The Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab) is an organisation aiming to enrich the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media. After being nominated for the Transmediale Award 2010, F.A.T. Lab members met up in Berlin in the first week of February and produced a series of projects dedicated to the topic of the week: FUCK GOOGLE. In addition to producing free software, browser addons, live streams, communiques and on-site workshops, F.A.T. Lab built a fake Google Street View car they took to the streets to see what it’s like to be Google. A PDF with building instructions and a list of needed materials has been made available on the F.A.T. website, along with a host of video material. Read about all the week’s projects here.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/9455140[/vimeo]

UPDATE: Also see the collaborative article and interview with F.A.T. Lab’s Evan Roth, by Marcello Lussana and Gaia Novati: http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=384:

“An interesting outsider project at Transmediale.10 this year, was F.A.T
Lab (Free Art and Technology Lab). A collective of artists, engineers,
scientists, lawyers, musicians and trouble-makers who have been working
together for two years, on the intersections of Pop culture and Open
source. Their stapline describes them as “An organization who is
dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and
development of creative technologies and media.

For Transmediale.10 they presented a project called Fuck Google,
focusing on reminding us all how this big company has become omnipresent
in our digital lives, refering to the risk that too much data is owned
and is going to be owned more and more, just by Google alone. It exists
as a collection of browser add-ons, open source software, theoretical
musings and direct actions.”