Celebration: San Francisco Electronic Music Festival at 25

Hi everybody. Welcome, welcome to the Caret Auditorium. It's great to see you all. Um, thanks to our terrific media services team who are making this all happen. One of them who will join you on stage tonight, I believe. Um, I'm Michelle Jeffers. I'm the chief of community programs and partnerships at this library for another two weeks. And I'm delighted to have you here for dialogue and sound with the San Francisco Electronic Music Foundation as it celebrates 25 years. Um, before we begin tonight, let's begin with a land acknowledgement. Um, we do recognize that the land we are having our library on that we all live on is the unseated ancestral homeland of the Ramacho Shaloni people. We benefit from living and working on their land. And of course, we want to take a moment to pay our appreciation and respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of this community. Now, I'm just going to do a brief introduction, but I'm so delighted to get the chance to welcome to the stage tonight the magnificent Elizabeth Beard. Um, as you probably all know her from her work with the Electronic Music Foundation, but I know her and I'm fortunate to know her as the true imprario, I think I'm saying that right, of the night of ideas, our annual after hours takeover of the library with wild music and dancing and dancing on tables, but also debate and dialogue and important discussions about the future of San Francisco. And somehow Elizabeth makes it just magical with the amazing array of acts she brings into this event every spring. Um, a lot of electronic music comes in, but a lot of other kinds of music comes in as well. And she has really transformed um a library event into something that is a citywide celebration. So, I'm so happy to know her, to consider her my friend, and let me introduce her to the stage to welcome this event on. Thank you. [applause] Michelle, >> Michelle's the best boss ever, and I feel so lucky to have the job of curating performances for A Night of Ideas. It's kind of a a a crowning point for me with my career. I've been in San Francisco since 1990. I started out as a volunteer for Festival 2000 when I got off the plane and that was a very interesting experience. I don't know how many people in this room remember Festival 2000, but I think it's safe to say that we have the Cultural Equity Endowment for the San Francisco Arts Commission because of Festival 2000 and its unfortunate failure really. But but but the the end the cultural equity endowment is the the living uh tribute to festival 2000. Um I spent nine years running the lab and one of the things that I did at the lab from 1996 to 2005 was to uh offer the lab's nonprofit status as a fiscal sponsor for a variety of projects. Um, in 1999, Pamela Z and Mia Masoga came to me and said, "We're thinking of starting this San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and we think we'd like to try to get some grants and could the lab be the fiscal sponsor?" And I said, "That sounds great." So, we we were the fiscal sponsor for the first six years at the lab. And then I left the lab [laughter] and then they said, "Can we bring the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival to Circuit Network, the company that I moved over to work with in 2006." So I've been involved with the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival since the beginning and I've worked closely with many of the artists that are part of the steering committee and I myself am part of the steering committee at this point. But um I've had very close relationships with Pamela and with Mia. Mia did a lot of projects at the lab during my tenure there. She worked with bees. She worked with hissing Madagascar cockroaches. Um she did a lot of other stuff too. She worked with plants, with lasers. But anyway, um she is going to give a a brief keynote now. And I just want to introduce her by way of saying that she's an amazing artist. She's educated in San Francisco at San Francisco State and Mills College. She's had a lot of uh really great um honors in her career. She's had a lot of amazing performances. She's written symph symphonic music. She's performed bodybased performance art with really amazing sound. Um, she's Herb Albert award winner. She's a Guggenheim fellow. She's a Doris Duke awardee. Um, she had the Rome Prize uh in composition with the American Academy in Rome. Um, she's a Fulbright scholar. She's done a lot of things and right now she is the associate professor of uh and chair of the visual and sound art department at Columbia University in New York. So please welcome Mia Masaoka. [applause] [cheering] Thank you. Thank you Elizabeth for that very generous um introduction. So I am thrilled to be here at the 20th anniversary of the San SF EMF San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. Um because and I'm going to just talk uh in my seven minutes of a loted time of the origins of how I got this idea. And I slept on it for two nights before really thinking is this really a good idea because it seems like such a bold move to call yourself this to to call to make this organization. But on the other hand, there were so many creative artists that I knew and many of you are some of you are here in the audience. Pamela Z, um, Wobbly from Negative Land, um, Brenda Hutchinson who had really done had been doing and had done a lot of of really interesting creative work in the San Francisco Bay area. I had come out of Mills College, which has an amazing history with the San Francisco Tape Music um, center with Paulina Lever, Morton Subatnik, etc. who have since also participated in the festival. And you know u truth be told the Bay Area is this innovative place that spawned Hillet Packard you know jobs I mean there was before there was Silicon Valley there were all there was a whole culture of a do-it-yourself out in the west the wild west um my husband at the time worked for Dolby Labs so um I knew Dolby uh down the street and that was really one of the first innovations in audio technology that that was introduced into the cinema and became a worldwide kind of um a phenomenon. So, the Bay Area has been this real center for innovation and and there were so many um freelance independent artists. Woo! Look in the peas. Um in that I knew that I worked with and so and we didn't have any place to play. There was a San Francisco Jazz Festival. There are all these kinds of things. I had started something called the San Francisco Gagaku Society a few years back before this and we had I had gotten permission in Tokyo from the the Tokyo Gagaku Society to use the moniker name and also get discounts on the gagaku instruments like deep cuts and the prices. And it worked out really well because they kind of supported us in a certain way. And I knew that um that for to start something that I wanted to get Joel Chhattabe had invited me to perform at the New York Electronic Music Foundation, the EMF it was called. And so I thought, wow, you know, he's an individual who's an artist and he put together this foundation himself. Um and is it and I was just thinking and got his permission. And I said, "What if there was SF EMF? Would would that be okay with you? Would you give us your blessing? Could you support us the the idea of of of having a a music festival in San Francisco?" And he said, "Yeah, you should go for it." So, um, based on that and and then and pulling together just people that kind of was in my orbit, people I worked with that I was friends with like Pamela Z and Carl Stone and Dan Joseph, etc. uh um [clears throat] you know Ed Osborne who uh had done sound culture in 1995 and I I was curated into that and I was really impressed with that. So I really wanted to have him. There was also Chris Salter who was very active into uh internationally with a lot of intermedia kinds of projects and so pulling together a group of really diverse artists um and calling them up individually and then figuring out yeah we we would let's do this. let's come together, pull our resources. We had connections to Meer Sound, so we got free um you know, the best speakers in the world um due to some connections and put together. We had to originally pay to have to rent a few things like insurance and a place called Cellspace, which was in