MOOGFEST 2016 UNVEILS AMBITIOUS DAYTIME PROGRAM
OF CONVERSATIONS, WORKSHOPS, MASTERCLASSES AND FILM SCREENINGS LED BY ARTISTS + TECHNOLOGISTS INCLUDING LAURIE ANDERSON, GZA, DANIEL LANOIS, THE ORB AND REGGIE WATTS

Four-day festival explores new technologies pushing the boundaries of creative expression to take place in Durham, North Carolina from May 19-22
 

Durham, North Carolina (March 23, 2016) – Moogfest 2016 today unveiled an ambitious daytime lineup of events that features many musical artists, including Laurie Anderson, GZA, and Daniel Lanois, leading master classes, workshops, and conversations that explore the technologies, innovations, and ideas that make the festival’s cutting-edge evening performances possible.

To celebrate the legacy of Bob Moog, an engineer who worked in partnership with artists to invent new creative tools, Moogfest reimagines the tech conference and music festival by taking the best of both formats to create a completely new type of experience. Hailed as “a sci-fi dance party with a Ph.D. in STEM” by The New York Times, Moogfest 2016 will gather more than 250 technologists, musicians, and artists -- from Grimes and Gary Numan to Jaron Lanier and Dr. Martine Rothblatt -- to explore new technologies that are pushing the boundaries of creative expression. For the first time, Moogfest will take place in Durham, North Carolina, named one the hottest cities for tech in 2016 by Business Insider, and just a few hours from the employee-owned Moog Music factory in Asheville.

Reflecting its role as an incubator for experimentation across technology, art, and music, Moogfest enlisted The Haxan Cloak and Smashing Boxes, a Durham-based digital design firm, to collaborate on turning the Moogfest website into instrument. Dubbed “_substrate”, it allows fans to manipulate individual audio tracks by swiping, tapping, and clicking the screen, resulting in a totally unique audio and 3D visual experience for each user. The experience launches with a remix by The Haxan Cloak (Moses Sumney’s cover of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”), and will expand in the coming months to feature other Moogfest artists. 

Watch the tutorial on how to use _substrate HERE.



Tickets for Moogfest 2016 are available for $249 (Festival Pass) and $499 (VIP Pass) at www.moogfest.com. Exact times, dates, and locations of all daytime events will be announced on March 31st.

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.

Workshops

• Virtual Reality Prototyping with North Carolina State University
  NCSU’s Derek Ham and Helen Armstrong will lead a hands-on workshop on Virtual Reality where participants will prototype content using a simple physical kit and then experience their designs in 3D using an Oculus Rift.

• Sonifying Data with Gray Area
  Participants will break past the limits of the eye and explore alternative methods of visualizing data to discover other methods of perception that can be used to enhance and augment our ability to present data.

• Video Synthesis + Collaboration with Undervolt & Co
  Undervolt & Co., the independent online artist-run distributor of time-based art, leads a collaborative video-making workshop providing participants with the opportunity to learn the basics of modular analog video synthesizers in a creative play space.

• Interspecies Collaboration with Data Garden
  Participants will be invited to explore music generated from plants’ communication with virtual synths and sample based environments while Data Garden artists share new software they’re developing to produce bio-generated digital art.

• Hypnotique Sceance
  The Church of Space in association with Poèmes Électroniques, will guide participants to explore modern magic theory, based on the latest research in brain science and quantum mechanics, by entering a mild state of trance via audio and visual stimulation.

• Music In The Brain’ with Duke Institute for Brain Sciences
  Explore the effects of music on brain structure and function in this workshop that will highlight the intersection between artistic and scientific perspectives on this fundamental and aesthetic form of human expression.

