If you live in San Francisco for any amount of time, you are probably familiar with Frank Chu. I was walking through union square with Jon Phillips and Pete Ippel after the Leonardo LASER event tonight, when we saw Frank standing to the side of a newscaster. We waited expectantly for quite some time to see Frank run out into the camera in the middle of the cast.

As we waited, and the cast started and stopped however, something seemed amiss. Then, they handed Frank the mike, and started taping him as he elaborated on his plight. From talking to the cameramen after, apparently they have worked out a tentative deal…Frank stays out of the newscasts in exchange for getting taped after they are off air. They never make it to air, but it seems there is a very large archive of Frank Chu video sitting on shelves in a great many media outlets around the city.

Surround cinema anyone?

At Mills College

Signal Flow, the annual festival of new works by Mills graduate students, is an opportunity to see the future in the making. Since the 1930s, the Mills College Music Department has been an incubator of many historic firsts in the field. Signal Flow is the place to take a peek at what the future has in store in the fields of electronic, experimental, and visionary music.

Many of the greatest composers of our age have passed through Mills, whether as teachers, as students or both. Some of these names include: Luciano Berio, Darius Milhaud, Dave Brubeck, Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson, David Tudor, Luc Ferrari, Alvin Curran, Aaron Rosand, Angela Hewitt, AMM, Leo Smith, Warner Bartschi, Anne Queffélec, Susie Ibarra, Kazue Sawai, Marilyn Crispell, Peggy Seeger, Hazel Dickens, Louis Lortie, Charles Rosen, Amy Denio, Laetitia Sonami, Miya Masaoka, Janice Giteck, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Tetsu Saitoh, Annea Lockwood, Kitundu, Christina Kubisch, Carla Kihlstedt, Amelia Cuni, Neil Rolnick, Nicolas Collins, Louis Goldstein, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Maggi Payne, John Bischoff, Les Stuck, and Chris Brown, to name a few.

Featuring everything from acoustic to electro-acoustic, electronic, mixed media, installations and sound design, signal flow is guaranteed to surprise, inspire and impress.

The Mills College Music Department proudly presents its annual offering to the world. Presented throughout Mills’ lush campus, Signal Flow is always a memorable experience.

Saturday, February 28th
9pm – 2am

10 Komega (LoveTech)
11 Evan Morris (Lost Science/Hexawe/EMP)
12 Nonagon
01 !INCLUDE (NYC, WarperParty.com)

9pm Workshop: Visionary Instruments presents: Six-Strings From The Future
Visuals by MZO and !INCLUDE
Roominant Installation by Komega
Time Machine by Rich DDT
Bar by Mixin’ Vixen
Digital Jam Lounge: bring your technology, plug in and play! (open to all)

@ The Ranch
1433 Van Dyke Ave
San Francisco, CA 94124

$7, All Ages

The Louvre has Venus. What do you have instead? If you can answer that question confidently and concisely without a lot of stimulating-the-following-target-audiences mission statement hooey — and your answer isn’t on SecondLife, then you may be one the few museums that doesn’t suck.

You’re a museum, right? You’re not an outreach summercamp. You’re not an Imax theatre lobby. You’re not a social networking iPhone app. Be a museum. And try harder not to suck at it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is the third video by Dana Countryman documenting the creating and use of his amazing synth DIY project – an Ondes Martenot.

The Ondes Martenot is a unique musical instrument invented in 1928 by Maurice Martenot and originally very similar in sound to the theremin.

via happymoogman:

In this video, I show the left-hand volume control, and give an overview of the entire system.

At the end, I play “Ave Maria” on the instrument, live in my studio.

More info at http://www.danacountryman.com

Don’t miss the previous two videos, Building An Ondes Martenot & Dana Countryman’s Ondes Martenot Ring Controller Project.