the neighborhood. And I remember finding what is this warehouse? We could maybe do it in this warehouse. And it was like on Bryant Street in the Mission District. And um but we still had to pay sales space and we still had to pay Myers Sounds insurance. So there were a few things, but everybody agreed to put in I think it was around $125 to to to put on the first festival. And um and it was really it really changed the landscape and I think I don't know do you have hands of anybody who was here around that time for the first festival? Yay. because it was so amazing and I think people just were so energized because it was so empowering to be able to put on a large festival similar to a lot of the festivals that were going on at the time um [clears throat] only we were doing it ourselves. it was artistrun and the fact um you know I think so much credit goes to the people who have kept it going for so many years and Pamela Z who will be on the panel here later with us um has really been an important figure supporting the um the festival year after year printing out the tickets and doing all these kinds of things that had to be done and Amy um who's also here has also been a very important figure and I'm sorry if I'm leaving Luchiano as well. Um, and I'm sorry if I'm leaving people out. I don't It's kind of dark in the audience, so I can't see everybody. But really, so much credit goes to y'all for keeping it going for more than 20 years. I forgot my champagne glasses, but I wanted to bring champagne and say congratulations SFMF for 25 years. So, if everyone could give applause. Um, so that being said, thank you so much for coming and for those of you who are on the steering committee, thank you so much for keeping it going and an Hegy who is also the new president. Um, so thank you so much for taking on that role. Um, what I don't know why you're laughing, but [laughter] okay, there's some backstory there. I'll hear about it over drinks later, but um, so uh, thanks again for coming. And with that, we'll continue on our way. Hide in a side alert. Alert I b I love the blue. That's the white one. Imagine it say go Hey, look. You look exactly hide. Need it. Safe. Safe. Come. Come. Come. Come. St. I thought you Merry Christmas. It's here. [music] Heat. Heat. Heat. >> [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] [music] I glory. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Morning. You are Where are you? [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [applause] >> So, I'm going to have our panelists come up. My name is Anne Hegy and I am not the president, but I am a steering me member of SFMF. But on the panel tonight, we have Pamela Z, we have Mia Masoka, we have Luchiano Chesa, and Quesa. I'm so sorry. I'm just gonna speak it like the Americans. Sorry. [laughter] >> And and can I just jump in to say that uh we just heard music from Jorge Bachmann. Thank you, Jorge. [applause] >> Yeah. So um I pre pres-scripted some questions um and just to kind of have an overview of the whole festival over these 25 years and many of the things that I think are quite beautiful about this festival. So Mia, you gave us a nice kind of it started it seems like it started as an idea from you and what happened when you spoke to Pamela Z about it? What was that conversation like about the beginning of this festival? Let's see. Um, testing check. Okay. Um, yeah, after sleeping on it for a couple nights and thinking, yeah, I called up some a number of friends, including Pamela, Carl Stone, um, to just send out feelers of like, what do you think? Do you think this would be a good idea? And I think everybody was very positive because one thing about electronic music is you need a sound system and you need a high quality sound system and you basically you can't do that single-handedly. You have to either rent it or find it. Even the transportation for the meer speakers and the insurance that we had to pay for, we uh even though we got the speakers for free, we still had to pay the transportation and insurance. And so we needed to pull our resources to do that. And so I think everyone was overwhelmingly positive but also a little nervous too. Well, I remember those first meetings and we met in the living room in Mia's home uh house uh just a few blocks from where I live now um on Hampshire and we all gathered in the living room and it was this amazing crew of people that Nia had talked into coming and and seeing if we could do this. And you're absolutely right. We were all very gung-ho about it, but we were also thinking like, you know, we don't have an organization behind us. We don't have any um sponsorship of any kind. So, it was like we all had to commit to well, for the first year or two, we're going to have to probably fund this thing as and do it. Um, and we actually, I'll say the first two years, well, the first year everyone on the committee performed on the festival because we didn't have money for artist fees. So, we performed and then we had I don't know remember how many other additional people that we brought in, but we paid artist fees to this couple of people who didn't realize they were the only ones getting paid [laughter] because they weren't on the, you know, they weren't on the committee. So we volunteered our time organizing it. We volunteered our time playing and um and doing everything else. And um but yeah, it was it was exciting time. >> And uh so what I one of the things I love about the festival is this kind of family of it. And it sounds like that was there from the beginning. this kind of sense of it being DIY and about the relationships within the people putting it together. Um, was that part of the construction of it that was it a thought that we want this to be kind of a community community gathering? Was that part of the seeds or >> Yeah, I think that um a community was a big impetus for it. Um also I was my orbit of friends and people I felt comfortable and I trusted >> and um it was we were also outside of the academic institution. So none of us h were on the payroll of faculty for an institution for a college or university. And so I think we felt a strong sense of kinship because we were freelancing. We were independent. We were writing grants left and right all the time for ourselves trying to make ends meet. trying to find sound systems, places to play, disappointed if we weren't invited to the latest festival that was going on and really happy if we got invited and we got like a $150 honorarium and you know it was just it was in there's so much creative people >> and we and yet there was not the institutional support and so we just created that >> we just in terms of the com the community thing I think one of the things that Mia really emphasized when she called us all up was, you know, the Bay Area is so alive with all of this and we need to make this festival about San Francisco. And we did >> from the very beginning, we would always invite one or two people from far away, but we tried, especially at first, to make the focus be Bay Area community. And um so a lot of the people who played on the festival and some of them really um groundbreaking artists like Alvin Curran >> um were on our first festivals but Alvin at that time I mean I think he had just stopped >> being at Mills I think and he wasn't he'd gone to Rome >> um >> he was splitting it with Pauline I think at that time >> he was splitting it with Pauline but um but when we invited him. He wasn't in San Francisco >> and um but we were trying to highlight this rather rich community of of very very creative um experimental artists. Well, and I think one of the things that I've seen in the curation is a commitment to people who are right at the beginning of their careers, people who are kind of longtime members of the electronic music community and people who are so you have this breadth of who is playing and almost a kind of generational expanse of what is showcased, but also in the genre of what is showcased as electronic music that you have things that are sculptural or installations versus dub versus all these different kinds of forms of electronic music. Was that kind of was there a thought at the beginning we want it to be broad and in this way or did it kind of grow into that over the years? Well, I I had [clears throat] been a graduate of Mills