FIGMENT organizers will be conducting a session each day after the 11 a.m. ferry lands on Governor's Island to provide interested members of the press and public with background on FIGMENT and highlights of the day's activities. FIGMENT organizers and artists will be available at each session for interviews and questions.

Erik will begin with an overview of some participatory art projects and thoughts on the value of collaborative art in general, followed by an explanation of why traffic cone viewing is a valid aesthetic practice. The lecture will conclude with discussion of some collaborative traffic cone-related new media works in progress.

Burning Man Founder and Director Larry Harvey discusses how the principles upon which Burning Man was founded—the power of community, collaboration, radical self-reliance, and the gift economy—are enjoying a resurgent relevance in the new economy.

A common story often told by commentators about the emergence of internet culture is that it opened unprecedented new avenues for anyone to distribute content, remix, and to gain public notoriety. This was argued to be more broadly participatory than earlier models of mainstream media production in TV, print, and radio. How valid is this story of democratization? How broadly participatory has our culture become with the rise of the internet? Taking a crash course tour of the world of memes, internet celebrities and web culture, this lecture will take a realistic assessment. Then, taking that analysis, it will discuss how current trends might threaten the vibrant cultural ecosystem of the web into the future. It will also meditate on how we might collectively defend that universe, preserving participation and broad contributions.

Wooster Collective is interested in how we alter and adjust public space to make it more “livable” and creative. That first moment when you notice a stencil on the pavement, a poster wheatpasted to the wall, or a metal sculpture attached to a street sign, you suddenly become transported into another world—a vibrant subculture that eradicates the monotony of daily life. Your commute to work or that short trip to the store now becomes an adventure as you search for creativity in unexpected places. The artist's motivation is to beautify buildings and to create something truly special. Wooster Collective will explore what makes street art so infectious and show some interesting examples of street art from around the world.

LoVid will present aspects of their participatory installations and performances, Wirefull Interventions. These Interventions highlight physical connections between human bodies and electronics as well as connections between people in the networked/virtual era. Wirefull Interventions continues LoVid's work with custom-made electronics in live video installations, performances, and objects. We use the term "wirefull" to discuss our ideas and aesthetics. This work exposes and expands on the processes that comprise and create communications technology. It comments on an industrial society where the details and workings of widely used, popular public technology are becoming increasingly hidden, private, and wireless. Wirefull directly refers to our use of electrical wire. This physical conduit for electricity symbolizes other conduits, including veins and arteries that carry nutrients for the body, and invisible conduits of information such as language.

Sal Randolph, a social artist who gives away money, explores the interactions provoked by these gifts through her ongoing project, Free Money. In her recent work, she has left cash in public spaces, given it to volunteer distributors, given away stacks of dollar bills at galleries and art fairs, and met with people one on one in cafés, offering them both money and a choice. In her talk she will tell the story of the Free Money project, seek out volunteer distributors, and discuss some of the consequences of looking at art as an experience rather than as an object. Free Money distributions have recently taken place at 16 Beaver Street, Creative Time’s Democracy in America, the LIVE Biennale, and the Conflux Festival. Randolph's work has also been seen in solo and group shows at Roda Sten in Gothenburg, Sweden, La Box in Bourges, France and Glowlab in New York.

Gotham Guide is New York's first multimedia tour using QR (Quick Response) code technology to add a contextual layer of information on top of Manhattan's city streets. Anyone with a QR reader-enabled mobile phone can snap a picture of a Gotham Guide code, which then automatically redirects the user to recorded audio, video clips, or webpage snippets that tell more about the user's current location and the surrounding buildings. Users can download free software to participate from the Gotham Guide website, where they will also obtain a map of New York with the locations of the QR codes highlighted. Gotham Guide gives people the opportunity to serendipitously discover new things about the buildings they pass each day and for tourists to use advances in mobile technology to interact with the city in a brand new way.

Andrzej Liguz co-founded the Australian branch of the Mutoid Waste Co. in Melbourne in 1990, and subsequently started Imagineer and Regeneration before founding MORE (Ministry Of Random Events) in Sydney in 1996. MORE built a series of large sculptures from recycled materials and worked with the MORE Drums, which are part of this year's FIGMENT, on Reclaim The Streets. He will present a talk and slide show on sculptures constructed by MORE in Australia as well as the concept behind the MORE Drums. Some of the sculptures he will discuss include The Recycle, an interactive 30’ x 20’ bicycle which stands at the entrance to the largest recycling center in the southern hemisphere; the Recyco Dragon, a 20’ long fire breathing dragon made from car hoods on Bondi Beach; and the Garbo Man, a 20’ tall garbo man sweeping up a car at one of Sydney’s busiest traffic intersections.

Dance Parade is a charity whose mission is to promote dance as an expressive and unifying art form by showcasing all forms of dance, educating the general public about the opportunities to experience dance, and celebrating diversity of dance in New York City by sponsoring a yearly city-wide dance parade and dance festival.

What's wrong with advertising? Steve Lambert makes the case with a fast moving lecture that's as funny as it is informative. Steve's anarchist/sociologist take on how modern, non-stop persuasive messages have distorted and altered our culture will leave you plenty to ponder on the ferry ride home. Steve Lambert recently made international news with the The New York Times “Special Edition,” a replica of the grey lady announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other good news. He is the founder of the Anti-Advertising Agency, lead developer of Add-Art (a Firefox addon that replaces online advertising with art) and has collaborated with numerous artists including the Graffiti Research Lab, and the Yes Men. Lambert has appeared live on NPR, the BBC, and CNN, and been reported on in the New York Times, Harper’s, The Believer, Good, Dwell, and Newsweek. He is a Senior Fellow at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York, and teaches at Parsons and Hunter College.

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed more than 80 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. In 2009, Charlie Todd and Alex Scordelis co-authored CAUSING A SCENE (HarperCollins), a book about the group's infamous exploits. Improv Everywhere is based in New York City.

Jeff will present several projects in which he plays with the relatively new phenomenon of "crowdsourcing," how it can be used in a creative practice, and the moral issues that he has faced in the process. The first project is Invisible Threads, in which Jeff hired Second Life avatars to work in a jeans sweatshop to make real jeans for real customers. Second, in Dirt Party, he crowdsourced the task of digging up "dirt" about party-goers from the Internet in order to project it back at them in playfully reconstructed creations.  Finally, in a new project, Laborers of Love, customers pay workers on the crowdsourcing marketplace Mechanical Turk to make a custom fantasy pornographic image, and then watch as it is assembled.

The Towel is a model airplane built from scratch out of foam, trash, $100 worth of parts, and three hours of effort. Its primary goal is to channel everyone's inner eight year old. It also serves as the foundation for an excellent night flier and has great repairability and crash tolerance. We will present the Towel, possibly build some parts, and then go outside and fly it. With conditions permitting, we will let other people fly the Towel as well.