Two cool dudes before Floor van de Velde and Elaine Buckholtz’s Giant Leap.

 

The San Francisco’s Electronic Music Festival began a five-night run of music art and performances on Wednesday night at Million Fishes Gallery. The exhibit features art and sound instillations that create an enjoyable ambiance—like being in the home of a gentle eccentric who dabbles in Zen practice. Floor van de Velde and Elaine Buckholtz’s Giant Leap is a sweet and timely tribute to Neil Armstrong that successfully employs participatory art’s best lures: a TV screen, accessories (3-D glasses), and something to do with your hands (hold the receiver of a rotary phone.) Dan Good’s Artificial Lung rises and falls by a stereo speaker running at an inaudible 1 to 2 Hertz. Artificial Lung is gentle and sentient, kind of like an alien pet.

 

The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival will host art and sound installations through Sunday, September 9. Tonight’s (Thursday) performance at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Wattis Theater is a part of the festival’s line-up as well as SFMoMA’s month of John Cage Centurary Events. Posthumous birthday celebrations are inherently weird, but marking what would have been John Cage’s 100th birthday with performances of his works and those he inspired is just as good an excuse as any. If your celebration of John Cage’s legacy on his birthday—yesterday, September 5—was insufficient, buy a ticket now for performances of his work at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art tonight. Daniel Steffy and Christina Stanly will perform Fontana Mix, an assembled score of pages of transparencies and Aria, a score written with wiggly lines that visualize changes in pitch and colored for interpretation of the timbre left up to the performer. sfSoundgroup will perform 4’3’’ for laptops which, though it’s a part of his “greatest hits,” is worth getting excited about. Finally, mariachi musicians will perform Variations #2.

 

-Kendall George

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15xkowPEPg

John Cage’s Aria (Fontana Mix), performed by Cathy Berberian

 

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 151 Third Street, September 6 at 7 p.m.-8:45 p.m., $10 general admission performance pre-sale, http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/events/2173

 

San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Thursday-Sunday, September 6-9, tickets and information at http://www.sfemf.org/

 

Millions of Fishes, 2501 Bryant Street (@ 23rd Street), Friday-Sunday, September 7-9 from 3:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m., http://millionfishes.com/