The only thing cooler than Moogfest’s music line up is their speaker list and day time presentation

by | Apr 8, 2016 | MUSIC

Moogfest aims to bring an incredible experience to Durham, North Carolina, next month, even if
Moogfest aims to bring an incredible experience to Durham, North Carolina, next month, even if
the state’s new law is fucking crazy.

The music line-up includes some of the most influential electronic musicians in history, as well as modern headliners like Grimes, GZA, and Explosions in the Sky. Check out more about the tunes here.

But their daytime program has bene finalized and it looks equally impressive. Check out details via Moogfest below:

The Moogfest Day-to-Night Journey

Evening headliners will participate in a range of daytime programs including master classes that take audiences deep inside the artist’s creative process, workshops, conversations, film screenings, and improvisational performances. Highlights include:

Musical experimentalist Laurie Anderson will be interviewed by Jana Hunter of Lower Dens.

GZA will discuss Time Traveling with Hip Hop in a conversation moderated by Duke University Professor of Black Popular Culture, Mark Anthony Neal.

Master Classes will be led by legendary producer and musician Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel), ambient house pioneers The Orb, and composer and producer Ben Frost with drone trailblazer Tim Hecker. The Orb will also host a screening of their film, Lunar Orbit. It will be the only screening with The Orb in attendance and in conversation.

Reggie Watts, Tyondai Braxton, Mykki Blanco will discuss Afrofuturism, which combines elements of science fiction, astral jazz, historical fiction, psychedelic hip hop, fantasy, and magic realism in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas but also to re-examine the historical events of the past.

Odesza will take apart one of the their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how it was made in a live recording of Song Exploder, the hit podcast hosted by Hirishikesh Hirway.

Claire Evans of YACHT will present ‘The Future is Unmanned,’ a condensed feminist history of the Internet, tracing the role of women from the human computers of the 19th century to the cyberfeminists who made videogames, hypertext novels, virtual reality projects, and non-narrative art pieces on websites and CD-ROMs before disappearing along with the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

Julia Holter and Empress Of will participate in live episodes of the No Effects podcast hosted by Jesse Cohen of Tanlines.

Mad Professor will host a Workshop on the History and Future of Dub and also join with Ras Kush, Tippy and Lister for Reggae Hacker Soundsystem, a conversation exploring the evolution of dub and home-made sound system culture, radiating outwards from its native Jamaica.

Pioneering synthesist Suzanne Ciani will perform in a four-hour-long experimental session with immersive visuals as part of the Durational series.

Conversations

The Future of Our Species
Cyborg artist Neil Harbisson joins Pau Riba, BJ Murphy, Rich Lee, and Daniel Lock to discuss how humans are taking an active part in their own biological evolution. By becoming technology, instead of using or wearing technology, humans are opening up the possibility of having additional organs and senses beyond the ones confined to our species.

Creating Music Tech with Kickstarter
Nick Yulman, curator of Kickstarter’s Design and Technology categories, will share some innovative music tech projects that have come to life with the help of the platform’s community, which allows instrument creators to test ideas and get feedback from music makers as part of an open development process.

“Technoshamanism: A Very Psychedelic Century!”
Paleo-ecologist turned multimedia performer Michael Garfield will take festival-goers on a playful, deep discussion on the new technologies that are dissolving boundary between the “made” and “born,” the “natural” and “artificial.” – and how the indigenous medicine traditions are just what are required to navigate this brave new digital society.

“Hyperinstruments: Opera of the Future Tod Machover (MIT Media Lab)”
Composer/inventor Tod Machover will describe the past, present and (potential) future of his Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab, showing Hyperinstruments for soloists and ensembles, responsive stage technologies that go beyond multimedia, large-scale collaborative systems that enable entire cities to create symphonies together, and musical tools and concepts that promote wellbeing, diagnose disease, and customize compositions to individual needs and desires.

Synth Instrument Pioneers
Explore the art of musical instrument design with some of the synthesizer industry’s most influential analog architects; past, present and future. This year’s featured luminaries are David Friend, co-founder of ARP; Tatsuya Takahashi, Korg’s Chief Engineer of Analog Synth Development; David Van Koevering, inventor of the Van Koevering Piano; and Cyril Lance, Chief Engineer of Moog Music.

———————-

Tickets for Moogfest 2016 are available for $249 (Festival Pass) and $499 (VIP Pass) at www.moogfest.com.

Brad Kutner

Brad Kutner

Brad Kutner is the former editor of GayRVA and RVAMag from 2013 - 2017. He’s now the Richmond Bureau Chief for Radio IQ, a state-wide NPR outlet based in Roanoke. You can reach him at BradKutnerNPR@gmail.com




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