This year, we visited some festivals throughout Europe within Canal180 focus themes — music, digital art, design, architecture. In June, we were teleported for the future - we didn't even know that was already possible! We ended up in Montjuïc, Barcelona, with a handful of artists who were attending Sónar+D, a conference on digital art. It's parallel to Sónar, worldwide known festival of electronic music and audiovisual performance. We came back to the present with the series Montjuïc: A Future Odyssey, featuring Darius Kazemi, Memo Akten, Tarik Barri, Nonotak, Boris Chimp 504, and Sean Caruso.
Darius Kazemis was the first artist we met, who told us that “creativity is walking down the road and seeing dust in a formation you didn’t see before”. Fair enough, right? In the end of our meeting, he revealed us we’d made him think, and so we left Montjuïc gardens with a feeling of accomplishment!
We returned to the park to chat with computational artist Memo Akten, with whom we made a deep reflection about the role the digital world occupies nowadays. “Our deities have evolved to become digital deities. Church used to be the prevailer of Art and Culture, now we’re seeing companies like Google or Facebook moving to that space”.
Throughout the week, more artists showed us their motivations and modus operandis. Boris Chimp 504 explained us how a chimp that was sent to space and never came back is their inspiration for their performances. Their narratives are thus a mix o NASA real facts and their science fiction’s imaginarium.
Nonotak stressed how important it is for the audience to actually see the performers and to be alienated from all the technical issues — they want their Art to be available for as both kids and grannies. We also learned with Sean Caruso, from Société des Arts Technologiques, how challenging it is to create narratives inside a dome, because the “traditional rules of cinema don’t apply”.
Finally, one of our favourite chats was with audiovisual composer Tarik Barri, with a bunch of guys playing jazz in the park as a soundtrack. His work makes him feel like a different person, deriving in between programming and creation mode.
Although working with emerging technology, having one foot already in the future is not these artists’ cup of tea. Instead, they prefer concentrating in what they can do now.
Should we say that the future is now? It might be.
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