Arguably the first music video ever, and possibly the first Powerpoint presentation, in “Don’t Look Back,” Bob Dylan holds up cue cards with words from the song Subterranean Homesick Blues on them and flips them, while staring at the camera, as the song plays:
‘Johnny’s in the basement
Mixin’ up the medicine…’
Slideshow presentations went downhill from then on:
Times Roman font, meaningless bullet points, a blue blend background, droning presenters wearing company polo shirts and pleated khaki pants. Powerpoint is an art crime.
Because of this, I rarely pay much attention to conference presentations. However, one of the best things I saw at at Web 2.0 was how Larry Lessig has perfected his trademark slideshow.
Like in Subterranean Homesick Blues, the slides flow along nicely with the lyrics. A lawyer defending the right for people to create digital collages produces a presentation that is an art form in itself, his mash up being a pretty good example of the type of creativity that he defends so well.
What makes a Lessig presentation different?
Style: Lessig uses a cracked courier typewriter font. It is a perfectly ironic use of something intrinsically analogue, used in a digital medium.
Structure: Each slide in a Lessig presentation is a piece of microcontent, it can be a word a symbol or an entire movie clip. There is no notion of a page.
Timing: As Lessig raps to the slide presentation, the rhythm of the slides has a non-linear flow i.e. a slide may emphasize a point ‘so and so: slide 1 – did this: slide 2 – which resulted in this: slide3″ where each slide is punched out subliminally to the rhythm of him talking.
So, all you fathead music industry types, if you want to prevent people from making collages, all your slideshows are going to suck, and nobody will listen.