The Neverending Allure of Blips and Bleeps: Reformat the Planet at the Alamo

Feverishly pounding the buttons on your Gameboy, your heart spikes along to the punchy tunes of Double Dragon, the handheld video console becoming one with your body as you go toe-to-toe with the scum of the streets, doling out justice in the most pugilist of fashions. Whether is was simply ambient music to you or a central part of the games, those low-bit soundscapes occupy a corner of our brains that will be forever young, and with that youth comes the power to invent, the power to see the inherent possibility that lies within that little box of wires and chips.

Reformat the Planet, a documentary that debuted at the 2008 SXSW Film Festival, delves into that youthful ingenuity by exploring the underground music scene known as ChipTunes, which focuses on taking old, outdated gaming devices, most notably the Nintendo Gameboy and NES, and creating something wholly new and different from what existed before. Possibly as an affront to the 32, 64and 128-bit technology that we see today, these musicians employ a very punk aesthetic of taking what seems to be a very limited set of tools and expounding upon them to create layers and layers of sound that our-10-year-old brains could never have dreamed would be produced by our little game consoles.

Reformat follows musicians from all around the world as they descend upon NYC for the Blip Festival, a four day event that showcases the best of low-res wizardry. Some of the artists are more accessible (we nearly squealed out loud at The Neverending Story theme in the trailer) while others are more experimental and obtuse. Whatever sound they choose to create, they all are pioneers in experimental electronic music, and nostalgia or no, these musicians can seriously drop a knockout beat.

This just in: Producer Paul Levering and Director Paul Owens will be in person at both screenings!

If you enjoy the film, Champion Scion and the Austin Museum of Digital Art are sponsoring a free evening of Chiptune music with artists from the film on March 18. More info at www.datapopparty.com