College, which as I mentioned before was where the San Francisco Tape Music Center was with the beginnings of tape music, electronic music, really seinal work in electronic music. And Mills College unfortunately is no longer. But in that time period, it was very rich. There were many, many interesting artists there. John Bishoff, Chris Brown doing Elvin Curin was a my composition teacher and um Dan Joseph who was also on the committee was a Mills grad alum. So just having that as kind of a a one of the the backdrops to what was happening was really um you know was really part of it because we were many of us were associated with Mills College or had come from there or had friends there and other than that it was um you know that was a real important institution even though we were not being hired as as faculty we were like students. >> Yeah. former students I should >> but I also I think that it's true that we wanted we wanted some diversity in approaches but what we were most interested in was focusing on all kinds of things but not on the things that we feel felt that the world was sort of oversaturated with. So, we didn't want to we didn't really want to feature like pop or or like dance music in a sort of like mainstream way. We didn't we weren't like anti-beats. We always had somebody on the festival that had beats, but it wasn't we didn't want the focus to like when we first started the festival, a lot of people who were more like a little bit less maybe um initiated to our our sort of world were sort of like, "Oh, well, like where's the dance floor?" Like they would come into [laughter] the festival and they'd see all these chairs and they'd be like, "What? Wait, what? Where's the dance floor? >> [laughter] >> we were like this isn't really a >> well you know that kind of festival [laughter] >> right I think that goes to this other point that at the time and we're talking about late 90s early 2000s when there was this genre called electronica that was coming through and everyone was talking about electronica and it was really more of a pop idea a pop kind of style of music genre etc that was more of a marketing tool that came out of the UK Okay. And it was it was it was it was very um it was not an art kind of music that we were making. And even though we weren't anti-beats, we were we liked rhythm and like liked to be open in terms and inclusive of people doing rhythmic music and loops and rhythmic etc. But electronica, which was kind of like a soft, easy listening dance music, was really different than what we were doing. And we were always calling ourselves electronic, electro acoustic musicians, composers. And then all of a sudden, we got overtaken in the press, in the media by something called electronica >> and they were using that term electronica. And remember, we were feeling, well, wait a minute, that's what we've kind of we've been doing that. Why are you calling yourselves that with the electronica like some kind of a Latin suffix and then it says something and we were a bit insulted also kind of losing our identity of what we did but not really being able to articulate it. M um well I was thinking Luchiano of your piece I think it was in 2022 or 2020 2022 and you installed in the lab these mechanisms maybe you can describe it a little bit but how and how because I think it gives an image of the broadness of electronic music in some ways because it was so acoustic in many ways >> certainly an an element that was acoustic also uh we decided to used the piano and me being a pianist uh thought that maybe that was a interesting direction to go. The piece however was really about uh being uh being exposed constantly throughout the length of the piece uh with this exercise of compare comparing the uh electronic sound together with uh uh sound produced in the moment which were obtained mechanically. So you were constantly uh comparing these two sources uh and uh you were as a audience member presumably uh kind of come to terms with how different they can be and how similar they can be and the subtle nuances in between the two. The piece was really about uh essentially this synoptical view of sound. Uh but you're right that you definitely had >> if I can jump in too. I thought one of the most fascinating things about that piece was that it was very difficult >> to differentiate sometimes like what was the source of these sounds >> and that to me was the magic of that piece. >> Oh well thank you. Thank you very much. And I thought the beauty of that piece in the space that you could sometimes see these things moving and this this piano in the center. But I was also felt that that piece explains a little bit about some of the complications with running the festival that I think you installed for most of the Friday maybe. >> Yeah. I mean it had to come down real fast. Um but but I think it it also I mean I benefited from the fact that I had many friends and they have studio space where I could actually borrow their competences. My boyfriend at the time had some mechanism that I can use and so I went in his studio and borrow some of the tools. I mean, you know, it was um it happened real fast, but I think the results were really good for the space where we were. You know, the room was basically square and I remember from the very beginning to think, well, what if we think in terms of quad, a quadrophonic environment and then try to make the piano to be the center of this space and the audience was basically all exposed in a kind of uniform way all around it. Yeah. So, but yeah, it was communal as well. That's for sure. >> Yeah. Well, and it was um so sometimes I think about the curation and we are often sometimes people I feel like people will ask well how does it get curated and who gets decided and how do we think about pairing and um so I thought we could take a moment to talk about what a year like what is the process like how how do we come up with this festival? >> Shall I just give a little outline of what actually happened? So, um, it it starts very soon after the festival finishes of the previous year. So, when we're done with the with with a festival, we give ourselves a beat to just catch our breaths. And then we start uh trying to get meetings together. And so, we've been doing this so long that um, you know, there wasn't Zoom when we first [laughter] when we first started doing SFVMF. So those meetings that we would call would be in me's living room or in my studio or you know but now in for the past six years [laughter] >> they've been >> they've been uh on Zoom but so we call our meeting we call our first meeting the first thing we have is we get everyone comes over to my studio and we have cocktails um and then we We start we make a Google doc and uh on that Google doc all of the people on the steering committee plus we have tentacles out in the field of people who are that we think of as really strong sort of advisory type people who have eyes and ears out there and we also call on them and we ask people to just contribute names to this Google Doc that they think would be great for the next festival. >> Mhm. >> And then it ends up being populated with so many names that we need to winnow it down. >> And um so then we then we start having meetings where we discuss the people that are on the list that we've we've mentioned. If we put them on the list, we sort of maybe make our case for like why we want them. And we also uh start having these rounds of voting between us, everybody that's on the steering committee. And um through that process, it take it this usually takes a couple months, >> you know. >> Yeah. There's usually a push and it and it accelerates when we start looking at oh my god, we're we're already running out of time. Um and we get it down to a list of who we think uh would be a you know a good strong list and we have discussions about various. So, at first it's just who do we like? And then later it's like who's good together. Like who we have so many like this? Let's make sure we have another one of these. And and then we um and we used to we used to make jokes about um so we used to make jokes about like having a good combination of knob twiddlers. We don't have so many knob twiddlers anymore. Now we have like trackpad strokers, but [laughter] But we say, "Okay, these are knob twiddlers, these are