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SPAM New Media Festival began in 2022 as a grassroots experimental arts platform, bringing together practitioners working on the fringes and frontiers of digital arts through exhibitions, performances, and critical discussions.

SPAM's organizers and curators are a collective of artists, researchers, and academics who are bugging the system — imagining resistance narratives against capital-driven media through multiplicity, embodiment, and critical practice.

For SPAM's 2026 iteration we're gathering October 9–11, 2026, at Indexical in Santa Cruz, CA to share the work of artists we love with the greater San Francisco Bay Area community through performances, workshops, and artist talks.

The 2026 lineup features regional projects by Dorothy Santos & Abram Stern, Ava Koohbor, Jean Carla Rodea, and EPOCH, alongside the touring projects of Sunken Cages and Rohan Chander.

SPAM 2026 is organized in collaboration with Indexical and SrcMaterial. Indexical is generously hosting the event, supporting the performances, and creating a space for gathering and relationality. SrcMaterial is curating Ellaboration, a workshop series focused on technological literacy — with an emphasis on AI, collaboration, and connection in an era of increasingly asynchronous workspaces.

SPAM is an ongoing project of regrowth and persistence. We are committed to creating discourse from the margins, developing pathways of interconnectivity for our future selves.
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Santa Cruz Electronic Music OM is a series of live electronic music every 4th Thursday of the month in Santa Cruz, California (except for NOV and DEC, TBD). From ambient to techno and improv to sequenced using synthesizers (analog/digital), sequencer devices, and other electronic instruments (both old and modern)... https://emom.subvurt.net/

Featuring: TBA

• Ruby Deagle - samples, break-beats - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-JtLj4CpfI

• Digital Larry - synthesisers, electrified string instruments - https://soundcloud.com/gary-worsham

• David Leikam - Moog Rogue synth with pedals - https://davidsonic.art

>> 30 Minute Intermission (8-8:30 PM), to grab a refreshment and switch over the stage acts. <<

SIGN-UP TODAY: https://emom.subvurt.net/

Santa Cruz Electronic Music OM Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRoqeZxY3Y&list=PLzSmjoKqY5G5Mg-SydX03cJrZ3p797_MU

What: A sign-up based Open Mic night for anyone involved in making electronic music, whatever the style, genre or format - anything from ambient and drone through synth pop, techno to industrial, noise and beyond!

The intent is to showcase live performances of music that is PRIMARILY ELECTRONIC IN NATURE - e.g. acts using hardware or software synthesizers, electronic instruments, laptops, groove boxes, drum machines, sequencers and so forth.

NOTE: It’s not a forum for DJ’ing, or playing pre-recorded music, or for regular acoustic/electric acts (try the ‘open decks’ night at Motiv, or one of the more traditional open mic nights around town). For example, if your act can primarily be described by a genre like ‘rock’, ‘alt-rock’,’acoustic’, ‘singer songwriter’ or similar then you should probably sign up for a different event (having ‘electronic elements’ is not enough). This doesn’t preclude you using more traditional instruments like guitars or cellos - but the expectation is that these are used as part of an overall electronic composition, and not as the primary sound source, e.g. a bass guitar processed through a bunch of pitch shifters, delays, reverbs to create ambient textures and strange sounds is probably a great fit - but playing regular bass riffs over a pre-recorded backing track is probably not.

We have six 20 minute slots for performances. Come and hear your music played through a high-end Meyer sound system. YOU NEED TO RESERVE A SLOT IN ORDER TO PERFORM. NO WALK INS.
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