Art and technology meet on the street at IngenuityFest

by Karen Sandstrom

Friday July 25, 2008, 12:00 AM

Downtown Cleveland becomes briefly more dramatic, slightly electronic and, dare we say, a teensy bit exploratory this weekend as IngenuityFest overtakes the streets, alleys and theaters in the PlayhouseSquare neighborhood.

The fourth annual celebration of art and technology begins from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday with a parade of musicians, robotics and performers around East 14th Street and Euclid Avenue, converging around Star Plaza. Festival admission is free during opening ceremonies. Activities continue through midnight at the theaters and the Idea Center. The festival resumes at noon Saturday with music on three stages, kids' activities in the Family Village at the Idea Center and an assortment of work by artists using innovative technology. The actions starts up again at noon Sunday, and the festival closes at 5 p.m. with a gospel revue. Need a little more inspiration?

Check out our critics' picks for festival fun.

Pop music
Having a hard time finding any good music on the radio? Joshua Fried is here to help. Words come up short when attempting to describe this New York City performance artist's wildly entertaining "Radio Wonderland" routine, but we'll do our best.

Fried shows up with a boom box, procures a random sample of something -- anything! -- he fancies on the FM dial and improvises a remix on the spot, manipulating sounds using everything from a steering wheel to a beat-up pair of shoes. Prepare to have your mind blown and your booty shaken. And with four performances by Fried scheduled during IngenuityFest, you have no excuse for missing out. Catch him at 7 p.m. Friday or 1 p.m. Saturday on The Plain Dealer Star Plaza Stage, or at 6:15 p.m. Saturday or 2 p.m. Sunday on the NPi Hanna Stage. -- John Soeder

Classical music
There will be a fair sprinkling of music at IngenuityFest -- some of it popular, some classical.

For the latter, head to the Idea Center to hear pianist Angelin Chang, who won a Grammy last year for her recording of Messaien's "Oiseaux Exotiques" with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and conductor John McLaughlin Williams. Chang will give performances Friday through Sunday at the Idea Center, with help from video artist Qian Li and media artist John Ban, that promise to put new spins on beloved music. (8:30 p.m. Friday, 3:30 and 10 p.m. Saturday; 3:30 p.m. Sunday.)

Elsewhere at IngenuityFest, you'll find New York composer-guitarist Mikel Rouse performing his solo piece, "Music for Minorities" (7 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday, Ohio Theatre). -- Donald Rosenberg

Visual art
New York artist Jenny Marketou wants to set the record straight. Her outdoor art installation at the IngenuityFest consists of precisely 99 red weather balloons, not 100, as the festival's flier states.

That's important because the artist says she was inspired by the anti-war pop song "99 Red Balloons," released in German in 1983 and a year later in English by German singer Nena. "It's a very timely song," Marketou, a native of Athens, Greece, said by cell phone from New York last week.

Marketou's balloons in Cleveland will fly from Star Plaza in Playhouse Square. They'll be selectively mounted with wireless video cameras, which will send real time images to digital display screens around PlayhouseSquare and inside the Idea Center.

The balloons will not be released, out of concern for the environment. Marketou said she created a similar piece in Basel, Switzerland, last year and will create another variation in Seville, Spain, this fall.

"My medium, let's say, is surveillance technology," she said. "It is actually the way the moving image looks through surveillance cameras and how it can be used critically and playfully."

Other artistic highlights of the festival: the sound and video installation "Angels by Night," by Cleveland artist Kidist Getachew, in All Go Alley, which will explore spirituality in an urban context; and "Theater of Operations," an ongoing multimedia installation by Minneapolis artist Piotr Szyhalski in the Allen Theater, which will explore sights and sounds of the war in Iraq. -- Steven Litt

Film
IngenuityFest commissioned featured artist Tom Jarmusch -- brother of filmmaker and Akron native Jim Jarmusch -- to create "Sometime City," a video documentary capturing slice-of-life moments from various Cleveland neighborhoods. Tom Jarmusch, who grew up in Shaker Heights and now lives in New York, plans to attend Ingenuity. Screenings are ongoing at 2055 East 14th St.

Superman's local roots are the focus of "Last Son," a documentary looking at Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and how they created an American icon. The film includes seldom-seen home movies of Siegel and Shuster growing up in Glenville. Director Brad Ricca will hold a question-and-answer session after the film's screenings at the Idea Center, at 12:30 p.m. Saturday and 4:30 p.m. Sunday. -- Julie E. Washington

Theater/Dance
It's not exactly theater in the old-fashioned sense, but among the main offerings at IngenuityFest, the most traditionally "theaterlike" is "Inventions Suite."

The hour-long dance-video-music collage about man and machine is by John Toenjes and Benjamin Smith of Urbana, Ill., and David Marchant of St. Louis. It's at 9 p.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Saturday in the Ohio Theatre.

In the nooks and crannies, the most intriguing thing going is "Know Your Future," 27 interactive scripts by 10 writing students in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program.

Actors will play diviners of fate, and customers can glimpse their futures, one at a time, in one of five fortune-telling rooms. It's at 1220 Huron Road, where the curious can walk in between 6 and 10 p.m. Friday, noon to 4 p.m. and 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. --Tony Brown