Music and Art at Macworld Expo
Last week, as I do nearly every year, I attended Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Though the show had much less emphasis on desktop computing than in the past (reflected in its rebranding as "Macworld | iWorld"), my primary interest in attending was to attend some great musical performances. At last year's Expo I was introduced to the awesome Zoë Keating and Jonathan Mann, so I had high hopes for this year as well.
I had an Exhibits Only pass, so most of the presentations I attended were on the Midway, which was open to all attendees. Here playing a Godin MIDI guitar is Sal Soghoian, best known as product manager of AppleScript, but also an avid jazz musician. He used the MainStage module in Apple's Logic program to tune the guitar strings to sound like different instruments, so that he could, for example, play bass and piano at the same time. Very cool.
This ensemble from the Berklee College of Music, Mashine Music, also made creative use of digital music technology. David Mash, a senior vice president at Berklee, at one point played a guitar-iPad hybrid instrument.
Also on the Midway, musician and educator Marilyn Miller entertained with The Marilyn & Mac Show, featuring lighthearted parody songs mostly written by David Pogue. Her Macintalk-voiced companion occasionally chimed in with his opinions.
Back on the expo floor, this artist painted very quickly, to musical accompaniment. The end result caught many in the audience by surprise, despite the hint in that he painted this work to "Candle in the Wind". Elapsed time from start to finish: four minutes.
Meanwhile, over on the Macworld Live stage, Super Art Fight matched pairs of artists in a battle to illustrate chosen themes, occasionally trading places and also taking input from the viewing audience. Normally done on canvases, this competition for the first time used graphic tablets attached to laptops, with the drawings projected on a screen next to the stage.
Finally, this subject has nothing directly to do with music nor art, but did catch my attention when I first entered the Expo. Vendor PolkAudio employed elite athletes, a trampoline jumper and a ski jumper, to illustrate how well their sports headphones fit even under extreme conditions. (So I suppose there's a music connection after all...)
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