gesturers, >> these are um you know, modular people, you know, we would we would go and then, oh, these are people who combine acoustic instruments with processing so that there's live acoustic instruments on." And so we were always like, we want to like make sure that the festival has >> some like that each night is not all one kind of thing. Oh, these people use visuals. These people, this person is really strong with visuals and this person is, you know, wants to do their thing completely in the dark and wants to sit at the desk in the middle of the spa venue instead of being on the stage, you know. Um, and and so we go through and we sort of winnow it down and then >> and it's all through like discussions between us and then voting. we vote and then in the end when we come down to the final list who got most votes from us >> then we look at it and we say oh well now that we've got it down to this we realize we don't have anybody who's blah blah blah >> let's go back and look again and we go back and we shift it around and we finally come up with uh who we want and then we have to say who's going to be on what Right. And then that's a whole discussion and usually one or two of us will just take a run at it and make a program and send it to the group and we look at it and we say that's great except maybe you should switch so- and so with so- and so. And then uh in the end uh once we have all those names figured out then uh it goes to the the the president. No, [laughter] >> the president has to sign it. No, I'm just >> [laughter] >> Well, before too much time goes away, I just want to call attention to the fact that we have a very important scholar in our midsto of the futurist um movement of you know, one of the really important movements actually that has a relationship I think to electronic music festival and sound and kind of a perhaps obtuse or adjacent way but with your intonators etc. of of the futurists who really were creating the first kinds of uh maybe not electronic but analog physical movement, mechanical and mechanical kind of synthesis. uh really a a really important international movement that you can talk a few minutes about maybe that um 1906 it got published in the cover of Lemon the Manifesto of the Futurist which then within 24 hours was sent to Japan amazingly enough somehow some kind of the telegraph telegraphing and then it became on the front page of a Japanese newspaper that really influenced against the Japanese avanguard and create helped create the Japanese avang guard. So this futurist manifesto uh was so important and kind of goes along with some of the innovations that have that that have come along that we talked about in the Bay Area and being supported by the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. But just sitting having you sit here and not talk about that. I'm sorry. I have to I have to mention that because there is this relationship and maybe just a few if you can say a bit about that. >> Yeah, I mean this is this may be in fact the one of the main reason why uh I got in involved with the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and somebody invited me uh to become part uh part of the steering committee. It was specifically this research on early mechanical synthesis uh that uh that led me to say well this is I mean I feel very much at home. Uh the Bay Area also I should say it's a place of a lot of tinkering around sound and a lot of music uh instrument builder have been here historically if you will look at Harry P uh and uh and you know his his time in Salelito but also currently even. So I thought it was a a very natural uh connection there. And so my yeah my research one that me I was uh speaking about uh was also this the subject of a panel in one of the festival that we did I believe in 2015 or 2016. No it must have been yeah maybe in any case uh so I had uh the opportunity of talking about that as well. And so in a way the piece that both Pamelan and was referring to was yet again one more opportunity of considering the mechanical aspect of sound production and how the kind of mechanical synthesis uh you know would be regarded in this uh situation that I created that was really seen oral more than synoptical where you were actually hearing as I mentioned a moment ago uh both sound together. I think the the relationship and the differences becomes even more uh overt in the moment that you are offered to to perceive them kind of in the same sitting. So I I I think that maybe um one of the things that uh I feel is worthwhile mentioning. And then definitely yeah the the roller rulo Luigi Rousulo the inventor and the creator of this mechanical synthesizer that I devoted a book uh on uh is regarded definitely by many to be perhaps the beginning of our field. He introduces the possibilities of creating music with noises and noises are so much vital to I think our vocabulary as electronic musician. Uh and so the idea in fact of allowing audiences to consider that you can use that as building block for a composition for a serious composition was quite radical when the manifesto was published and it feels still now I think in many many ways and uh eventually of course the notion of noise became very political if we look at work so I mean but at the time when Russell was really considering that he was just thinking about a possible all development of music essentially not he rebuilt his orchestra for that purpose. >> Well I one of the other things I wanted to ask about Luchiano was this idea of expanding you have this connection with the Italian cultural institute and you've been such an important member on the steering committee with helping us connect with Italian artists who have come um and just what that has meant to the festival and to have that expansion. So at the time when I was invited to be part of the steering committee, I was also working at the conservatory in San Francisco, teaching there, but also I was working for the Italian cultural institute which is a foreign mission uh directly founded from the Italian government and the ministry of foreign affair. And the objective of having an institution like that in a place like San Francisco is to provide support to uh make Italian culture present in a specific uh geographical area. There there were at the time and until still are I guess six Italian cultural institutes in the in Northern America. No. Uh and one has been in San Francisco. So I was already producing concerts of Italian performers and they ranged the gamut from I don't know Chichilia Bartoi uh performing at uh cal performances and and so on but of course being a composer and interested in the his history I was mostly proposing to the director the various directors they changed it with three to five years uh mostly things connected to the music that I love contemporary music experimental music music, etc. And um the the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, I think it's really a very special creation. So, I have to actually be very uh I'm glad that you created it at some point in part also because it has, I think, this magical blend of communal experience, but also a very institutional name. And so this is what I uh kind of uh use as basically the main Trojan horse to use a very current metaphor to go basically to the uh director of the Italian cultural institute and said give us money and uh let's use this budget to add to the diversity of the curatorial possibilities. So essentially that was uh yeah because every director is different but every director that I work with wanted essentially something that will have the greatest visibility the greatest presence and so on. And I said well is the San Francisco contemporary music festival and look around Mia mentioned this the specificity of the Bay Area the proximity with Silicon Valley but also the the history of electronic music that had populated San Francisco. So I think those were all very valid argument uh to bring on the table in the relationship with this Italian institution and I'm glad to say that basically every single year we had some support. >> Yeah. And I would say that because of the this relationship that you had and now that we have um we're able to bring uh every year we've got an Italian that we can bring from Italy. Um whereas we normally wouldn't have the the budget for our budget