DURHAM, N.C. — On Thursday, the Moogfest party started early at the Motorco Park outdoor stage, with Hundred Waters, a keys, bass, and drums Florida trio put on a stage show that was half Human League synthpop and half Carole King piano ballads. Rain threatened, but Hundred Waters made it work by testing the limits of the outdoor venue’s subwoofers, sending a wall of bass at anyone within 50 feet of the stage. It set the mood for Motorco Park’s party atmosphere, which only grew throughout the night, peaking with a packed Blood Orange set that had those lucky enough to get through the long check-in line dancing.
Meanwhile, Moogfest organizers put some of Thursday night’s more experimental acts indoors. Dawn of Midi worked a dark stage at Carolina Theatre, only visible when an occasional red or purple laser passed over the performers. Building a riff and working every possible angle of the line, Dawn of Midi built to a mystical fervor, only relenting when their time was up. A set change later, Julia Holter took over, mesmerizing the room with her strange and surreal songs. Finally, the night ended with a
sleep concert in the 21c hotel ballroom that had attendees exploring their dreams as droning synth tones and ambient noise washed over their sleeping bodies.
- Matt PoindexterMoogfest Technology: You Don’t Have to Eat the Same Old Chicken Tonight
Do you eat the same seven recipes every week? Is chicken always on the menu? We’d all love to be more creative in the kitchen or just to get dinner on the table fast but work, life . . . sometimes it doesn’t all come together as planned. Before you pick up the phone to order pizza let me introduce you to Watson. You may remember Watson as a winning Jeopardy contestant. Watson, developed by IBM, is a computer answering system. What makes Watson unique is that it understands natural language. Good old speech. Nothing fancy, no quantitative data that must be input in a certain way. That high brow language, Watson needs none of that. You just talk to Watson as you would anyone. What does that mean for you? In the words of Guy Fieri, winner, winner chicken dinner. You’re not eating the same old chicken tonight.
Watson is a chef. Watson is so well rounded. It cooks, it paints, it designs. I might hate it a little if it weren’t so darn helpful. Bon Appetit partnered with IBM to develop Chef Watson, a cooking app, that will help you come up with new recipe ideas and reduce food waste. Give Chef Watson your list of ingredients and it will design a recipe for you. Watson is the kitchen MacGyver. This app is a handy way to use up ingredients on hand and unlike recipe search engines where you search chicken and get 10,000 recipes to sift through and have to visit a few stores for ingredients, Watson uses the ingredients you enter, the things you have on hand. Easy peasy. So if you’re wondering what to do with 3 olives, a piece of steak and a kumquat, give the Chef Watson app a try. - Fran Castillo
