GridFest Monome Meetup Set For May 6-8 In Santa Fe (Details + A Rant)

GridFest, a monome meetup, is scheduled for May 6-8, 2011 in Santa Fe, New Mexico:

In the spirit of collaboration, as it is exemplified by artistic endeavor, the monome community is once again organizing a large scale event showcasing the broad spectrum of talent of monome users.

Artists from around North America will be attending and performing in a series of concerts and workshops to be held at Corazon and Santa Fe Complex. Funding for the festival is also community based: a Kickstarter Project has been created, seeking assistance in offsetting the cost of airfare, accommodations, venue rentals and promotions.

<rant>

But where the ladies at? Seriously.

Can an event like this really be “broad spectrum” without getting some women involved? The video promo makes the community look pretty homogenous.

This issue is in no way unique to GridFest. But the electronic music community is missing out, in a lot of different ways, by not getting more women involved in events like this. And this, unfortunately, is highlighted by the promo video.

Who created the most important open source DIY electronic music project of the last decade – the x0xb0x? It wasn’t a dude.

Again – I don’t mean to slight GridFest specifically, because it looks like it will be a cool event. But GridFest, and other meetups, could be that much cooler by attracting a broader audience.

</rant>

See below for the schedule of events below. There will be lots of monome performers, educational opportunities galore and even a workshop on building a monome clone.

Schedule:

  • Friday, May 6: Edison (San Francisco), Making the Noise (Boston), and Portable Sunsets (NYC) bring in the beats with live sets of original electronic music at Corazon. Darkseeker (Edmonton) will start off the night with a DJ set of mellow dubstep and Cigarette Operahouse (Toronto) will close with some mashed-up, electro beats. 8pm, @ Corazon, 401 S Guadalupe, 505-983-4559.
  • Saturday, May 7: Learn the basics of getting started with a monome at the Santa Fe Complex. Afterwards, presenters will discuss various techniques of monome integration with the music software, Ableton Live. Subsequently, monome artists will give short presentations on their setups and allow for hands on interaction with the devices. Performances follow by The Sweaty Caps (Los Angeles), Lokey/noiseflowr (Calgary/Edmonton), Watson (Santa Fe), Anenon (Los Angeles), TheAlphaNerd (Toronto), Cigarette Operahouse (Toronto), % (NYC), Altitude Sickness (Los Angeles). Workshops 1 – 6pm, Performances 8pm-130am, @ Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fria St, 505-216-7562.
  • Sunday, May 8: Learn to build a monome like device yourself at Santa Fe Complex. Denver based Mike Stacey (Circle Six) will be leading a four hour workshop where you will learn how to create an arduinome (monome clone). All parts will be supplied, including custom enclosures for the devices and participants will leave with a fully functional grid controller. 2 – 6pm,@ Santa Fe Complex.

Details at the GridFest site.

10 thoughts on “GridFest Monome Meetup Set For May 6-8 In Santa Fe (Details + A Rant)

  1. i dont think it too fair to compare the xoxBox to something like that monome i mean ones a 303 clones and the other one is open source midi device that you can program to do alot different things
    ….but i totally agree with getting to be a more open social event i deff dont fall asleep with my monome in my bed lol

  2. Sorry. The x0xb0x was designed by a dude.

    To quote Ladyada.net, "Our crazy German engineer obsessed over EVERY GODDAMN THING in this synth to make sure it was perfect. We sourced all of the original transistors and op-amps, even though it took months of harrassing people on the phone. Just deciding on which potentiometers to go with took three solid weeks of searching through catalogs. (Its a good thing he's unemployed or he would have been fired for not leaving the house)."

  3. yes,its true, electronics/science/math/anything nerdy has been a male dominated circle. monome is brian and his partner kelli so there is some feminine influence there. paradigms can shift slowly and this appears to be one of those examples. we hope to have a broad spectrum of attendees and hopefully get some women interested in building one!

  4. given that this whole community is based on individual participation, i'm not sure how to attribute the admitted lack of women. There are females with monomes, but they haven't decided to attend. Our community has always been quite firm against any sexism that has been posted, I trust that the lack of participation is not due to exclusion…everyone is more than welcome to attend…

  5. Funny you should say that… if we get the funding I was planning on splitting the costs with my girlfriend so she could come along 😛

  6. heh, I'm using it as a "boys weekend" away from my wife, myself :P. But its a good point the author makes, I know there are several female monome-ists, its unfortunate they can't make it out to the event. Then again, the event was mostly planned via the monome forum and other social media, and not everybody is as religious about checking it as I am… maybe over the next week with more exposure we'll get a bit more interest…

Leave a Reply to Thealphanerd Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *