Free Art and Technology Lab

The Free Art and Technology Lab a.k.a. F.A.T. Lab is a collective of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and musicians, dedicated to the merging of popular culture with open source technology. F.A.T. Lab is known for producing artwork critical of traditional Intellectual Property Law in the realm of new media art and technology. F.A.T. Lab has historically created work intended for the public domain, but has also released work under various open licenses. Their commitment is to support "open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents. F.A.T. Lab's mission has been approached through various methods of placing open ideals into the mainstream popular culture, including work with the New York Times, MTV, the front page of YouTube and in the Museum of Modern Art permanent collection."

History

The F.A.T. Lab was founded in 2007 by Evan Roth and James Powderly which are also known for the Graffiti Research Lab. A large part of its members were research fellows, artist in resident or otherwise affiliated with the New York-based Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in 2005–2008. Most F.A.T. Lab members are based in North America as well as Central Europe and Asia. The F.A.T. Lab is fully international and Internet based. Due to the use of the Austrian Country code top-level domain '.at' many people imply the origin of F.A.T. in Austria which is not the case. Connected through the Internet, its members cooperate on mostly digital and web-based art projects which are published on the F.A.T. website. Often its members also publish their own artistic work under the label of F.A.T.