eriksson

Magnus Eriksson may refer to:* Magnus Eriksson * Magnus IV of Sweden...

: Virtual Research Fellow (SE)

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions, workshops, screenings and performances include:

• 2010, Transmediale
  Transmediale
  transmediale is an annual festival for media art and digital culture taking place for one week in February in Berlin, Germany. The festival engages in reflective, aesthetic and speculative positions in between art, technology and culture...
  
   FUTURITY NOW!, Berlin, Germany
• 2009, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Versions, Amsterdam, Netherlands
• 2009, Betahaus, Upgrade! Halloween edition, Berlin, Germany
• 2009, Pecha Kucha
  Pecha Kucha
  Pecha Kucha is a presentation methodology in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each, usually seen in a multiple-speaker event called a Pecha Kucha Night ....
  
  Berlin Vol. 14, Berlin Germany
• 2009, iMal, Openframeworks, Brussels , Belgium
• 2008, New Museum Rhizome Commissions 08, New York City, New York
• 2007, Gadgetoff, New York City, New York