click on the picture above to see the flickr gallery

Last night we went to the Baryshnikov Arts Center for the awesome-tastic SonarSoundNewYork event as part of Catalan Days Festival. It was FREE and the entire building was open for a multi-level, multi-room celebration of new media installation and cutting edge electronica music performance. It was really fun!!

Above is a picture of my head on screen as part or Marcel-li Antunez‘ “Metamembrana”. Marcel-li, I found out, works with  La Fura dels Baus, the spectacular theater troupe from Barcelona, and this interactive piece had the same chaotic, fantastic, playful, macabre aesthetic. Go to the flickr gallery for more pix of the huge video screen, the interactive interface (patterned carpet trigger pedals, a birdhouse for screaming and pictures). What is it about Barcelona? One of my earliest “oh my god what the hell was that?!” theater moments was seeing Els Comediants’ Dimonis in Edinburgh in 1989 which was similarly spectacular and mind-blowing.

Then we wandered into Studio 6B for ReacTable (feat. Ikue Mori) where you could play a kind of abstract version of digital air hockey that triggered sounds and lights, projected onto a screen.

We spent some time tripping out to d.a.r.yl. and Prefuse 73 before wandering into Theater C to chill out to Fibla and Arbol‘s beautiful and haunting live soundtrack to the enigmatic Taiwanese film “Goodbye Dragon Inn” by Tsai Ming-Liang.

We wandered around some more as the placed continued to fill up to capacity and being the old codgers we are, left pretty early. I can only imagine the chaos that ensued with these hordes of young, beautiful, hip kids grooving to the sounds of the future!!

Which reminds me – Monday night I went to the ITP Spring showcase and saw a whole bunch of amazing stuff. You can download the book here. I love that ITP now refers to themselves as a “Center for the Recently Possible.” Too bad the show was only up for a day or two…

Okay – more to come! Happy Wednesday!