Games and music by Claudia Sonea

Think you've heard everything? Think twice, because the Blip Festival, a four-day celebration of music made with obsolete computers and electronics will blow you away. At a hip Manhattan art space Haeyoung Kim, a classical pianist, succeeded to get all the attention of a crowd of people with shaggy-haired and wearing T-shirts and glasses. The room was vibrating with beats of electronic beeps and buzzes of a 1980's video game called Marion. She proudly held up her Nintendo Game Boy. Some of the former Atari jockeys are building a cult on music called chiptune or 8-bit, according to Mike Rosenthal, 29, one of Blip Festival's organizers. He states that the first generation that had an up bring dominated by video games and computers wants now to do more with their toys and therefore the chiptunes that includes also pop, metal and other styles is the best choice. Beck, an eclectic artist, an EP of chiptune remixes due to nostalgia created by the first electronic, tinny sound of the first commercial video game. The chiptune community is largely in contact mostly online through file-swapping and on bulletin boards, so Blip Festival is a rare event for them and that is why they travel far distances just top get to it and artists from Europe and Japan are brought in to perform. On the scene the do-it-yourself ethic of punk rock and hacker culture will be performed and artists rely on jury-rigged gadgets. Commodore 64 and Atari 80 is the favorite, but Game boy is the most popular. Chiptune artists' instruments are often more than 20 years old and it is expected to bring in the unpredictable in their performance. For all games addicted this is something on the must do list, so: enjoy!

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071206/ap_on_hi_te/chiptunes;_ylt=AgHcn4NuHPNtY.EJLD3w.lKs0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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