Megapolis Festival

The Megapolis Audio Festival is a weekend-long event dedicated to the art of sound and to do-it-yourself culture. The festival serves as a forum for artists, documentarians, musicians, and fans, producing and presenting audio works online, on-air, and on the stage.
MEGAPOLIS was founded in 2008 by Justin Grotelueschen and Nick van der Kolk and is administered by a new team of organizers each year.
The name Megapolis is a variation of megalopolis, referring originally to the Northeast megalopolis of the United States and to the cultural influence of an urban environment on the soundscape.

Past festivals

2009

The inaugural MEGAPOLIS Audio Festival kicked off in Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting on April 24, 2009, at the Massasoit Elks Lodge and continuing April 25 and 26 at the Pierre Menard Gallery, with some events in Boston. Featured events included:

A performance by Gregory Whitehead, radio theatre legend
An audio documentary listening room from the Third Coast International Audio Festival
An opening night of intense musics led by The Lothars, theremin-infused psych rock from Boston, along with the Boston Typewriter Orchestra, a man manipulating the radio waves with a steering wheel, and a demonstration of culinary auditory delights

Over 40 artists from across North America and from countries beyond combined with local artists to perform, install works, and conduct workshops and tours under the general theme of the megapolis, including:

workshops for building your own instruments and contact microphones
an audio-making slumber party
a bicycle-powered 8-track player
a clandestine audio tour of an insane asylum
a presentation on the cross-pollination of poetry and sound

Co-sponsored Festival events included a media archaeology of Boston at the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, a live cello score of a museum construction at the Axiom Gallery in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and a live performance of the WNYC science program Radio Lab at the Museum of Science in Boston.

2010

The second MEGAPOLIS occurred in Baltimore, Maryland starting on May 14 at the Windup Space and continued May 15 and 16 starting at the Hexagon Gallery. The 2010 event featured several high-profile artists including:

Felix Kubin, sci-fi music and radio visionary from Germany
Lucky Dragons, psychedelic electronic artists from Los Angeles
David Kestenbaum, science and economics correspondent for NPR

Over 60 artists from around the world interpreted the festival theme of travel during:

audio scavenger hunts with iPhones and low-wattage transmitters
collaborative sound-making performances using contact mics attached to parachutes and knitting needles
1-800-numbers that attendees could call that dealt out exercises and suggestions designed to elicit aural experiences
booths where participants could retell their nightmares and strain to hear to tiny sounds
existentialist theatrical tours led by gnomes who encounter deviant characters along a path to 'enlightenment'
audio transmissions between live-mic'd venues using FM and shortwave radio

2013

The third MEGAPOLIS Audio Festival took place in New York City, from April 19–21, 2013, with most events happening in and around the New School. More than 100 artists participated including:

Artists loosely interpreted the festival theme of tourism through more than 60 events such as:

“noise” karaoke, where participants sing hit songs as the DJ mangles their vocals through live processing
Foley effect workshop recording food items then sampled and mixed live in a dance music tent
helmet that used bone conduction to “hear” sounds
experimental one-man theatre backed by suffocating noise music and harrowing spoken word
global experiments in musical improvisation using telecommunications networks

2015

The fourth MEGAPOLIS was the first held outside the Northeast megalopolis, instead popping up within the Northern California megaregion. This event kicked off at The LAB in San Francisco CA on July 5, 2015, continuing the 6th at various venues in Oakland before landing at the Omni Commons on the 7th. Some of the artists featured that weekend:

Roman Mars, executive producer of highly acclaimed podcast 99% Invisible
Matmos, experimental electronic music duo; collaborated on albums with Icelandic musician Björk
Al Letson, Peabody-award-winning radio host, poet, playwright, and actor
Doseone, a poet, rapper, singer, painter, producer, and member of cLOUDDEAD, anticon, and more
Fantastic Negrito, winner of NPR's 2015 Tiny Desk Concert Contest
Kevin Blechdom, a Bay Area experimental electronic musician self-dubbed as an avenging angel of pop music
Song Exploder, a podcast where artists deconstruct their songs from the inside out
Gamelan X, ensemble that remixes the ritual of a Balinese procession with a decidedly west coast twist

The theme of the 2015 MEGAPOLIS Festival was the frontier and featured 30 events including:

an immersive installation of sound-emitting light bulbs that react to your presence
interactive presentations on scientific innovations in music and storytelling through conscious thought control as well as infrasound imperceptible to the human ear
an exercise in rapid prototyping using the basics of design thinking to introduce the idea of iterative problem solving for artists
hacking and soldering workshops to create Moldover's Light-Theremin CD cases, low-wattage radio transmitters, homemade synthesizers, and manipulated game controllers
yoga together with drone music