is we're still all volunteer all artistrun organization and our budgets is really low. So, we struggle to just have fees for even the local artists that we don't want to insult people with the fee that we're offering them. Um, but then to bring somebody from afar, it really helps us that we have that. And we also have uh the for the last couple years now, we've been getting support from uh Villa Albertine to bring somebody French. >> So, that's helped us a lot too. And that international connection is so important because in addition to really local um aesthetics, local roots, but to also break out of provinciality into an international realm to bring in more ideas, more technology, more uh more, you know, international art influences. >> So, I'm going to bring it to a wrap-up, but I did want to ask a little bit. I know that a number of us studied at Mills and I'd really like to just see what what we think the impact of losing that program. So Mills College had um a graduate program in music that was quite expansive including electronic music u masters in composition, masters in improvisation and um what that might mean for the festival, that impact of losing the program, but also what role the festival plays in kind of grounding that community when there's no longer a physical space. And I'm wondering, >> well, I want to say that I feel like it it puts a heavier duty on us. I think because I think it's our duty and and some of the other organizations as well, other minds and all of these other things. I think we we all need to rally to um to help continue >> what we've lost at Mills through our festival and through other other things. So, in a way, I feel like it's it's it's kind of rallying the troops uh that when we're losing all of these art, we're losing all of these art institutions. It's not just Mills. It's >> CCAC, the Art Institute. Oh my god. Like, what is happening? So, um I feel really good. I think about like Mia calling a calling, you know, a handful of us up 25 years ago and 26 years ago because it took us we we basically had our first meetings in 1999 and then our first we finally were able to mount the festival in 2000. Um, but to think of her like having this kernel of an idea and having it spark and we're still here >> and all these other things are falling away. >> So, I feel like it's really important now for us to step up even more and not not recede, you know. >> Yeah. I mean, it's been devastating with the San Francisco Art Institute, California School of Arts and Crafts. Um, I can there's probably a few more. I mean, it's clearly this real corporate takeover and lack of government support for the arts. >> Um, lack of respect for artists and the arts that exist in other European countries, even though that's dwindling as well. But it's ironic because I think these in, you know, the San Francisco music electronic music festival was outside of these institutions and we would have never have guessed that they would die and that this would still be going on. I mean it's it's it's and you know on this thread budget bear bear string budget but it's just it's almost like what does it mean to be independent freelance really separate from institutional support and you can just keep going even though you're not getting this big support from corporations you can still ma manage >> yes I know >> here's for the independent freelancers >> yeah well and there is something to staying being so bare bones and very committed to a to a very clear mission that is manageable in I think um the festival has done an amazing job of being able to continue its mission. Um and this year we're expanding just slightly. So I did want to mention before we close that we are having um an event at Gray Area. It's our 25th anniversary gala celebration on August 22nd. Um this is open to everyone. Uh there are tickets that range over a many a broad range of pricings. And um Carl Stone will be performing. Um we have DJ uh Sly Ida. Um we have only now who's also known as Kosha Aurora. And then Luchiano, did you want to talk a little bit about the Raone Sender piece? >> Yeah. So since actually very pertinent since we you were talking about Mills and and now um what I'm about to say but uh among the performances on the August 22nd program there will be a piece by Rammon Sander Barlayon uh titled Desert Ambulance. The piece was written in 1964 and was part of the San Francisco tape music center uh performances. Um, so the piece is important for a variety of reasons, but feature featured a tape uh that Rammon uh produced using uh one channel in for the audience with the uh experimentation on the Chamberlain at uh an early uh tape based uh I guess sampler in for lack of a better uh word and also featured Paulinover on the accordion and voice and then a a mixed uh projection of of both filmed and slide by Tony Martin. Uh so we will recreate the piece on August 22nd. It's a a very special opportunity of seeing a piece that has been performed but uh not as frequently as one would wish. Uh so I'm I'm performing the accordion. I'm actually borrowing Rammon Sanders accordion. and uh performing the piece together with uh John Locker over there also part of the steering committee uh aka Mobly and then Sam Genovves with projection recreating uh the projection that Tony produced for the piece. The piece is an early example of multimedia uh performance and it has as an additional feature the fact that there isn't exactly score but the piece is also not improvised and the part that Pauline played each single time she performed the piece from 1964 to I I believe the last performance in 2008. Um, so the the the score is essentially Ramon's voice whispering on a tape uh that that Pauline listened on headphones and Ramon essentially shield the performer on the stage Pauline uh completely from the experience and uh but with the understanding of the structure of the piece and particularly the tape part that is a fixed media that is presented on the audience. So the audience get the of course the the light projection from ton from Tony uh Martin but at the same time he hears a mix of bas b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b basically the chamberling produced fixed media part and uh the performance produced with the accordion and voice which Pauline is uh had presented but following essentially a score on tape. There aren't really many pieces conceived like that. And you can immediately think if you if you think about exactly what the piece is what based on what I just said. I mean if if you and kind of consider just how poetic and inspirational even the setup already is for performances. And so if you have the opportunity, please come on August 22nd. It's our gala. we need your money because the festival we already said you know it's basically us volunteering and making it happen. So please come. >> Yeah. So um we wanted to share some a short compilation of video clips from 25 years at SFMF and panel's going to stay up here because we're going to talk about it right after it happens. >> Here we go. >> Let's crane our next The fall. The sloshing motion. The fall. The sloshing motion of the sound. [music] The air. The sloshing sound. The air. The sun. The air. The winds and the clouds. The sun and the winds. Please manage. Come on. [groaning] Heat. Heat. I love the beats. Are you the >> [music] [music] >> You got it. I want you to Woo! Woo! Woo! Did you Feel your heart. needless to go. [applause] you know, just in terms of fundraising for everyone, I just think there are literally hundreds of artists who have performed at the Electronic Music Festival over the 25 years and if you just going to every single one of them and saying, can you donate a minimum of like $50 because we etc. I just think that you know that people don't know maybe the struggling roots of everybody's a volunteer and that I think so many people have benefited in their lives and careers of performing here who have jobs with institutions or on the payroll of academia etc and are very successful musicians and I just think it's good to maybe hit them up you know [laughter] yes [gasps] I yeah I mean I when I watch this. I think it's just I remember so many of those performances and they were so moving. Um I mean it's uh I think it's such a special thing to every year look forward to this weekend where