Attended a "pre-sleepover" party last night (thx Marisa) for the Great Internet Sleepover at Eyebeam. The actual event is tonight. Got to meet folks I only know as internet presences from the various Sleepover-participating crews: Double Happiness, Supercentral, Loshadka, and Nasty Nets.
Several people I met were students of an artist I gave a graduate crit to about seven years ago. Didn't realize he was now a go-to guy in a NYC university art department. The crit was kind of a disaster. He had selected me as a non-faculty advisor, which his school allowed, for his final graduate critique. He was supposed to receive it from all three of his advisors at the same time but the two from the faculty went out of their way to avoid having us all be in the same room together. One rescheduled about 3 times before bailing and the other "caught a cold." I ended up doing the crit with him one-on-one, in the gallery where he had his thesis exhibit. I have no proof of this but it sure seemed like his teachers were putting weird academic turf issues and protecting their own egos from a possible, actual exchange ahead of their student's education, for which he was paying top dollar. Seven years on I can only say--weenies.
Tonight should be fun--doubtful I'll do much blogging but I plan to bring my laptop and will hook it up the Internet. At some point I might attempt an MSPaintbrush demonstration.
Not sure what I'm going to talk about on the panel, hopefully I will not lapse into old veteran reminiscences about the world before YouTube and comment spam.