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To the rebel in all of us, James Powderly is our part-nefarious, part-make-the-world-a-better-place hero. As you’ll see from the video and my tweets live from the Monday keynote speech below, Powderly is intoxicating in his allure to scrawl graffiti all over a 500 foot building with amplified lasers and projectors. He even got incarcerated before the Beijing Olympics last year for 10 days for attempting to pull off an impermanent graffiti trick on mass scale. What he didn’t talk about until the last question of the session was his new project to enable a quadriplegic man to be able to do art again, but this time through his eyes (and lasers) instead of his hands. Creativity in such an authentic way – not sure you get a sense of his energy from the video below.

My tweets for this SXSW session—-

#sxsw keynote – just had 2000 people cooperatively give middle finger to speaker james powderly, grafitti research lab12:18 PM Mar 16th from web

Research and track grafitti all over world12:19 PM Mar 16th from web

Learning what a #led throwie is. Very cool on a mass scale12:23 PM Mar 16th from web

Take a laser and write in huge letters on a huge building12:25 PM Mar 16th from web

Went from grafitti research lab to now free art tech lab12:27 PM Mar 16th from web

Oh: “release early, often, and with rap music”12:28 PM Mar 16th from web

Note to self – play hip hop video in any presentation – coolio12:30 PM Mar 16th from web

Powderly was detained by chinese government at 2008 beijing olympics for grafitti project12:32 PM Mar 16th from web

Mc yan is amazing chinese rapper12:34 PM Mar 16th from web

Powderly – if you don’t have a voice, we’ll give you one12:36 PM Mar 16th from web

James powderly is frickin hilarious – best speaker yet at #sxsw12:41 PM Mar 16th from web

Laser tag on a grand scale is so powerful – the ultimate free speech12:42 PM Mar 16th from web

Hermes – if zeus does not grant me power, I will take it like the prince of theives. Powderly is very do it yourself12:51 PM Mar 16th from web

Online video and flickr is a huge piece of grafitti writers’ arsenel.12:54 PM Mar 16th from web

Loves the world the way it is with cats/cops and mice/transgressors12:56 PM Mar 16th from web

A lot of emphasis on lightness and loft – like the combo of those words1:00 PM Mar 16th from web

private confession – yesterday, I learned that # is called a hashtag and not pound. Old school getting more new school every hour at #sxsw1:30 PM Mar 16th from TweetDeck

@garrettgonzales – James Powderly is bad ass – that is the context of laser graffiti1:31 PM Mar 16th from TweetDeck in reply to garrettgonzales