Blip Festival : Trash-bin symphonies and ray-chasing pixel pushers

The Blip Festival is a three-day music and arts festival presented by Manhattan arts organization The Tank, in partnership with NYC artist collective 8bitpeoples. The fourth-annual festival took place at Brooklyn's Bell House, December 17th, 18th, and 19th 2009. All three nights were aired live on wfmu.org, hosted by DJ Trent of Sound and Safe.

Celebrating the best and brightest from the realm of chipmusic and its related disciplines, Blip Festival showcases the use of the former heavyweights of computing such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga, the Atari ST and 2600, and the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy to create arresting music and visual art.

The festival, now one of the worlds largest and longest running events of its kind, continues to evolve with a greater breadth of international artists, a growing sophistication of styles and creative vocabulary, and a forward-thinking enthusiasm driven home by over two dozen of the worlds best musicians and visualists.

If there's one thing festival-goers can expect, it's to have their expectations blown away. And the high-energy, low-res live experience is also supplemented by daytime workshops, film screenings, and open mic events -- all in an open, friendly, all-ages atmosphere, accessible to the hardcore fan and the chipmusic neophyte alike.