It’s been a busy week, first interviewing Spot for Webmetricsguru, attending the NY:MIEG breakfast meeting that focused on Podcasts, Vidcasts for emerging media, and last night, I rocked over at the LEMURplex (which just happens to be two blocks away from my painting studio when I get over to paint - not often enough).

And what a rocking event it was - about 200 new media musicians and guests, many who collaborate with each other, some who are current or former attendees of the ITP program at NYU which Judy Breck and I have covered at Smartmobs, braved the bitter NYC cold and came to Brooklyn for LEMURplex’s first open concert.

I was surprised to see just how many people showed up - many taking interactive videos from their mobile devices that were being uploaded and send all over the internet as the evening wore on. Eric Singer - who, probably more than anyone else, is LUMERplex, is running a series of educational programs, some for teens (I wish I could get my son into one of these).

When you go to LUMERplex’s site today the banner says:

“NEWS: Performance/gallery show Jan 26! Robot classes for kids and teens begin Feb 3! New Jan/Feb art and technology classes for adults announced!”

I’m thinking of taking a class myself as some of my artistic visions should be in electronic form - they don’t belong, for now, as a painting in the traditional sense of the term. And that’s why places like LUMERplex are so important - as a connection between present and future, both for Art and Music.

The music performances last night were hot - in every sense of the word……
Jamie Allen/Circuit Music (http://heavyside.net), Loud Objects/Tristan Perich, Kunal Gupta, Katie Shima (http://www.loudobjects.com) and Joshua Fried/Radio Wonderland (http://radiowonderland.org).

In between drinks of “Robot Punch” and Mozzarella Cheese-sticks I got to speak in depth with Nick Sears, currently attending the ITP program.

Not too many people get invited to attend TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design conference. Nick Sears got invited - that’s pretty cool and his installation of “The Orb” (which I saw last month at the ITP Winter Show and wrote up here) drew a lot of attention.

The Photos and YouTube Videos on Nick Sears’ site convey genuine excitement and freshness about the future, Nick being something of a visionary (you could project the effects of global warming on the globe - in fact you can do a lot more with the concept - both with the content projected though The Orb and the physical properties of it - which lend itself to “Push /Pull”, Hans Hofmann type of colorist effects - I see a bright future for The Orb - I guess that’s my take).

Along with Nick Sears, I also spoke with Leif Kringle, who worked with Nick on “The Orb” and Joshua Goldberg, whose performance was “electrifying” - fantastic and totally interactive - a magician of music. Everyone who performed was great, but I related to Joshua’s music the most.

I also spoke with the editor of Make Magazine, Phillip Torrone, who is also based out of NYC now. If anyone is a prolific writer - it’s Phillip - who writes up to 25 posts a day.

Yes, it was rocking time at The LEMURplex last night.