Uploaded September 2025 | Updated September 2026, 16 hours ago
On the evening of Saturday, August 30, we enthusiastically presented A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise and The Hut Improvisers.
About A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations: Real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, in collaboration with The Hut Improvisers. A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Orphaned labels. Free-floating symbology. Saturated colors and the subtlest of tints. Jittery zooms, pans, and traversals. Glitches from crowdsourced data.#ASynesthetesAtlas
About the artists:
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Using performance, video, and works on paper he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, the Light and Space movement, and visual poetry as fresh explorations through the realm of digital cartography. Since its Lisbon premiere in 2022 he’s given forty-some performances of A Synesthete’s Atlas, during which he manipulates projected digital maps in collaboration with improvising musicians, across North America and Europe. His animation, If Map #5, appeared on the eight story high display that crowns San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower throughout February 2024. His concerns include perceptual pleasure and fatigue, geographies of the natural and built environment, and subverting the presumed objectivity and authority of maps.
The Hut Improvisers is comprised of:
Etiyen Esteff- Rhodes, synths
Bryan Stewart- electric bass, synth
Chris Weldon- cimbalom, gongs, found objects
Gerard Cox- drums, piano, percussion
Billy Wolfe - saxophone, clarinet
On the evening of Saturday, August 30, we enthusiastically presented A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations between Eric Theise and The Hut Improvisers.
About A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations: Real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, in collaboration with The Hut Improvisers. A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Orphaned labels. Free-floating symbology. Saturated colors and the subtlest of tints. Jittery zooms, pans, and traversals. Glitches from crowdsourced data.#ASynesthetesAtlas
About the artists:
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Using performance, video, and works on paper he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, the Light and Space movement, and visual poetry as fresh explorations through the realm of digital cartography. Since its Lisbon premiere in 2022 he’s given forty-some performances of A Synesthete’s Atlas, during which he manipulates projected digital maps in collaboration with improvising musicians, across North America and Europe. His animation, If Map #5, appeared on the eight story high display that crowns San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower throughout February 2024. His concerns include perceptual pleasure and fatigue, geographies of the natural and built environment, and subverting the presumed objectivity and authority of maps.
The Hut Improvisers is comprised of:
Etiyen Esteff- Rhodes, synths
Bryan Stewart- electric bass, synth
Chris Weldon- cimbalom, gongs, found objects
Gerard Cox- drums, piano, percussion
Billy Wolfe - saxophone, clarinet










![Cassette Culture Celebration: Hal McGee + Skull Vacuum
On Saturday, July 22 2023 we proudly hosted our first ever Cassette Culture Celebration microfestival at the Columbus Performing Arts Center. This event celebrated Cassette Culture and the spirit of DIY from the early 1980’s and beyond, included a who’s who of DIY cassette culture and noise, and was organized by Columbus music historian Jeff Chenault.
Jeff kicked off the festival with a seminar on the history of Columbus electronic music, titled Attack and Decay: The History of Columbus Electronic Music. Festival performers included Chris Phinney (Harsh Reality Music, Mental Anguish), Hal McGee, certified guru of HalTapes and multiple other labels, Jeff Chenault (ITN/Exoteque Music), Knox Mitchell (Green Tapes, Easy Listening), Gates of Janus (Detroit), Envenomist (Columbus), Full Load of King (Cuyahoga Falls), with a special surprise appearance by Michael Thomas Jackson (Winston-Salem, NC).
In addition, Jerry Kranitz, author of the book Cassette Culture – Homemade Music and the Creative Spirit in the Pre-Internet-Age lead a panel discussion and Q&A with Hal, Chris, and Jeff. During the performances and presentations, we also screened two films, which ran continuously throughout the day: The Great American Cassette Masters by William Davenport and Grindstone Redux by Andrew Szava-Kovats. To top everything off, vendors sold cassettes, books, and other cassette culture memorabilia. along with displays of vintage tapes and artwork by the festival performers.
Video credits: Rachel Rew Wagner.
About Hal McGee: Hal is an American experimental artist and producer who has been active since 1981. With Debbie Jaffe, McGee operated the Cause And Effect cassette label and distributor in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the mid-1980s, McGee recorded works as a member of Viscera, solo as Dog As Master, and in collaboration with If, Bwana and JABON.
McGee moved to Florida in 1988, where he operated the Electronic Cottage label out of Gainesville, FL, simultaneously with an Electronic Cottage Magazine into the 1990s. This was restarted as an online zine and community in April 2018.
In the mid to late 1990s, McGee released dozens of cassettes of homemade experimental music, solo and in collaboration with Jeph Jerman, Brian Noring (EHI), Big City Orchestra, Emil Hagstrom (Cock E.S.P.), Charles Rice Goff III and others. He also produced a series of Tape Heads cassette compilations on his own HalTapes label.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s Hal McGee started releasing homemade CDr albums. During this time he collaborated heavily with Brian Noring of the FDR Tapes, in person and via mail collaboration, and with his long-time partner Chris Phinney. In 2006, with the encouragement of Andrew Chadwick and Christopher Miller (2), McGee began performing live for the first time since 1987, joining the ranks of Floridas live noise/experimental music scene. From 2014 to 2015 Hal operated a new label, Kassette Kult Tapes, and has contributed to Exit (16). He continues to release music on the [lHalTapes] label.
Since 2008 Hal has hosted a numbered series of live performances from his apartment called Apartment Music. Attendance is limited mostly to participants but documentation is posted on his YouTube channel, and some live audio recordings have been released.
About Skull Vacuum: Skull Vacuum is a collaborative project between Chris Phinney and Jeff Central Chenault - see: https://harshrealitymusic.bandcamp.com/album/a-chris-phinney-tribute-concert-by-jeff-central Cassette Culture Celebration: Hal McGee + Skull Vacuum](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D9Vypa1OscA/mqdefault.jpg)