Moogfest 2016: Was It Actually the Future of Music?
For its fifth edition in North Carolina – and first since moving into the technology-centric Research Triangle – Moogfest promised another year of “Future Sound” and “Future Thought.” Durham’s hotels, theaters, pubs, open-air spaces and YMCA cages were crackling with circuitry. There were electronic-infused musical acts like Gary Numan, Odesza and Oneohtrix Point Never; thinkers like artist/”cyborg activist” Neil Harbisson, who could be spotted walking around with a color-sensing robotic eye sprouting from his head; and even installations like the Burt’s Bees observational beehive turned into a relaxing-to-dystopic sound machine. Could this convergence of musicians, scientists, futurists, relentlessly optimistic tech types and the brands that love them actually reveal the future of music itself?
The short answer is “probably not.” Though it was certainly entertaining to watch Shimon, the improvising jazz robot, bop along to his human pals as he followed along on his marimba. Whether Shimon will unlock exciting and aesthetically intriguing melodies remains to be seen, but he is a very solid side-bot and some enterprising jam band should take him on the road immediately.
Two performances did seem to transcend the present, with artists sharing music that felt like open-source software to paths unknown. The first, Sam Aaron, played an early techno set to a small crowd, performing by coding live. His computer display, splayed naked on a giant screen, showcasedSonic Pi, the free software he invented. Before he let loose by revising lines of brackets, colons and commas, he typed:
#This is Sonic Pi…..
#I use it to teach people how to code
#everything i do tonight, i can teach a 10 year old child…..
His set – which sounded like Electric Café-era Kraftwerk, a little bit of Aphex Twin skitter and some Eighties electro – was constructed through typing and deleting lines of code. The shadowy DJ sets, knob-tweaking noise and fogbank ambient of many Moogfest performers was completely demystified and turned into simple numbers and letters that you could see in action. Dubbed “the live coding synth for everyone,” it truly seemed less like a performance and more like an invitation to code your own adventure.
The second future-paving performer, Grimes, turned cutting-edge experimental ideas into a pop spectacle. Between the huge crowd, the massive bass and the dancers, everything about her set looked like a pop show, but the sounds were as out-there as many of the weekend’s chillier, more expressionistic acts. You could hear the cold, harp-like, synthetic-sounding synths that power artists like Fatima Al Qadiri and the desiccated Weather Channel music of vaporwave. Grimes turned the distorted, nostalgic noises of the past into an exultant, extroverted pop future.
Similarly, Moogfest itself turned Durham into a cozy EPCOT that made electronic music and avant-garde ideas fun for all ages thanks to interactive musical installations. However, there was a cognitive dissonance between the World’s Fair environment and accompanying paragraphs of techno-babble, jargon and advertising copy. Descriptions of things set up expectations that no technology could deliver, and the weekend’s diversions from performers were riddled with anti-climax. Global design firm IDEO rigged up some enormous beachballs in the YMCA’s outdoor basketball court, which provided some pastoral but busy, Eno-esque interactive composing for giddy kids and fun-loving adults. It was pretty to hear and, of course, fun to whack around giant beach balls. However, it was explained thusly: “[G]estures are interpreted through machine learning and used to sculpt an evolving dynamic sonic output.”
Microsoft sponsored a walk-in installation called “Realiti – Inside the Music of Grimes” that boasted “innovative hardware [that] recognizes and tracks each interaction with the installation, translating the data into unique sounds and visuals. The result is a dynamic and immersive environment that blurs the line between creator and audience.” In reality, it was a darkened room where pressing a net made different parts of a Grimes song louder and fuller. “Using Mammal Music, you become a wilderness DJ by combining musical loops, natural sounds and animal calls to make unique musical mixes” was an especially whimsical way of saying: “The museum put some whale sounds into a sequencer.” Popular kids show Yo Gabba Gabba! invited “both adults and children to experiment with new sounds,” but it was more like TED Talks Jr. inserted into a cascade of technical nightmares.
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