Young Turks' III Points Festival Marries Music, Tech, Art in Miami

Sept. 12, 2013— -- White-hot London record label Young Turks releases music by the kind of blog and critical darlings who draw crowds at cool-kid festivals globally. So it made sense that the imprint launched its own three festival dates earlier this year in Europe, curated by their marquee band, the XX, and branded Night + Day.

Now, though, label creative director Molly Hawkins has announced Young Turks is branching out to the United States, with an inaugural festival in Miami’s creative-hub neighborhood, Wynwood. Launched in conjunction with the Miami venue Bardot, Hawkins and Bardot music director David Sinopoli envision the event as a mini SXSW-style affair running from October 3 through 5.

An admission pass will grant attendees entry into more than 20 venues (so far) hosting simultaneous parties and shows. They’ll feature musical acts including techno legend Juan Atkins, DJ Shadow, Jamie XX, the Juan Maclean, Jerome LOL, James Murphy, and more.

But the festival name – three points – denotes two other aspects to the event. Though music, via Young Turks and Sinopoli, takes center stage, almost equally important are a showcase of visual art, and – putting a fresh spin on usual music programming – the intersection of music and technology. This slate of programming offers a robust day of activities on Saturday, October 5 hosted by the Lab Miami, a creative and startup incubator.

The idea, says Lab cofounder Wifredo Fernandez, is to break down some of the still-standing imaginary walls dividing the music and tech scenes. “It’s about looking at, how is tech reimagining how the music business industry is conducted,” says Fernandez, “and how it all interacts?”

Here’s what’s planned:

Music Hacking with Raspberry PiThe Raspberry Pi is a $25 laptop that’s already available to consumers – and ripe for tinkering. This workshop will show attendees how to use it to create music.

Music and Data Science, featuring Senzari & WahWah Miami-based startup Senzari is trying to give Pandora a run for its money through its own competing app, WahWah. The difference? WahWah takes a Pandora-like experience and makes it social, allowing users to “co-listen” to stations and get recommendations based on their current activity (say running or driving). Obviously this involves a ton of data – and this panel aims to explain the usefulness of number-crunching in music discovery.

Music Business and Tech, featuring Vinylfy Learn about this new social network for vinyl collectors. Will a movement built around an old medium – vinyl record collecting – actually coalesce around a new medium, the social web?

A Transmedia Experience, featuring Artistin.us Transmedia is the idea of telling a story across multiple media and platforms – and in the final and possibly most exciting tech activity at III Points, participants will create such a narrative together. “It’ll be a mix of visual media, crowd-sourced social media, and hashtags, and they’ll create a mural through a projector,” says Fernandez. “It’ll be visual storytelling through a few different forms.”

Visit the III Points festival web site for the full music and art lineup, plus ticket information.