jonnygoldstein.com

The Short Version:

Jonny Goldstein is a videoblogger, visual artist, comedy performer, and videoblogging teacher and curriculum developer at Phovi.com. He recently finished a stint managing the technology education arm of the groundbreaking BX21 program which taught 100 Bronx teens to videoblog. Jonny’s video art was screened in front of hundreds of thousands of people at the 2001 Detroit Electronic Music Festival and his online videos have been downloaded more than 20,000 times. Recently, Jonny has been producing online video for iVillage.com. Jonny is a big proponant of media by the people for the people and has spoken on this topic at universities, forums, retail stores, and conferences all over the country. At Vloggercon 2006 he gave a presentation about videoblogging in education and moderated panels on oral history, the digital divide, and interactivity. Jonny currently splits his time between Washington DC and New York City.

The Long Version:

The origins of Jonny Goldstein are shrouded in mystery, but this much is known: He was born in the mean streets of South Central Eugene, Oregon. He spent his formative years in Oregon, Southern England, and Papua New Guinea. As a young man he moved to Israel where he performed menial jobs for no money. As a college student he dwelt in Colorado Springs equidistant from NORAD, the Airforce Academy, and Focus on the Family, protected by a thin layer of trust fund hippies and future delegates to the Republican National Convention. He studied English Literature, a wise choice, as he already knew how to read and write in English coming into the deal, which left him considerable time and energy to fend off existential angst.

Jonny Goldstein popped up irregularly in the next several years seeking to explore his limits in a variety of settings. 47 settings to be precise—Here as a whitewater raft guide, there as a homeless shelter counselor, and still farther out there as a door to door dog licenser. After many years of reading comic books, he decided to move to New York City, where he took the subway often. He exhibited a bizarre, Zelig-like, talent for appearing on TV. After many years of doing little, he started to do more. Along the way he honed his runner up skills by coming in second place in the playing card memory competition at the 1999 Memoriad in New York City, and garnering the Silver Medal in the Mind Map Competition at the 1999 Mind Sports Olympiad in London, England.

Shortly after, he began working with video art collective Dorian Orange. His climactic moment came in 2001 when he projected his own hand drawn visuals live on the main stage to accompany musician Mix Master Mike in front of tens of thousands at the 2001 Detroit Electronic Music Festival. His slightly less climactic, but still fun, moment came a couple of months later when he VJ-ed to accompany DJ Spooky at the Lunatarium in New York City. Soon after that, he decided that it was in his eardrums’ best interest to find a new line of work.

Finally he ran out of money and went to grad school at the prestigious Interactive Telecommunications Program where he created the web radio show, Jonathan’s Throbbing Boil. The Boil was a program of the arts, information, and ideas. Jonny then developed, with a crack team of scientists, the PowerSuit, a set of technology encrusted coveralls which enabled him to talk with beings from the future by pressing and slapping different parts of the garment. Since then, Jonny has taken his art to the streets of New York (low overhead, no audition necessary), San Francisco, Denver, and the halls of Salem College in Winston-Salem North Carolina.

For the first half of 2005, Jonny has cohosted a stand-up comedy show which featured such luminaries as Victor Varnado, Ali Walker, and Rob Shapiro in Greenwich Village, and performed stand-up comedy at such venues as the Knitting Factory and New York Improv. Jonny has started videoblogging in early 2005 at jonnygoldstein.com. He currently appears biweekly on the Manhattan cable TV program “The Erzsi and Jonny Show.”

Over the past year, Jonny managed the technology education portion of the ground breaking BX21 program for Vision Education and Media. The program taught 100 Bronx teens how to videoblog. Jonny continues his interest in teaching and videoblogging at Phovi.com where he creates curriculum and will teach online videoblogging classes. Jonny splits his time between New York City (noisy dirty subway, great streetlife) and Washington DC (quiet clean subway, buttoned down, khaki streetlife).