Almost every laptop show is the same, says local electronic musician and performer Liz MacLean-Knight: some pasty white guy sitting at a machine pushing buttons and moving a mouse. “While that’s cool for the ears and cool for the mind,” she says, “it’s really boring to watch.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
That’s the kind of thing that makes electronic music fun–but rarely do artists take the same pains to frame their music in a live setting. A little over a year ago, MacLean-Knight and her friend Logan Bay, cofounder of Pilsen’s Bruner & Bay gallery, vowed to do something about it. What they came up with was Laptronica–a no-holds-barred multimedia spectacle that pits teams of laptop musicians against one another to compete and posture WWF-style. The first edition was staged at the Funky Buddha Lounge in January 2002.
Almost everyone–judges, combatants, audience members–wears a costume. At the second Laptronica event (also at the Funky Buddha) one judge showed up in a cape and plastic laser-tag helmet rigged with a flashing LED strip; his fellow lady judges dressed as a slutty sailor and a sleazy Bo Peep.
After the room cooled off and the evening wound down, a guy in a hot-pink ape suit grabbed the mike and started freestyle rapping, egged on by several onlookers in wigs and fake mustaches. “Laptronica is very confusing and surreal,” says MacLean-Knight. “But we do what we have to for entertainment.”
