Michael Voeltz was a happy, hands-on audio explorer at Dogbotic's last instrument petting zoo at 924 Gilman in December 2024. (Courtesy of Kirk Pearson/Dogbotic)
When you find yourself in a room full of complicated, custom-built audio gear, it’s generally not a great idea to immediately begin touching everything. At avant-garde electronic shows, for example, one should not approach the stage and aggressively mash on the artists’ instruments with one’s grubby non-musician hands.
Luckily for those of you with such compulsions, Dogbotic is here to help. The East Bay sound laboratory/workshop/agency takes up residency at Oakland’s New Parkway Theater this weekend with a slate of grubby-hands-welcome audio programming. On Saturday, July 25, they’ll screen a series of short films featuring interesting sound components, then open the theater up into an all-ages “audio carnival.” The centerpiece is an instrument petting zoo, with unique, custom-built musical instruments and other sound-making machines ripe for the mashing.
I don't know what either of these are, but they took fun to touch! (Courtesy of Kirk Pearson/Dogbotic)
“I think it’s very easy for people to be intimidated away from music or engineering, and we’re really trying to squash that,” says Kirk Pearson, a composer, audio engineer, and Dogbotic founder. This is the crew’s second iteration of an instrument petting zoo; the first was at 924 Gilman, where Pearson was a longtime sound engineer. At that event, says Pearson, they learned a bit about which types of instruments invite play, especially for people who might not feel like they have any business handling an instrument in the first place.
“There's something very approachable and simultaneously kind of complex and academic about it,” says Pearson. “If I hand you a bassoon, you kind of know the conventions around that, but if I hand you a weird box with a bunch of flashing lights on it, you’re just like: ‘How the hell am I supposed to use that?’ Which I think is a little nicer.”
“Children respond to it really well,” Pearson adds, “but adults also get that same glimmer of excitement in their eye.” (You might also suddenly have Richard Strauss in your head.)
According to Dogbotic, nearly 500 people showed up to the last audio carnival at 924 Gilman. (Courtesy of Kirk Pearson/Dogbotic)
The audio nerdery continues next week, on Wednesday, July 29, with a Dogbotic-hosted screening of the 2020 documentary Sisters With Transistors. The film highlights unsung women heroes of electronic music, including Suzanne Ciani, Pauline Oliveros, and more.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring some of the Bay Area’s leading women sound designers and audio engineers. Confirmed panelists include Ava Koobhor and Ramona Sharples, two women who were students in Dogbotic’s virtual workshops early in the pandemic and are now accomplished sound artists. Which, conveniently, makes the event a nice advertisement for Dogbotic’s other programming. Like the instrument petting zoo, it’s all organized around one principle: that music-making, and audio in general, is a populist art and science, and everyone deserves to join in.
As Pearson says, “Mostly it's just really fun to walk around a room and poke at stuff and figure out what it's supposed to do.”
Dogbotic’s Short Film Screening and Instrument Petting Zoo takes place at 4pm this Saturday, July 25 at the New Parkway Theater (474 24th St., Oakland). Tickets ($12 to $16) here.
Emma Silvers is a San Francisco journalist with 15+ years of experience covering the people and policies shaping arts and culture in the Bay. She grew up in Albany and lives in the Mission.
