5 Reasons You Should Get On Board With F.A.T. Lab [NYC EVENT]

“Celebrating more than five years of thug life, pop culture, and R&D,” F.A.T. (Free Art and Technology) Lab will be holding their exhibition “F.A.T. Gold” at Eyebeam tonight, originally scheduled for last fall but postponed due to Hurricane Sandy. If you haven’t been convinced that this is the best thing you could possibly do on this Monday evening, here are five reasons that you must be at Eyebeam tonight from 7 to 9.

If you aren’t a 16 year-old girl with Bieber-fever, you probably find his omnipresence in search engines and gossip sites—where you spend time researching only the really important topics such as how fat Kim K. has gotten—annoying. F.A.T. Labhas forever solved this problem with their “Shaved Bieber” add-on for Firefox. Download this plug-in, and censor Bieber from your newsfeed/Google searches/D-Listed research stints forever.

Although Google maintains a positive brand image with their clean web design, their cutesy, themed homepages that change based on (sometimes obscure) holidays, and their status as the ultimate answer-provider to just about any question fathomable, they have been known to monitor your web-browsing habits, making them a well-dressed version of the always prying, corporate Man. However, F.A.T. has created an alarm system so that you can know when Google is prying into your personal usage for their own money-making interests.

Anti-establishment bad boys have always been hot. From James Dean, to Elvis Presley, to Sid Vicious (no? not a thing?), the bad boy rockstars have secured their spot at the most-wanted list among their female counterparts. And who embodies our generation’s rebellious spirit more than hackers? F.A.T. Lab even developed an app that let you Occupy the space where you spend most of your waking hours: the internet. In the age of internet activism, F.A.T.’s dissent make them one of the symbolic bad boys of our generation.

F.A.T. member Tobias Leingruber created Social Media ID Cards for everyone who attended his opening in Berlin after border patrol asked him what his Facebook name was when entering the US. Certainly there is a bar in New York City where the Facebook ID would be accepted as a reputable form of identification.

Remember when you moved to the Big Apple, and you had dreams of being a cultured New Yorker who had a wardrobe that looked like Carrie Bradshaw’s, and were starting a clothing line like the guys from How to Make it In America, but yours was totally going to be successful--and you would have drinks at the bar with Barney Stinson and would spend all your spare moments going to Broadway plays and art openings? While I can put a large sum of money on the fact that you now spend more time on the ungarnished mattress which you kindly call a “bed” than doing any of the above listed things, tonight is the night it can all change. Going to Eyebeam and seeing an art show will bring you one step closer to the fantasy New Yorker you’ve always dreamed of being. If, like many others, you have to pour beer or cook food tonight to pay your rent, the exhibit will be up until April 20th. Eyebeam is open Tuesday—Saturday from 12 to 6.

@megyoungblood