Time flies faster than the highest download speeds, it seems. Yep, it’s Wednesday again, time for another edition of Tech Briefs, your weekly roundup of technology and life science items.
Speaking of internet speed, the state’s Broadband Advisory Council is meeting again. We’ll get to that, but first, how about some fun with audio/visual immersion in live music experiences?
As always, I’m up for tips, questions, suggestions and corrections. Just email me — tad@cardinalnews.org.
Get your music/tech fix at Virginia Tech’s Cube Fest
Ever since the Cube opened inside the venue formerly known as the Moss Arts Center, the multimedia-ready space has been the center of a technology and music nexus.
That continues Friday through Sunday with Cube Fest 2026, at the venue now called the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech. The theme this year for the biennial, free weekend of performances, installations and listening experience is “Spoken Words,” explorations of stories carried via sound.
The Cube and other portions of the arts center building on the Virginia Tech campus will host an international group of artists using spatial, or three-dimensional, speaker placement that turns recorded conversations, poetry, field tapes, historical spaces and ambient sounds into immersive audio experiences, according to a university news release.
“Tesseract Jukebox” will be a Friday and Saturday constant in the venue’s Sandbox. The installation will play a loop of spatialized audio compositions from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., during which audience members can come and go as they please.
“The Declaration of Independence: Spatial Audio Remix” is set for 1 p.m. Sunday. Tyechia Thompson led a multidisciplinary team of Virginia Tech and Washington and Lee University scholars and artists who developed this remix.
Thompson recorded ambient sound inside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the country’s founders debated and drafted the declaration, then she and the team digitally incorporated that sound with recorded recitations to give them acoustic qualities from that historic building, said Center for the Arts spokeswoman Susan Bland.
The recitations come from people with a range of ages, identities and life experiences, transforming it into a “tapestry of overlapping voices, revisions, echoes, and silences that make the sounds of American freedom audible,” according to the news release.
An audience discussion facilitated by creative team member Sherri Craig will follow the installation.
Cube Fest closes at 9 p.m. Sunday with a spatial orchestration of De La Soul’s hip hop classic “3 Feet High and Rising.” Virginia Tech professor Eric Lyon, whose specialties include composition, computer music, spatial music research and audio software development, designed the audio presentation.
Using elements including 360-degree speaker placement — something the Cube was specifically designed to host — Lyon’s take on the De La Soul album will surely show off the wildly diverse collection of samples that helped put the set into the Library of Congress.
Discussions, a master class on poetry and a mix of live and recorded performances round out the weekend.
The news release notes that the weekend offers the opportunity to experience the Cube itself, a rare sound environment in the world.
Get more information and note that some events, though still free, require registration.
Broadband Advisory Council meets Monday
Affordability and adoption are on the agenda for the commonwealth’s Broadband Advisory Council next week.
The body meets on Monday in Richmond, during the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Summit and Fiber Expo.
It will discuss a report that the Joint Commission on Technology and Sciences issued late last year, Beyond Access: Broadband Affordability and Adoption. The report analyzed the issue in 10 Virginia localities, using a tool from the University of California at Santa Barbara that simulates customers’ online searches for broadband plans.
The JCOTS report’s recommendations included establishing a statewide requirement that internet providers offer a basic 100 Mbps download speed plan at $30 a month, while mandating visibility and accessibility to those plans on all internet service providers’ websites.
Such measures would ensure “that broadband is not only available but affordable and accessible to every household across the Commonwealth,” the report states.
The meeting begins at 1 p.m. Monday, during the broadband summit, at the Marriott Richmond, 500 E. Broad St. Get remote meeting access online.
