Spark Festival - Rock Music Paper

Steve Nalepa flew the redeye out from LA and arrived at the Holiday Inn around 07:00. Let him get an hour of sleep before we headed off to get breakfast at the Hard Times Cafe. Headed over to Ferguson Hall in time to catch the end of Megan England’s talk about Second Life. Duncan and I were up next with “Rock Music”. Started out with a brief intro and Rock Star. Continued along with the work of T. Townsend Brown with petrovoltaics and touched a bit on Cleve Backster’s work with plants before getting into Gordon Salisbury’s work at Duncan’s studio. The talk was well received and garnered some interesting questions afterwards.

We skipped the afternoon concert to go and check out some of the Minneapolis museum scene. First we found the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting in an industrial park. The building was stuffed with all manner of early telegraphy, wireless, radio and TV electronics. It seemed more geared to school groups, with several “working” radio control booths and large scale demonstration rooms. The main hall full of electronics was breathtaking.

Next up was The Bakken, A Library and Museum of Electricity in Life. There were a handful of exhibits of electricity throughout a beautiful mansion on the shore of Lake Calhoun. The real prize was a visit to the vault to look at the few radionics devices that were in the open and some interesting devices from Dr. Otto H. Schmitt. The librarian, Elizabeth Ihrig, was incredibly kind and showed us around even through we turned up without an appointment.

We came back over to the university to catch Gregory Taylor and Andrew Pask show a sneak preview of Max/MSP 5. Ran into Ali Momeni on the way to Hard Times Cafe and took a detour through the installations. Headed over to The Whole for a super inspirational talk by Richard Devine about his influences and career.