It Was Twenty(-Five) Years Ago Today… …the Banff Centre brought the world to play…with VR and art.
From May 20-22, 1994, Canada’s Banff Centre for the Arts hosted the 4th International Conference on Cyberspace, aka 4CYBERCONF. According to Wired (in April 1994), this was:
One of two important conferences on cyberspace and virtual reality, 4CYBERCONF is a prestigious annual event bringing together practitioners and theoreticians to discuss the social and cross-cultural implications of cyberspace.
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I was fortunate to be able to work a few days last fall with Pelayo Méndez. His company was contracted by the Catalan theatre troupe La Fura dels Baus to create interactive visuals for their new “smartshow”, titled M.U.R.S. (murs are walls in Catalan). Pelayo and his team created software for animated visuals, interactive “games” that turned spectators into participants and a networked mobile application that made audience members part of the show.
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Last year, as a member of the Barcelona Laptop Orchestra, I programmed on various pieces and helped prepare for our performance at Sónar (Barcelona’s annual International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media Art). However, in the end, a wedding in Canada (and “best man” responsibilities) forced me to miss taking part in the show.
But this year, fate came calling. More specifically, Sam at l’ull cec came calling, asking for help setting up Daito Manabe’s Sónar show on June 12.
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Circle “0” - Charon and the ferry across the river Acheron.
Eighth Circle (Bolgia 3) - Simony
On May 17, we paid a (surprisingly pleasant and handbasket-free) visit to Hell – more specifically, to Dante’s Inferno, as one of the Insectotròpics' invited guests.
Alex “painting” the Teatrillu world with an infrared flashlight.
Between May and September of this year, the “Insectos” (a Barcelona-based theatre troupe) are organizing a series of collaborative theatrical/performance events at the old Fabra i Coats textile factory (now art centre), one for each cantica of Dante’s Divina Commedia, in which they invite other artists to participate.
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After a long span of lots of hard work (more about that in the coming month) but no performances, I had not one but two gigs this week, performing with my co-conspirators from the wú:: Collective, Alex and Roger.
Announcement of the WeArt SubverJam.
First, on Wednesday, we took part in the SubverJam session (in polite company, referred to as a New Media Art event), as part of the closing of the 2013 WeArt Festival.
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Josep, Orm and Glen talk during rehearsal, prior to Barcelona Laptop Orchestra’s performance at Festival Mixtur 2013.
Last Friday (April 26), the Barcelona Laptop Orchestra performed at the Mixtur Festival, an event featuring musical and sonic art, research and experimentation. The venue was beautiful – inside the renewed industrial space of Fabra i Coats. The space was previously a textile factory, created following the 1903 fusion of Catalan textile producer Fabra y Portabella with the ancient J & P Coats company, with roots in Paisley, Scotland.
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Show announcement.
Last week was a busy one! After Tuesday’s Moritz/Insectotròpics event, on Thursday I had another concert with the Barcelona Laptop Orchestra – this time at l'Auditori, in Sala 2 (Oriol Martorell). There wasn’t enough advance publicity, and we ended up very (very!) far from filling the 600-seat venue, but it was a great experience nonetheless. It was fun to be behind the scenes at such a large and professionally-run venue.
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All abuzz about Insectotròpics and the wú Collective! From the hands of Insectotròpics' painter Xanu.
This past Tuesday we were invited, by the Insectotròpics theatre troupe, to participate in an event presenting the Programa Suport a la Creació 2013 (production grants) from FiraTàrrega (an international performing and street arts festival in Tàrrega, Catalunya). The event was held at Barcelona’s beautiful Fàbrica Moritz (historical brewery), recently redesigned by architect Jean Nouvel.
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I finally managed to put together a video of my live coding performance at Niu. Enjoy! (that is, if you have 23 minutes to kill)
2nd annual “Live Coding Sessions” evening at Niu, on March 22, 2013
Coding was done in [SuperCollider](http://supercollider.github.io) 3.6, and I set myself the constraint of only using the most basic building blocks of sound: sine waves (as oscillators, LFOs, envelopes, even as arpeggiators driving patterns of scale degrees).
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El Teatrillu (a Catalan diminutive of teatre, meaning: “little theatre”) is software for the performing arts. It’s an application, built on top of openFrameworks, that I’ve been working on with the other members of the wú:: collective. Alex and Roger had already created the first version of this software – a mix of interactive theatre, live stop-motion animation, puppeteering and digital sleight of hand – when I came along last summer and asked if I could join the party.
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