Evan Roth is an artist who applies a hacker philosophy to an art practice that visualizes transient moments in public space, online, and popular culture.
Evan Roth received a degree in architecture from University of Maryland and an MFA from the Communication, Design, and Technology School at Parsons The New School for Design, where he graduated as class valedictorian. During his time at Parsons, he developed several projects, including Graffiti Taxonomy, Typographic Illustration, Explicit Content Only, and Graffiti Analysis, his thesis project. Roth was named one of the ten most interesting recent graduates of 2006.
After graduating Roth worked at the Eyebeam OpenLab, an open source creative technology lab for the public domain, as a Research and Development Fellow from 2005–2006 and a Senior Fellow from 2006-2007. Roth’s work with graffiti, open source technology, and public space led to him forming the Graffiti Research Lab (“GRL”) with James Powderly in 2005. GRL projects include LED throwies and L.A.S.E.R. Tag. In 2007, Roth co-founded the Free Art and Technology Lab (F.A.T. Lab), an Internet-based art-and-technology collective dedicated to the intersection of open-source hacking and popular culture. He has worked under the pseudonym fi5e.
Roth and Ben Engebreth were awarded a 2007 Rhizome Commission for White Glove Tracking, which was presented at the Contemporary New Museum in New York City. Roth was again awarded a Rhizome Commission in 2008 for his project “T.S.A. Communications.”
Several of Roth’s work are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.