So finally some time to write a decent entry:

STEIM was invited as special guest to the Spark festival in Minneapolis, USA. Takuro Mizuta Lippit, Joel Ryan and Robert van Heumen performed concerts, and held keynote lectures.

The festival took place around the University of Minesota campus, so all venues and lecture spaces were walking distance. A new aquisition this year was the Bedlam Theater, where most of the evening and late night concerts took place - a very intimate space, but still big enough to fit quite a crowd. Speaking of crowds, it was amazing how the organizers managed to get such large audiences interested in experimental music. Although Pole’s dance music probably helped…

The festival was a nice mix between academic lectures and presentations, installations, social events (Ali Momeni showing groups of visitors around the Fine Arts building), performances and meals ;) Some of the highlights:

• Jeff Lubow from CNMAT: improv with Monomachine & Machinedrum, skipping beats, beautiful sounds


• David Bithell (UNT Texas) & Ali Momeni (UMN Minneapolis) performed their piece Liminal surface: moving around wooden blocks on contact mic’d surface, totally choreographed and fast, very musical and theatrical


• Alison Ogden (Louisville KY)’s piece Attabi: clarinet & electronics in balance, nice and dissonant, very much sound-based as opposed to a lot of pieces at the festival that were more traditional


• Krzysztof Wolek (Louisville KY) & Alison Ogden: improv ambient with nice soundfields;  too bad they were hiding behind their laptops


• Ted Coffey’s piece Blue Cycle Noise; guided by a text about noise which was projected in a nice way, with good vocal processing and ‘noise’ sounds


• Lorenzo Bianchi (sound) and Michele di Stefano (choreography) Comfort: interesting to see a modern dance piece at a festival like this - great piece, very good dancers, music and movement went well together

Some photographs.