Beginning Transmission
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The event had been a grassroots effort from top to bottom: McDonald, then a grad student in communications, and her two primary co-organizers, Ethan Clauset and Julie Shapiro, relied on the generosity of more than a dozen friends and acquaintances to pull it off. All three had dabbled in promoting shows, but none had ever planned anything on such a large scale–they spent months negotiating with artists, finding venues, obtaining a sound system, and arranging lodging, and while the festival was in full swing they managed to stream most of the nearly two dozen performances over the Internet using a single dial-up account. McDonald ended up about $400 in the hole.
Cultural Center, the Chopin Theatre, HotHouse, Subterranean, and Rednofive. Twenty-four artists from eight different countries will perform; among the biggest names are electroacoustic composer Carl Stone, New York improviser and no-wave legend Ikue Mori, and Austrian laptop-music pioneer Pita. The schedule also includes four programs of experimental film and video (all at the Chopin), curated with the help of Abina Manning and Blithe Riley from the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute.
For more information about the festival and the performers, visit the Transmissions Web site, www.transmit.org. For a complete schedule, see the sidebar in this section.
