The first stop on Music Tech Fest’s world tour was the South Pacific’s High Tech Capital. In Wellington, we worked with indigenous and traditional music, showcased some of the best talent from the city’s hacker and maker community, made sound out of light, created new ways of visualising music, built a mobile orchestra and completely reinvented the music box.
With help from the British Council and the New Zealand Music Commission, we ran a pilot event to showcase the festival at Sounds Aotearoa - and ran a 24 hour music hackathon.
Ableton, Korg and Baboom provided the challenges, musicians - including the brilliant Rhian Sheehan - supplied a bunch of inspiration and creative input, and the winning entries were absolutely phenomenal. Prizes included software and synthesisers… and one of our hackers won a night out with Kim Dotcom.
New Zealand’s public youth media outlet The Wireless made this great video showcasing the event:
A fantastic time with a brilliant team of people on the ground in New Zealand. Thanks so much to Mikee from Baboom for all his support, Leon and the team at Rock Shop for the Ableton prize, James from Rock Shop Wellington for getting his hands dirty and getting involved - and to Music Planet Wellington for the fantastic Korg gear.
We’ve been asked by the British Council New Zealand to return with the full festival in 2015 - and we already can’t wait to come back!
Ka kite ano…