Kathy Hanrahan

A Raleigh couple has launched a crowdfunding campaign to open the city’s first cat cafe. Sarah Newton and Arthur Hailey seeking $28,800 to open Purr Cup Cafe. “It is as if you had a coffee shop and made a room within that coffee shop that is a cat lounge,” Newton told WRAL in March. Cat cafes originated in Taiwan in the late 1990s as a way for people to enjoy hot beverages and interact with cats. Patrons can sit and drink beverages while looking at the cats in the opposite room or pay to reserve time in the cat...

Moogfest will seek to empower and explore creativity through a variety of concerts, workshops and events this weekend in downtown Durham. The annual festival devoted to art, music and technology has designated its main stage on opening night on Thursday as a Protest Stage with performances, talks and technology experiments. The festival runs through Sunday. When deciding which themes to expand on each year, creative director Emmy Parker said the festival always looks at what the future of creativity looks like. “There is a long history of music and art being used to foster resistance and nurture organization and...

​Moogfest is a synthesis of music, art and technology. The festival, which is May 19-22 in Durham, will feature tons of speakers, workshops and concerts. Here’s our breakdown of 10 events you don’t want to miss. Keynote addresses – The keynote speeches at Moogfest really set the tone for the festival, organizers said. Each delve into the future of creativity and transhumanism. On Friday at 2 p.m. at Carolina Theatre, Dr. Martine Rothblatt, creator of GeoStar satellite navigation and Sirius XM Radio, and founder and Chief executive officer of the multi-billion dollar biotech United Therapeutics, will speak about the...

​If you can’t afford the $249 ticket to Moogfest don’t despair, the festival has released an ambitious lineup for free performances, workshops and activities. The free programming lineup was released Tuesday and includes a breakdown of events by venue and day. Highlights include Yo Gabba Gabba and comedian/musician Reggie Watts performing shows at American Tobacco Campus. During the festival, Moog Music is moving production of its most famous synthesizer to a temporary manufacturing facility in the heart of downtown Durham. Workshops will teach people how to put a synthesizer together and explore the history of the device. Throughout the...

IBM Research’s Watson program will be taking on the “DJ Watson” moniker to help festival-goers compose their own songs at Moogfest. Plus, synth-pop band Grimes and pop trio Miike Snow have been added to the Moogfest lineup. More than 250 artists will participate the festival, which is devoted to music, art and technology, on May 19-22 at 17 walkable venues throughout the downtown Durham. (Tickets are available online.) Watson is the supercomputer cognitive computing initiative from IBM that not only has beaten human champions at Jeopardy! but also is now being used in a wide variety of medical research...