we get to see nine performances in three days by very unique voices. I don't know if um Yeah. So yes, I do think I do think people should donate for that. >> Well, I have to say that um in putting together that collage um it was so hard because uh they said, "Okay, make a five minute video." And I'm like, but I have 25 years of amazing things [laughter] and I don't want to do these tiny little short clips that are so short that you barely I don't you hate it when you get those emails and they put this thing that flashes so fast that you don't you can't see you by the time you want to see something it's already gone. So I I thought I'm just going to have to >> you know choose choose. So this is such a small sampling. >> Yeah. >> Of what has happened at this festival. >> Take questions now. Is that a good time? >> Well, I think we're going to do questions after the end of the performances. So I think the next thing we have is Amy um coming up for a performance >> and we Yeah. And there she is. And we I think sit because it will be her. Thank you. [applause] >> So, it's a we have a couple of just short performances and then we'll do the Q&A. [clears throat] And I'm um I'm I'm twiddling knobs today. I'll just I'm going to tilt this and kind of show you my knobs. >> [laughter] >> They're red and very lovely. So, >> that's right. Okay. You think you can bring up the the noise now? Yeah. [music] Wow. Wow. [screaming] Oh, [screaming] heat. >> [screaming] >> He doesn't be I need you. What am I? All right. Yo, yo. Just [music] [screaming] heat. Wow. [screaming] Wow. >> [music] [applause] >> So, we were now going to take some uh questions. Um, but I want to invite the panelists back up and I wanted to acknowledge Amy X Newberg uh for her performance. And yes, and the musicians are invited back up as well in case there are any questions for the musicians. Sam Genevese here. Awesome. Yeah. Does anyone have any questions for panelists, artists, musicians? >> Yeah. >> Uh, please wait for the mic. >> Oh, they're they're bringing a mic. >> There we go. >> I'm gonna >> Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Be brave and go first. I have a question about um performance versus presentation versus composition. >> Um our first performer um I loved it but in with modular which I'm into the the connection between gesture and what is happening is always vague >> and this is by necessity. You have he had it would have taken five six people you know. So I'm wondering like like you I I actually think that way it was very validating um was pretty clear what related to what. So I'm wondering what your all thoughts are about this. You know some are more performant than others. You know today's DJs don't perform at all hardly. They hardly even compose. Um >> I I have uh very strong thoughts about that. [laughter] >> Yay. Yes. >> So I >> as we all do >> my particular uh way of performing is extremely performative. Um I'm using my voice. I'm using live processing. I'm using gestural. All of the controllers I use are gestural. So you can always see uh sort of the source physical of what's happening. But I always say to people because I always get this comment um when people are in Q&As's like this, people always say, "Oh, you know what you do is so great because it's there's something to look at." And I just hate it when people are just sitting there behind their laptop and I don't have anything to look at. And my answer to that is this work is about sound. And so not every performance of sound has something nor should it to look at. You should be listening. And I think there's something really important about a room full of people being together when something is happening. Even if they can't see what's happening or they can see they can barely see what's happening, that isn't all it's not always the point. So I love work from all across the spectrum of people who are strong performers visually and people and people who are not strong performers visually. They just are like magnificent makers of sound. um to the extent I I I adore the um the San Francisco tape music festival where you go in and you come to a room and you sit and the lights go out and you listen in total darkness and you're really focused on the sound. And I think that that for some people's work that's the key. other people, myself, Amy, um many others, um have elements of their work where the visual part is part of the composition. And so I guess when I said I have strong feelings about it, my strong feeling is this. I don't want to see somebody adding visuals or movement or gesture um to their work because they think the audience expects it. I want people to put that into their work if that is a component of their work. But if their strong point is just making these incredible soundsscapes that um are made with very subtle gestures that are all hard or impossible to see, then that's what they should be doing. There's nothing worse than seeing some, you know, electronic musician on stage awkwardly gesturing or acting or throwing video up on the screen that could be just the screen saver because they think people need to see something. If you're going to put image up there, it should be work that rises to the same level of the quality of the sound that you're making. If it does not then just turn the lights off or just you know listen. Um so that's my feeling is that >> I have a slightly o alternate viewpoint which is over the 25 year period the aesthetic of what is revealed with wires and the transmission of sound and the sound source has drastically changed. And I'm talking about people um who wanted to hide the pedals or they wanted to hide the wires connecting to the gestural controllers. And it was all about hiding those wires. And that was a very strong aesthetic coming out of IRCOM of coming out of Paris, you know, one of the centers for electronic music. um coming out of a number of places, coming out of universities of hi of of hiding these wires and then things kind of swung in a different direction of it's actually interesting to see wires as a transmitter of sound and that actually sound is like a material that travels. Sound is a material element that is heard but it is also it it's in the form of waves. It has a materiality that can be felt, seen, heard, etc. So, and it kind of switches back and forth depending on what community it is that that I can almost say the years of when that switch happened and people getting heav he heavily criticized for showing the wires and then all of a sudden four years later they're showing the wires and or I remember people being saying well I'm so proud that I don't have pedals that I'm showing on stage. It's all done by a computer offstage in the wings. And this was a heavy very strong aesthetic of coming out of Paris, coming out of IRCOM and some other institutions. And then 10 years later, those same people are using visible pedals and not ashamed of showing the wires. So this relationship to the wires, I think, is interesting. Um, and also just thinking about sound as being like even early just hearing a sound in the back some far away, you don't know where the sound is coming from and thinking about that and the role of technology in terms of spatialization and how that has changed the way we've listened in the past 25 years and the way that we can make sound that's actually spatialized in very specific ways or Bluetooth or just so many things that exist now that didn't in terms of the reveal because artists are always thinking what do we reveal and what do we not reveal and this is part of the decision making as artists to figure out what do what is it we want to project or communicate to the listener and how much to reveal of that process and it's totally up to the artist and I totally respect it when artists choose one way or they choose another way because guaranteed they're going to change their mind in five years or 10 and no one stays the same, you know, everybody changes and so um I just think it's interesting to clock those changes and to just just to respect whatever stage that that whoever is in it and what that you know just in terms of the audience because the audience is also changing what they're receptive to and the perception of the sound which is this p it's just part of it's very different from the visual arts in the sense