The Megapolis Festival is a weekend-long celebration of the craft of DIY audio creation. Artists, documentarians, musicians, and fans come together to share secrets on producing and presenting challenging audio works online, on-air, and on the stage.

When: Apr 24-26, 2009
Where: Cambridge, Somerville & Boston, MA, USA
How much: $45 (regular), $30 (students)

The word Megapolis (more commonly Megalopolis) was first used to describe the Boston-Washington corridor as a single giant urban organism. For many living in the BosWash Megapolis today, Chinatown buses are like public transportation and the brief stretches of forest between cities are simply large parks. The massive infrastructural integration and enormous size means there’s an unparalleled potential for collaboration and creative exploration.

The 2009 Megapolis Festival examines the sonic landscape of this sprawling urban environment, showcasing artists and documentarians from all over the region, and focusing performances, workshops, and presentations around one particular mega-neighborhood: the Greater Boston Area. Events are scattered throughout in small galleries, outdoor spaces, and even friends’ living rooms, so you’re not just a passive audience, you’re actively adding context to what’s coming into your ears.

What can you expect to hear? Some stuff in the works includes an audio tour through an abandoned insane asylum, sonically innovative documentaries, field recording field trips, poetry embedded in sound waves and made visible through the magic of Windows 95, and noisy guitar rock transmitted over dozens of radios. We’ll have the full schedule posted a couple months before the festival. If you want to get involved by presenting your own work or leading a workshop, please visit the submissions page.

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