Art fest breaks sound barriers

If there was a recurring motif at last weekend’s CEAIT (Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology) festival at Cal Arts, it had to be the illuminated, compromised apple on the many Macintosh laptops on hand, a tool of choice for many of today’s experimental musicians.

And, because tools and conventions are made to be broken in the experimental scene, we could have expected the presence of a rebel like the artist known as Bob Bellerue/halfnormal.

Roving around Roy O. Disney Hall, Bellerue/halfnormal manipulated his laptop in strange ways for his piece “out of the box,” using only its tiny microphone to produce maelstroms of distorted and feedback-smothered sound.

At one point, he emphasized the transformation of a laptop into a physical instrument by using a bow on the laptop lid, to squealing effect. The end result was more guerrilla theater than inspired content, but it was the conceptual thought that counted.

In its sixth edition, the CEAIT festival -- officially the Festival of Electronics Music and Media -- was consistently provocative enough to perpetuate its status as an important new contender in the international network of multimedia experimental festivals.

One sign of success is its very diversity and stylistic elusiveness: Summary descriptions of what it actually is won’t suffice. The festival, and the music within, comprise a work innately in progress.

Digitally generated material was a norm here, but there were intriguing exceptions. Tom Heasley’s mesmerizing bit of loop-based, ambient tuba playing brought an ethereal beauty from the underrated instrument.

The Chinese hammer dulcimer called the yangchin was played by Hsiao-Lan Wang on “Refrain,” in tandem with digital cross-talk on tape.

Subverting the essential nature of an instrument was a goal in “Percussionless Drumset,” in which inventors Liam Mooney and Matthew O’Donnell pumped sound through tubes and speakers onto drums-cum-resonating-chambers and agitated cymbals.

These festivals have naturally followed the evolutionary arc of the technology. This year’s model included many sight and sound interactions, created live with laptops.

Kadet Kuhne’s “intercellular” mixed flashing checkerboard imagery and sound, like a surreal memory game; Masahiko Sunami’s “smoldering luminosity” dealt in elegant drones and shapes. Microtonalist Bill Alves’ “Aleph” combined pinging, quasi-gamelan tones and radiating linear patterns on screen with artful logic.

Festival organizer Clay Chaplin capped off Friday night’s program with a juicy bit of comic relief that also revealed tech ingenuity.

For a data source, Chaplin took the ubiquitous image of TV talking-head newscasters and manipulated them in skillful, funny ways. He reduced them to abstract pixels and gritty sound particles, creating stuttering mosaics of mutual “thank you, Bob,” and generally turned “found data” into comic art.

Cal Arts alumnus and now renowned digital dervish Carl Stone, laptop ever in tow, closed Saturday’s program with “Dosruk,” a fascinating, inscrutable sound world.

Working gradually from high, manic, flute-like tones to massive brushstrokes of sound, the piece conjured up a quality of luminous abstraction, and the effect was even romantic, in its way. Stone dared to be lyrical, a quality not often encountered in the cerebral experimental zone. But it’s fully allowable, in a world where rules are made to be broken.