Film Fest

• “Future Projections: Memories of the Space Age”
  Future Projections is a 9-part screening program of short film and video work drawn from 125 years of techno-prophecy and oracular future-visions. Curated by Ben Russell, including Adam Beckett, Barbara Hammer, Beatrice Gibson, Ben Rivers, Cauleen Smith, Chris Marker, Deborah Stratman, Fernand Léger, Harun Farocki, JJ Murphy, Jesse McLean, Louis Henderson, Making Takashi, Michael Robinson, Mike Stoltz, OJOBOCA, Peter Burr, Rachel Rose, Rosa Barba, Rose Lowder, Sara Magenheimer, Scott Bartlett, Shambhavi Kaul, Shirley Clarke, Tony Conrad, Yuri Ancarani

• "The Three Grace(s) triptych" Screening and live score by ADULT
  Detroit electronic duo ADULT will be presenting a unique presentation of original film and live soundtrack performance. The Three Grace(s) triptych chronicles the two year affair of artists/musicians Nicola Kuperus & Adam Lee Miller.

• “Crocodile Gennadiy” Screening and Q&A
  The documentary, featuring a score by The Haxan Cloak and Academy Award-winner Atticus Ross (The Social Network), will be screened and followed by a conversation with The Haxan Cloak and musician Leopold Ross.

• “The Silence”/”Gagglebox”/”Zombies 1985” Screening with Live Score by I Speak Machine
  I Speak Machine (vocalist and synth-nerd Tara Busch and filmmaker Maf Lewis) create brooding soundtracks for horror/sci-fi films. Busch will play the score live, on vocals and an array of analog synths.

• "It Follows" Screening and Q&A with composer Disasterpeace
  The acclaimed horror film “It Follows” took the 2014 Cannes Film Festival by storm and went on to exceed all expectations at the box office in 2015. Following the screening, Disasterpeace, the composer of the film, will discuss the background and inner workings of the score.

About Moogfest

Moogfest is the synthesis of music, art, and technology. Since 2004, Moogfest has brought together artists, futurist thinkers, inventors, entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, scientists, and musicians. By day, Moogfest is a platform for conversation and experimentation. By night, Moogfest presents cutting-edge music in venues throughout the city. This mind-expanding conference attracts creative and technology enthusiasts for three days of participatory programming in Durham, North Carolina. Performing artists include early pioneers in electronic music, alongside pop and avant-garde experimentalists of today.

Find more about Moogfest at:

●       Moogfest website
●       Moogfest tickets
●       Moogfest YouTube
●       Moogfest Facebook
●       Moogfest Soundcloud
●       Moogfest Twitter
●       Moogfest Instagram

Tickets:

Festival Pass $249
General Admission for the duration of the event, May 19-22. Access to all festival venues for performances and conference programming: conversations, workshops, and installations.

VIP Festival Pass $499
VIP access for the duration of the event, May 19-22. *Priority access to all festival venues for performances and conference programming: conversations, workshops, and installations. Access to exclusive VIP viewing areas and VIP/artist events. Gift bag. Complimentary food and drink in select locations. Special merch deals. More perks to be announced.
*Subject to capacity and based on first come first served

Engineer VIP $1,000 - SOLD OUT!
This two-day synth-building workshop, led by Moog engineers, invites a select group of enthusiasts to build their very own unreleased Moog analog synthesizer and sequencer. The hands-on workshop is conducted in two, three-hour sessions within a pop-up Moog production facility. No experience necessary, but basic soldering knowledge is recommended. Participants in the Engineering workshop also have VIP access for the duration of the event, May 19-22.  *Priority access to all festival venues for performances and conference programming: conversations, workshops, and installations. Access to exclusive VIP viewing areas and VIP/artist events. Gift bag. Complimentary food and drink in select locations. Passes available for pick-up at your hotel. Special merch deals. More perks to be announced. *Subject to capacity and based on first come first served

All prices exclusive of applicable fees.

*Complete alphabetized list of talent below.