that it's so related to our physical body and our senses of what we hear. Um it you know so so yeah. [laughter] Yeah. I mean I think I just to just to follow up I was thinking about a performance I saw Amy X Newberg do in New York with um you had a person create with a lathe and you did live looping with vinyl records. I don't know if you remember this performance, but I got to see this performance. So, um, the risk of making the lathes, making the cuts just perfect and doing the loops just right on the record was so compelling [clears throat] to me. And that idea of sometimes when these things are hidden, you're not really aware of what is a risk or what isn't a risk. And so there's s there's questions of sound and visual, but there's also questions of performative risk, virtuosity, and all these things that I think are so particular to the performer about how they feel on stage, what they're willing to take a risk on, what they're willing to um kind of show the audience that it's about the person that's actually there making those choices. It's about the It's about how that artist works and their relationship to their work and what the focus is of their work. >> Because for some artists, the focus is really completely sonic. >> And for those people, it makes sense for them to just do whatever is physically necessary on stage to make that work happen. And then there are other people who the actual composition includes gesture >> or includes something visual. And so I just think there's room for all of that. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> And you were saying in the curation that you like to have a mix of that, right? You were Yeah. I was also thinking how all this uh debates have been uh just by uh bringing to this conversation the fact that uh um I don't know if you've seen and compare different pianists performing uh I I need to make this um you know suggestion because I think it's pertinent just recently I was comparing Vladimir Horovitz performing the same piece and then seeing Daniel Trionov playing the piece and there are two very different approaches on the keyboard I mean It is essentially inbound. You he is not moving and doesn't matter. Doesn't matter at all. And Tonov is putting up a show and that's fine. But the point is that it's not that one is better than the other, right? I mean, we love Trifonov because of all the sweat and all the movement. But we also adore Horovitz because all the gestures are really calibrated to get the maximum effect for this damn instrument, you know. And so the point again is that like we already assigned it, it's not that one is better than the other and there are different approaches for different people. It's what works for you. I think that is the way to go. >> Yeah. Maybe another question if we move. >> Yeah. >> Got the mic. If you've got a question, pop up your hand. Anybody where ah coming down? [clears throat] Yes. So, I was wondering if you could go into the backstory a little bit in terms of the history of the one performance with uh Don Bllo and I think I can't remember the other performers whether it was Trent Resner or >> Joe Devel. I don't recall. >> Cini. >> Okay. Right. >> Cini. >> Yeah. And um it was so great because Don was up there playing his instruments and they also had a 2E up there and all these harmonizers and everything. But they had this da speaking of visuals, they had this dance group with all these masks on and they were dancing all throughout the audience while this incredible music was going on. I was like blown away. So I was wondering if you could maybe uh it kind of goes on the heels of this question too. uh if you could speak to a a little bit about that and give any insights that you may recall. someone can get give the insights but also just to speak to Don Bula who was a very important inventor of the analog synthesizer the BLA synthesizer which pretty much along with the Sish really changed the world and how sound was created and Don Blucla was a a family friend and also he lived in the Berkeley Hills and um but very good question maybe you want to who was on the committee at that time Oh, well that's been a while. We were in Bravo, so it was somewhere in the middle. Um, and I can't remember what year it was. But that was a fantastic performance. And we were >> I think it's 2015, maybe. >> Yeah, something like that. Maybe even year it was earlier, I think. Um, >> Elizabeth is looking it up for us. She's um But yeah, no, that was that was just amazing. And There were so many things going on on stage and just as you were describing um there was a lot of movement. There was was that the performance where actually somebody cooked something on stage also? I think maybe popcorn was made. Popcorn was made [laughter] during that performance. Um, and I and I'm guessing and I'm thinking that the the uh the the little uh burner that it was on had had a PZO on it so that you could it was amplified. [laughter] But yeah, no, that was um a fine example of a San Francisco Electronic Music Festival evening that included a wide range of performative approaches. Um, and that was, you know, pretty stellar moment for us, I think, that night. >> And just to add to Don Bula's legacy, he made the synthesizer, but in addition to that, he invented the lightning, a number of MIDI controllers, um, which were really innovative. Also a piano, kind of a disclaimer where the piano had a camera that captured movement, the gestures of the fingers. Um and we have an early prototype of that. Uh he he made it very creative mind doing all kinds of things including theater including all these other gestural controllers, sensor driven instruments and of course the booklet synthesizer which has made its way into rock and roll and into mainstream media like nobody's business. a couple of things that he never actually put out because I saw the I because my friend Joel worked with him so I saw a couple of things. So there was one thing called the mitty titty [laughter] which was actually two kind of squeezable things that that [laughter] >> 2010 was the year that we had BLA >> which 2010 was that year that we had He was John, >> right? >> So talk about diversity of approaches and what those performances looked like. Think about John Ching and then and then that theatrical thing with BLO was was quite the thing. >> And John Chingin was the inventor of I want to say MIDI in 1974. Is that possible? He was >> FM synthesis. Yeah. FM. >> I mean Yeah. FM synthesis which is mindboggling. >> We got another question back here. >> Thank you. My question is for specifically uh the people whom we heard uh performing who are available right now which for Sam and and for Amy. Uh it's very interesting with acoustic instruments. The instruments themselves have not changed over the centuries really. A violin is still a violin. But what we think of as a violin sound is very different in the late 20th century than it was in the music of Brahms or in the music of Bach. Now the electronic music that we've had going on for close to a hundred years now because we can go back to the 20s and Leon Thurman and electronic synthesis that's based on the heterodining principle. We have tape music. We have other forms of electronic synthesis. And then we have it moving into computer music. And the medium keeps changing. The instrument keeps changing. The sound does not uh the sound tends to be pretty familiar over the decades. And I'm just curious number one if either the people who performed here have any sense of themselves as being a part of a historic development of a particular sound of music. Because as the medium keeps changing in electronic music, the sound does not basically it tends not to change. And so there is a sense of reinventing the wheel from generation to generation as the sound making instrument changes uh but the sound does not. Whereas in acoustic music, the instrument stays the same, but its sound truly does develop and change o over the decades and over the centuries. So, I'd be curious if both Amy and Sam could say if they have a sense of themselves as part of any kind of historic moment, if they are thinking at all in terms of music made by Richard Maxfield or or Egabarez or or or or House and or do they see or or Babbot or Subatnik or so forth or do they see themselves more as having