Exploring This Year's Ingenuity Festival of Art & Technology
The Big Bang, Tesla Coil, Superman, the Screaming Tiki Con are only the beginning!!!

if there's one thing we've emphasized over the last several years, it's the incredible diversity and artistic exploration found in the annual Ingenuity Festival of Art & Technology -- or IngenuityFest, as it's known these days (see video of Ingenuity 2008 here). Cleveland's all-encompassing showcase of arts and technology returns for its fifth run starting this Friday, July 10 and will take over downtown throughout the weekend. With an mind-blowing melange of artists, live performances and cutting edge technology, attendees are sure to find something fun, ponderous and entirely electrifying in the streets and spaces of the host location, PlayhouseSquare Center.

The 2009 Festival opens at Friday at 4PM with an extraordinary percussion event called The Big Bang [pictured]-- created by famed conductor Marcus Santos and helmed by a group of drummers including local jazz luminary Jamey Haddad, Carlos Jones (of First Light and P.L.U.S. Band fame) and the Shaw High School Marching Band, still riding a high from their pre-game Olympic performance in Beijing, China. They and others will perform under the 2009 Ingenuity "centerpiece installation," the Tesla Coil Orchestra, which was detailed by Cool Cleveland creator Thomas Mulready last week.

All across PlayhouseSquare, from the grand Star Plaza to all of the nooks, crannies, alleys and storefronts, you can soak up an incomparable display of art fused with technology, visual arts, live music, performance art and dance, theatrical presentations, and amazing family-friendly installations, including the San Francisco's J.D. Beltran and Scott Minneman's Magic Story Table, which turns geographic-search technology on its ear and uses it as a launching pad for storytelling.

Elsewhere, Double Edge Dance, the College of Wooster's Theater and Dance Department, Dance Center's Youth Ensembles and others should provide ample dance performance excitement for those seeking it; the schedule of live music by the area's biggest indie names also looks impressive. And new this year is The Electronic Café, a new venue on the first floor of the Sterling Building which will feature electronic [music] events.

There's something for everyone. Here are a few other items not to miss:

An amazing collaboration is also promised with the forging of "masterwork mutantrumpet" by Ben Neill (of Bugfunk fame) and collaborator Bill Jones from New York. Neill has a new CD coming in September called Night Science and it promises to be something special. Ditto on Ingenuity alums Peachcake (see this week's Cool Cleveland sounds review) who marry performance art, zany pop culture idioms and a Polyphonic Spree-meets-Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In approach to synth pop.

Featured artists have, well, a lot to feature at Ingenuity this year: Cool Cleveland contributor Daiv Whaley's got a really hot second edition of his At The Cellular Level cell phone photo exhibition running throughout Ingenuity; Quan Li, MOCACleveland's "Neighborhood Watch" contest winner with a four-minute meditation on the Detroit-Shoreway, plans to astonish festival-goers with light; and the Hrbek-Hedersen ongoing installation at the All Go Signs alley sounds absolutely intriguing to us.

There's even The Screaming Tiki Con -- a high-test comic book and science fiction convention, with a focus on superheroes, games and toys -- is another perfect example. The Tiki Con camps out in the Halle Building, 1228 Euclid Ave., all weekend long. Aside from a few really excellent Superman programs (a Siegel/Shuster Family Panel) they also feature a guest list that includes actor Edward James Olmos (Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica), Michael Rosenbaum ("Lex Luthor" in Smallville), Ray Park (X-Men, "Darth Maul" from Star Wars: Episode I), Helen Slater (Supergirl) and Erin Gray ("Wilma Deering" from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century).

And of course there's a supercool ProgRock records tent to check out as well. See, even a sci-fi and prog rock geek like me can enjoy a proper "geek out" at Ingenuity this year. There really is something for everyone at Ingenuity this year.

On Thursday, July 9 from 8 - 11PM, you can preview many of the featured artists appearing at the IngenuityFest. The shindig hits The Electronic Café and promises a wide variety of events and other benefits. Click here to find out how. For the rest of you interested in tickets and additional information for the weekend, call 589-9444 or visit http://www.IngenuityCleveland.com. You'll find a complete 2009 festival schedule there as well.

From Cool Cleveland Managing Editor Peter Chakerian peterATcoolcleveland.com
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