So it was late on a Sunday evening, working at the ITP lab as usual. It was the last night of the New York Blipfestival (a four day festival of video-game inspired music & video), which I was likely to miss. At this point, Rui said something like “Why the **** are we in New York, if we are missing all this stuff?”, so I put away my wire strippers & LEDs and headed downtown.
Bubblyfish at work (click for more pix):
The festival was great! I saw acts by Saitone, Portalenz, Jeroen Tel, YMCK, Bubblyfish, Neil Voss and ITP’s own Tristan Perich. USK a.k.a. Portalenz, a young duo from Japan, put out some very powerful tunes using a collection of Nintendo Gameboys. Tristan played live drums to as an accompaniment to his 1-bit music circuit.
I was struck by how much genuine musical & performance talent was on display. Some acts, especially Portalenz, were playing their little Gameboys and hacked-up keyboards like electric guitars, jumping around on stage and generally putting on a show. (Other acts looked like they were checking their e-mail on stage.)
Visuals were also based on game imagery, and provided an interesting accompaniment to the music. However, they were overshadowed by the very bright LED wall behind the stage, which had it’s own imagery. I wonder if next time they’ll use a transparent display to have some extra effects come into play during the performances next time? The techie in me loves the thought of that. YMCK had their own visuals, coordinated across the video screen and the LED wall, worked very well.