working in an ahistorical manner and that they're confronting the sounds directly without any kind of historical precedent? or or or tight or or conceptualization keeping them afloat. >> Amy or Sam. >> Um yeah, I guess I want to disagree about this idea that the sound stays the same. Um, one of the one of the things that drew me to electronic music in the first place was the interestingness of the sound and um the the huge variety of sounds that one could get from one studio's worth of electronic instrument which at the at the time it was just kind of a lot of big things down in a basement studio that were they were fascinating to me and to me each one of them had its own thing. We had an FM synthesizer which has its own um very recognizable kind of voice you know um and then we had a bula we had a mog which which which also is very recognizable and makes synthesis in a whole different way. Um to me the legacy of those is always present in my mind when I'm doing electronic music because that's how I learned that's how I understood how sound travels through these processors and comes out the other end changed you know um and it went from kind of getting my hands on things and plugging things into things to later on going to these menudriven synthesizers which also had their once kind of um these like sampler-based synthesizers came into being where there were these sort of loaded up samples and then they were called presets and then you had the ability to make adjustments to the presets. Um, and they to me they had very distinctive personalities. These roll in synthesizers had these kind of airy tones that they were famous for. Um, and then you know later on it goes on and on. To me they're all very different from each other. So I guess I you know and then you know this of course is a kind of legacy thing going back to a very old-fashioned form of analog synthesizers. This is a super simple instrument with just two oscillators and two filters and then a bunch of different relationships between them. Um so yes so no and yes or yes and no perhaps is my answer. Yeah. >> Yeah. Good good answer. Good question. I I I think for me um I think you said something about the instruments staying the same. The guitar is basically a guitar. Piano is basically a piano. I I suppose my um frustration with electronic music is that all the instruments are different, right? The synthesizers are all going to have a different interface. Then once you get into software, uh you have very non-standard interfaces sometimes and you have someone who maybe had an art degree and is, you know, uh developing an interface that doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. And so, um, you're relearning all the time, you know, and I find that a little frustrating. Uh, but I guess it's just it's part of the deal. Yeah. Anybody else have time for one more? Anyone? Anyone? Going once. Going twice. >> Go right there. >> Where? Where? Where? >> Back. >> Directly >> back center. I I guess I'm curious about like when it comes to the relationship between the mainstream and audiences and it comes to what artists are interested in exploring. Um like in terms of electronic synthesis has become a pretty big part of popular music. um like and I'm curious like maybe what what you all think about the next development could be in terms of widespread recognition of like new concepts. Um I guess I'm interested in your experience with perhaps microonal artists. Um how that's been um having artists that are interested in new forms of tenality and how audiences respond to that and how that's been growing and evolving. Um yeah, that's what I'm curious about what um you all your opinion on that is and how you see that going on in the future. >> Well, I will I'll start with a comment about uh one thing that you said that um I think is so true is that uh you're talking about these this kind of instrumentation that goes from being only used by people in the avant guard basically to being something that's in mainstream pop music. And I feel like that the world has a history of that that things start with artists. They experiment with things. At first people tell them they're crazy and then over the years uh people mine what these artists are doing for their own things. And then it's like in the age of television and advertising and you know all you have all of these corporations that are now looking what are the experimental people doing and then they're grabbing that and they're put they're making their advertisements using these things and things that are now in very very you know uh top 40 whatever top 100 you know records are now modeling themselves after things that were once very up on guard. So I think that's um that's something that has happened throughout history is artists try things out. They they come up with really interesting and different ideas and they forge their own path and then slowly but surely it's it's like the gentrification thing, [laughter] right? you know, um so that um that's just a pattern I think that the world has of like looking to these very creative people for new ideas. Um the the other part of your question about where it could go next. Uh maybe I'll throw that to somebody else. Well, I think uh the thing on the everybody's talking about is AI and how artificial what with the possibilities of artificial intelligence, especially with electronic music or music that's not obviously like a vocalist like Taylor Swift singing that would be harder for AI to create. So in that sense I think um you know it could be not necessarily something to be afraid of or that it's necessarily going to be necessarily negative but that AI can be um can be another tool to be used manipulated treated etc for thinking about how sound gets created how music gets created and you know there's There's a lot to be talked about there in terms of machine learning that's being used in a lot of electronic digital music analysis of making making algorithms making music that is machine learning driven and also AIdriven. I mean I can comment ju just on the the very tail end of that and saying that so much of the music making is based on a relationship between the person producing something and the audience on the other on the other side and uh I think uh that because of that I the focus shouldn't simply be on envisioning what more can be produced but rather what more that will be produced uh can interact with an audience and producing something different now. So it's not so much what gets generated in other words for me at least but rather what uh the the correct question in my mind always has been whatever gets generated how will in the future interact with the receiving entity. And so because of that and because the focus is for me on the interactivity of what it is that gets generated uh it seems like that always can reserve new direction and new possibilities because there's always an interaction. I I I think the greatest question will be what will happen if in the receiving hand there is an audience of also a machine. I mean that's a potentially stimulating question and uh and because of that I mean I'll just leave it like that. I mean, but essentially just said that I think the focus should always be I think in this sharing of the space similarly to what Pamela said a moment ago about that the tape music festival you know the idea of being in the same space in that case in darkness so that the senses are projecting uh to receiving something that is in any case you know sound waves in the in the ether. >> Yeah. So I mean I think to wrap it up today first thank you for being here and for sharing this space with us. I do think there's something so special about the gathering that happens both with our festival with moments like this with our event on August 22nd. And so I wanted to just end by saying our festival this year is September 24th through 26th. That's Thursday through Saturday at the lab. Um, we have an incredible lineup including R. Rose and Emily Bhuton, Bleven Blechum, Paul Deirannes, the Gleaners, which is Leticia Tsunami and Matt Robu, Albert Yay, Stefan, Stefano Pilia, More Mother, Seth Kuitt, and Thomas Carnaki, which is Gregory Sharpen, Cheryl Leonard, and Gregory Hagen. Um, so thank you for joining us today, and we will see you hopefully on August 22nd. Thank you. >> [applause]