Watercooler: HoboTech (#ArtOutside)

One of the high points of both my Art Outside experiences were sets by Hobotech, a highly eclectic electronic musician. His website describes the music as:

Hobotech is boxcar funk, deisel dub and badass bluegrass crunk, a creation of Producer/DJ Jon Margulies.

Wearing a floppy white hat, Hobotech spins music at his laptop.

Hobotech in the Deco Dome, Art Outside 2012 (Photo: Kit O'Connell)

Hobotech combines danceable beats with the sounds of America’s musical roots. Like electroswing, another recent innovation in electronic music, it avoids the monotony of repetition by tapping into a creative, rich vein of history. In many ways it exemplifies the eclectic nature of Art Outside and the Burning Man culture from which the event grew, where raver kids in neon fake fur hob-nob with neo-1920s flappers and scruffy outsider artists to the sounds of ‘Vaudeville Gypsy Rock‘ at the Folk Stage.

A crowd dances under the lights of projectors

HoboTech Show at the Deco Dome (Kit O'Connell)

Hobotech’s set was at the Deco Dome, a dance space which was alive with sounds, people, and the lights of bright, entrancing projections until dawn. Every moment at Art Outside is a collaboration: much of the projection equipment is donated in return for admission to the event, and a large staff of volunteers and crew bring the festival together from stage hands to cooks.

A woman contorts as she hangs from a trapeze

Bethany, an aerial performer at the Deco Dome (Photo: Kit O'Connell)

A Hobo-Slide Guitar Made from a Shovel (Photo: Kit O'Connell)

Each set under the dome was diverse, with aerial dancers and fire spinners on a small side performance stage. At one point, Hobotech included a guitarist with a unique instrument made from a shovel.