Service Withholder?

Comments (0) By Austin Bunn Tuesday, Jan 13 1998

Most of these musicians' work looks like either upgrades or evolutionary castoffs, junkyard hybrids or a Guitar 2.0. Wednesday night, toy-piano virtuosa and vacuum-cleaner conductor Wendy Mae Chambers performs Sinatra tunes and American folk classics on tuned car horns, joined by Robert Grawi playing Beethoven and blues on a 21-string ''gravikord,'' based on the West African kora. Next week, Ken Butler will play guitars made of bicycle wheels, rifles, and hockey sticks, and Arthur Frick will unveil ''Stomper,'' a set of mannequin legs jutting out from one pant leg that can be made to pound the floor rhythmically. For the dubious, Grawi attests that the performances are about ''real music, not just gimmicks.''

(Frick, Butler, and others also perform in the ''Eureka! Fest'' at the Knitting Factory, Thursday, Jan. 15 at 8.)

Signal and Noise

Making Latte, Like the Rest of Us: Literary agent and author (Digerati) John Brockman published at his site (edge.org) a list of questions that haunt the greatest thinkers of our time: Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, Steven Pinker. Included in the list? The ever-pragmatic Silicon Alley Reporter publisher Jason Calacanis with his musing: ''If Mosaic had never supported pictures (read: the Internet didn't become a commercial medium), what would I be doing right now?''...

Terminal Man: School of the Future hosts a conference on the coevolution of man and his machines, on Monday, January 12. Call 475-8086 for details.

E-mail: abunn@villagevoice.com