Big Boi of Outkast fame is teaming up with the Atlanta Ballet for a groundbreaking collaboration that hopes to bring hip  hop audiences into the world of classical dance and the world of classic dance to new audiences that have traditionally disdained what is widely perceived as a very old and very white art form.

This article is a great read and makes EMERGE wish we could jet down to the dirty south to catch the premier.

"Big" premieres at the Fox Theater on Thursday, April 17


Posted by James Friedman

Yeah yeah yeah. We know.  Indie rock shows are a dime a dozen, and so are houseparties in Williamsburg but The Adolescent Sessions are something different.

Here's the deal: Two bands, two rooms, closed circuit televisions, the fine folks from Viva Radio, and friend of EMERGE Justin William Lin aka Billy J come together at the Uniondocs Bodega every thursday for a pretty fascinating simulcast/concert/party. The folks behind this "voyeuristic A/V experience" as "part show/part Schrodinger's Cat." If you are still confused, think of it this way: a band plays live in the basement and the performance is recorded for broadcast on Viva Radio's online radio channel. The show is also filmed and that live footage is screened upstairs where revelers are hanging out, drinking free beer from Flying Dog, and going ape for the music downstairs. The first session took place last week with up-and-comers Hopewell and Tall Firs and this week's session features Celebration and Blues Control

If you are in the area and want to come, RSVP to electricadolescent@gmail.com or keep an eye on the myspace page for upcoming shows. If you aren't going to be around, you can check the shows on viva-radio.com, duh!





Posted by James Friedman

EMERGE has been on a visual art kick these days, so its nice to find a performative, new media event this exciting to talk about. What is it you say? It's called Pop Rally and its happening to celebrate Automatic Update, an exhibition going up in the Yoshiko and Akio Morita Media Gallery at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

First up, let's talk about Automatic Update, a interdisciplinary look at new media art from 2000 or so onwards organized by Barbara London, Associate Curator for the MoMA's Department of Media. The basic idea for the show is that technology and society entered a wholly new realm with the emergence of the internet, generating a massive and often confusing churn of ideas, themes, technologies, aesthetics, and media. While much of the early media art from the mid-1990s became obsolescent as the technology evolved and adoption by the public shaped this process, later new media experiments settled into a more formalized mode of social commentary and play. As the show's literature attests: "By the year 2000, this quasi-revolutionary aura had dissipated and media art had settled into the mainstream... eas[ing] the somber mood of the times with entertaining presentations. Nevertheless, their humor does not soften their biting commentary on our social milieu. What at one time was Pop art has now become pop life." The show features work from Cory Arcangel, Xu Bing, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,  Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Paul Pfeiffer as well as the films Crash by David Cronenberg, Pi by Darren Aronofsky, the documentaries 8 Bit and Synthetic Pleasures, and six shorts by Ericka Beckman, Laurie Anderson, Miranda July, John Pilson, Pipilotti Rist, and Kristin Lucas. The show also features a more experimental program of screenings entiled The Artist and the Computer, which includes short films and animations by the likes of Arcangel and Paperrad.

Pop Rally is a program of MoMA and its affiliate PS1 focused on younger museum goers. For Automatic Update, Pop Rally has recruited Arcangel and Paperrad to curate a program of new media visuals and musical performances by Ben Jones of Paperrad, Cory Arcangel, Extreme Animals, Slow Jams Band and DJ Jazzy Jexxx and tickets include a chance to run around the Automatic Update exhibition afterhours.

The Automatic Update show runs through September 7, 2007
Pop Rally takes place Tuesday July 24
Tickets are available here.



Posted by James Friedman