Festival Preview

Not such a long time ago, San Francisco became a culturally vibrant hotspot for art and life. In the '60s, the city's resident hippies and acid trippers began to put on large-scale music, art and light festivals in the amphitheatres and venues in the famed Haight-Ashbury district. People could experience bands like the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane in a haze of colorful light and strange artistic installations that came together in a rainbow of psychedelic euphoria.

The concerts and music shows of today almost seem pale and uninspired when compared to such descriptions of the cross-genre brilliance exuded by the San Francisco night. But this weekend, Performing Arts Technology and Music junior Robert Lester and his cavalcade of big plans might surprise you if you stop by the Sync '06 Digital Art and Music Festival to be held at the Duderstadt Center on North Campus.

Though you may have never heard of it, Lester said, "Sync has been happening for a few years. We're kind of trying to bring (it) back."

After peripheral involvement with Sync's precursor, Entity, Lester expressed a desire to become more involved.

"I thought it was an important thing to continue and have happen in Ann Arbor because it showcased a lot of interesting work which really benefited from a sort of centralized exhibition," he said.

During the summer, Lester was asked if he would be interested in taking charge of Sync '06 as its co-curator.

The schedule of events for the festival is comprised of a gallery component and a performance component. The gallery will be open until Friday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Duderstadt Center, and will feature work by David Holtek, Leslie Sobel, Margaret Parker and others. The artwork has many starting points and is inspired by biological, spiritual and hallucinatory elements.

"Almost every performance that is happening at Sync features live visuals with live music or with live dancers. I think it's safe to say that one of the themes for Sync this year is a kind of interdisciplinary, collaborative spirit," Lester said.

Tonight, DorkBot.Detroit, a collective of artists, students, designers and engineers, will give a performance that includes analog electronics and visual components. Also tonight, Jeff Karloski will use everyday objects and familiar experience as a starting point and move his performance from there. Finally, Chris Landau will present "The Flocking Party," a multifaceted narrative set in the near future.

The Digital Music Ensemble, directed by Steve Rush, will perform Friday with improvised dance accompaniment. Attendees can expect everything from electronics and video to toys and interpretive dance. Saturday, The Earthwurms will give audiences a taste of live-video theater that includes scratched and dubbed remixes set to improvised electro-acoustic music.

The icing on the electro-tech cake is that all the events are free and open to the public. "I think that has always been central to the Sync legacy," Lester said of the festival's free admission.

Large, multi-component shows like Sync '06 can continue thanks to the year to year interests of patrons. "What Sync '06 is trying to create is an event that is going to create a buzz about inter-media art and multimedia performance art," Lester said, "something that we can regenerate a lot of interest in."

While the tripped-out light, art and music shows of the '60s have completely given way to more separatist events like art gallery openings, laser-light shows and music concerts that all function independently, the curators of Sync understand the kind of ideas the San Francisco community was discovering in their time. They've actively tried to create a point of union between art and technology.

"Sync comes from a contemporary idea that the visual can be attached to the sonic on a more foundational level," Lester said. "You can create works of art that dabble in both worlds to say something that is far more comprehensive."

Sync '06 Digital Arts and Music Festival
Tonight, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.
Free

At the Duderstadt