Concert Wed Jun 03 2009

Oh to live on/computer mountain/with the barkers and the colored balloons...

The avant-garde art/music space Lampo (219 W. Chicago Avenue, 2nd Floor) always attempts to bring new and unique experiences to the ears and minds of Chicagoans eager for something different, but Saturday's performance (9:00 p.m., $12 door) should prove to be especially engaging and unusual, especially for devotees of not just art and music, but the strange fringes of overloaded technology.

The event, loosely known as MAGIC MATRIX MIXER MOUNTAIN, is a collective ensemble of experimental musicians, software developers, visual artists, and circuit-bending mad scientists. The process sounds complicated, so I'm going to let the Lampo info sheet explain it:

During the performance and installation at Lampo, five of the artists will build the MAGIC MATRIX MIXER MOUNTAIN on-site while two are connected remotely via the Internet. All of the artists (foothills) will feedback and feedforward to expose the graceful musicality of faulty technologies. Decoding and rebugging digital media, the MAGIC MATRIX MIXER MOUNTAIN will exist for one night only but will be accompanied by an operator's instruction manual, to be written, arranged and printed live in realtime along with the performance of the audio, video and datastreams.

For a sense of what the group's about, you can visit their blog, which includes a ton of images, short films, and things that twitch and bleep and follow you around the room with a stinky eyeball. The tone and texture of the piece, as well as the love of re-purposing dead/dying media reminds me of the project 8-bit Construction Set, not to mention dorkbot Chicago (with which this group shares members Jon Cates and Jake Elliott) or even the long-running trio I <3 Presets, whose ranks MMMM shares member Jon Satrom (also of Magic Missile) with this group and who are similarly devoted to technological obsolescences in their death-throes, turning error warnings into haikus and bluescreens into percussive solos.

— Chris Sienko / Comments (2)