Submit Media Applications

A growing list of participants include: Aaron Soloway, Actress, Adam Florin,  ADULT., Afrikan Sciences, Alessandro Cortini, Alexander Randon, Amos Gaynes, Andrew Benson, Andrew Kilpatrick, Angus Taylor, Anna Friz, Antenes, Arthur Russell’s Instrumentals, AUDINT, Basma Alsharif, Ben Frost, Ben Knapp, Ben Russell, Bicep, The Black Madonna, Blazer Soundsystem, Blood Orange, Bob Moses, The Body, Bootsy Collins, Burton Rast, CFCF, Christian Rich, Chuck Lightning, Claire Evans, Cyril Lance, Cullen Miller, Daniel Bachman, Daniel Lanois, Daniel Lock, Darwin, Dave Rife & Gabe Liberti, Dave Tompkins, David Friend, David Katz, David Van Koevering, Dawn of Midi, Dawn Richard, Daye Jack, Demo Taped, Denzel Curry, Derek Ham, Disasterpeace, DJ Harvey, DJ Lance Rock & Yo Gabba Gabba, DJ Nanny Cantaloupe, Dorit Chrysler, Dr Blankenstein, Earthly, Eban Crawford and Christina Cucurullo, Ed Bear, EMA, Emma Coats, Empress Of, Explosions in the Sky, Eyes Low, The Forge, Floating Point, Floating Points, Gary Numan, Gil Weinberg & Shimon, Germick Brothers, Ghostdad, Greg Fox, Grimes, Grouper, Gwenno, GZA, Hanz, The Haxan Cloak, Health, Heathered Pearls, Helen Armstrong, Hieroglyphic Being, Hundred Waters, I Speak Machine, Ivica Ico Bukvic, Jaakko Eino Kalevi, Jana Hunter, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Kolar, Jlin, Joe Patitucci, Joel Ford, John Keston, Jon Shapiro, Jonathan Dinu, Julia Holter, Julia Kaganskiy,  Julianna Barwick, Justin Grotelueschen, Kaitlin Prest, Karen Gwyer, Kate Stone, King Mez, Kode9 x Lawrence Lek, Kristen Gallerneaux, Kyle Hall, Kyle McDonald, Larry Gus, Laurel Halo, Laurent “Tippy” Alfred, Laurie Anderson, Leopold Ross, Lister Hewan-Lowe, Lotic, Luisa Pereira, Lunice, M. Geddes Gengras, Mac McCaughan, Mad Professor, Made of Oak, Manuel Clement, Marc Fleury, Mark Anthony Neal, Mark Mothersbaugh, Martin Brooke, Dr. Martine Rothblatt, Matt Werth, Matthew Ganacheau, May Weinstein, Michael Garfield, Miike Snow, Mike Butera, Modular on the Spot, Moon Ribas, Morton Subotnik, Moses Sumney, Mykki Blanco, Neil Harbisson, Nick Yulman, No Effects with Jesse Cohen, ODESZA, Olivia Block, Oneohtrix Point Never, Onyx Ashanti, The Orb, Patricia, Patrick Buchanan, Patrick McDermott, Pau Riba, Paula Temple, Peter Hyer, Pierce Freelon, Professor Toon, Qrion, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Rabit, The Range, Ranjit Bhatnagar, RBTS Win, Rea McNamara, Reggie Watts, Rich Lee, Richard Smith, Rival Consoles, Robert Hood, Robert Rich, Ryan Germick, Ryan Hemsworth, Sam Aaron, Sam Conran, Sarah Davachi, Scott McCloud, Shallou, Shani Aviram, Sharon Mashihi, Sheba Love, Silver Apples, Skepta, Son Lux, Song Exploder with Hrishikesh Hirway, Stephi Duckula, Steven A. Cummer,  Steve Dunnington, sunn O))), Susan Kare, Suzanne Ciani, Tatsuya Takahashi,  tAz Arnold, Tim Hecker, Tlacael Esparza, Toby Heys, Tobias Overath, Phd, Tod Machover, Tory Lanez, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Trandle, Tyondai Braxton, Uli Sigg, UV boi, Van Partible, Veronica Vasicka, Via App, Well$, YACHT, Yuri Suzuki, Zombi

Check out our first and second press releases for more on Moogfest's lineup.