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Books Brood II David Rothenberg John Cooley Music

David Rothenberg, John Cooley and the New York Times

It isn’t often that cicada celebrities show up on your Mother’s lawn, but when you have a healthy supply of easily catchable singing M. septendecim, and a cicada website, these things happen.

Last Saturday I met up with cicada researcher John Cooley, Japanese cicada researcher Jim Yoshimura, and musician and professor David Rothenberg at Roosevelt Park in Edison NJ. They were looking for male cicadas to perform with David at a World Science Festival event in the Bronx later that night. New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was also there to interview David and John, and artist Asher Jay was there to lend David support.

The cicadas in the park weren’t performing well enough, so I directed them to my Mom’s place in Metuchen.

The Metuchen location yielded many screaming cicadas. David collaborated with the cicadas on the spot with his Ani-Moog iPad app, and a clarinet. John Cooley dropped some cicada science for Stephen Farrell’s video camera as well. My Mom served refreshments. Once enough cicadas were collected, the cicada celebrities departed — before leaving David left my Mom an autographed book and CD. Very cool!

John Cooley & David Rothenberg
A beautiful day for enjoying the song of cicadas in the suburbs of New Jersey.

More from David Rothenberg:

David Rothenberg plays Animoog on iPad live with cicadas:

More about David Rothenberg:

Man composes music with cicadas (news story with a video).

Cicada Mania: A 17-Year Benchmark on PBS (BTW, nice name for a TV PBS):

More from John Cooley:

BBC’s The Code:

Here’s a photo of David Rothenberg’s book Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise. It is available on Amazon.com.

Bug Music How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise by David Rothenberg

Categories
Magicicada Music Periodical Pop Culture

Are you a musician? Do a duet with cicadas!

Update: Here is the show that featured the finished cicada songs: http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/51182

Are you a musician? Would you go out in the field ( or your yard ) and jam with some cicadas? WFMU DJ Kurt Gottschalk wants you to send him your duets with cicadas!

Visit Send Me Your Insect Duets! WFMU 17-Year Itch Special Forthcoming! to learn more about Kurt’s appeal to musicians.

I want to hear you sing with the cicadas! They’re out in DC and starting to emerge in Jersey. From what I’ve been able to discern there’s little agreement about where they’ll be in NYC.

My friends form the band Blithe Doll are already planning on contributing their cicada collaboration.

Speaking of musicians who have jammed with cicadas, here is David Rothenberg jamming with some 17 year cicadas:

David also has a new album called Bug Music featuring his collaborations with insects!

Last night at the Judson Church in NYC I opened David’s “Richard Robinson: Song of the Cicada (World Premiere), Insect Music, based on the calls, chirps and clicks of various insects” event with a presentation about the 17 Year cicadas. David’s film and music were extraordinary. Here is a review of the event.

Cicada Event

cicadas in Washington Park

Categories
Magicicada Periodical Pop Culture

A Cicada Kickstarter: Return of the Cicadas

Want to sponsor what could be the greatest cicada documentary of all time? Samuel Orr has a Kickstarter to fund the production of his 17 year cicada documentary Return of the Cicadas.

Rewards for backing the project include cool stuff like the film (download, dvd or bluray depending on your pledge amount) and a fine art photo print.

Just watch Samuel’s trailer for the film. You will want to back this film after seeing the trailer:

Return of the Cicadas from motionkicker on Vimeo.

More information about Samuel and the Kickstarter:

I’m a natural history filmmaker and time-lapse photographer (http://www.motionkicker.com/time-lapse/), and have been following and filming the various broods of periodical cicadas since 2007 (there are multiple groupings of cicadas called broods that come out in different years across the eastern U.S.). I’ve got 200+ hours of footage, and am working towards an hour documentary that focuses on the 17-year varieties as well as cicadas in general. This film is anticipated in 2014, and will be broadcast on PBS afterwards.

Categories
Arts & Crafts

Cicada Princess Movie completed

Update:

I received my Cicada Princess clay cicada that was an actual actor/actress in the movie:

Cicada Princess

And here’s the URL to the movie: www.cicadaprincess.com

Here’s some news for cicada fanatics: the movie Cicada Princess has officially wrapped post production and was and successfully submitted it for consideration to the Sundance Film Festival. Read more about it. Congratulations to film maker Mauricio Baiocchi.

The Cicada Princess is a stop-motion animated movie featuring anthropomorphic cicadas. It was funded via Kickstarter contributions. Visit the Cicada Princess website. Here at Cicada Mania, we’re interested in both real and fictional cicadas.

Cicada Princess

Categories
Pop Culture

Awesome Cicada Pillow

Check out this groovy cicada pillow by friends J.C. Luz and Cliff G. gave me. No cicada fan’s home is complete without one. I’ll post a link to where you can buy one, as soon as I figure that out.

Order your own cicada pillow.

If you like Comic Books, check out Cliff’s comic book convention happening in Asbury Park, NJ this spring.

Categories
Brood II Magicicada Memes Periodical Pop Culture

KEEP CALM they’re only 17-YEAR CICADAS

Get it on a shirt! Guys & Gals

Keep Calm, they're only 17-Year Cicadas

Here’s my entry into the popular KEEP CALM meme. “KEEP CALM they’re only 17-YEAR CICADAS”.

Categories
Pop Culture

NikeID Cicada-Themed Sneakers

My NikeID cicada-themed sneakers arrived. Here’s what they look like:

The Magicicada:

nikeid box

nikeid

nikeid

The chloromera:

chloromera

Categories
France Pop Culture Video

Ceramic Singing Cicadas from France

I received a pair of ceramic singing cicadas for Christmas. Here’s a video of what they look and sound like. They are made in France and were obtained from a restaurant in Westfield, NJ called Chez Catherine.

Cicadas are called cigale in France.

Here’s the cicada Keychain mentioned in the video.

Categories
Pop Culture

Magicicada Sneakers

NIKEiD lets you create unique sneaker designs. Considering that 2013 will bring the emergence of Brood II, I need some sneakers that show my affinity for periodical cicadas.

NikeiD Sneakers

They’re black, dark grey, orange and red, just like Magicicadas. The soles are orange. Unfortunately they do not sing like cicadas do.

Categories
Cicada Mania Pop Culture

Cicada Mania News

Saturday the BBC stopped by Cicada Mania headquarters to interview me for a Periodical Cicada episode of their show Nature’s Weirdest. The episode will also feature Dr. Gene Kristsky, and other cicada experts. The show will air in January, and hopefully end up on NetFlix, BBC America or YouTube sometime after that. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019f6kv Here’s a photo of the amazing crew that interviewed me:

BBC film crew

Also, my friends David and Claire gave me this very nice cicada whistle from Peru:

Cicada Whistle