Raül Refree & Pedro Vian feat. Pedro Maia A/V set

Following its premiere at Sónar at IDEAL, Sónar CCCB presents  a specially recorded performance by two leading lights of experimental electronica and alternative pop, performing together for the first time in an AV show with visuals by Pedro Maia.

The show, presented in association with We Are Europe,  brings together the renowned artist and multi-instrumentalist Raül Refree with Modern Obscure Music’s Pedro Vian, performing within a visual environment designed for the space by Pedro Maia, a visual artist based in Berlin who has collaborated frequently with artists such as Vessel and The Bug’s Kevin Martin.

During the show the audience is treated to never before heard music, inspired by the flow of nature, the uncertainty of the future and the importance of the present. Collaborating around improvisations on prepared piano and positive organ, the show is an immersive experience where electronica, classical instruments and digitally manipulated analog images will create a brand new, parallel world.

Being a Curious Music-Mind by IDIBELL with dj Alicia Carrera

Sónar, the City Council of L'Hospitalet, and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) present for the first time a neuroscience experiment to explore how human curiosity works through music.
 
The aim is to use the framework of the festival as a real environment in which to collect scientific evidence to study the differences in curiosity among the participants of the experiment: the Sónar audience.
 
The experiment will be conducted by a team of neuroscientists from IDIBELL and the University of Barcelona led by Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells and will include the participation of DJ Alicia Carrera, who will select a series of unreleased tracks for the occasion.
 
The participants will be exposed to completely new music and the data obtained will be used to evaluate differences between listeners, considering the musical profile of each one, the sensitivity and pleasure of the experience, as well as the potential to enter into states of transcendence and absorption.
 
The results of this experiment will be presented at Sónar 2022 and will also be used to investigate the following hypothesis: can developing curiosity for a song improve memory retention?


Presented by Ajuntament de L’Hospitalet.
 

Bikôkô

At only 19 the Barcelona born and raised artist who records as Bikoko is something of a musical prodigy. Despite her short career, the singer and producer has already turned heads with her 2020 Cute Tapes mixtape and this years’ Aura; an entirely self-produced EP that walks in the footsteps of neo-soul pioneers Eriykah Badu or D’angelo via her unique influences of afro-cuban ‘son’ records, the jazzy house of Kerri Chandler or abstract electronics to name a few.
 

Yeule

The Glitch Princess, Nat Ćmiel, was born in Singapore,  they are  a non-binary, London-based painter, musician, performance artist, and cyborg entity. The yeule project was fabricated by Ćmiel to act as a portal to communicate their art to the outside world while still being protected within their inner shell. Exclusively for SónarCCCB, Yeule performs Debussy’s Claire de Lune and ‘Eyes’ from their upcoming album ‘Glitch Princess’ out on the 4th of February 2022. Recorded at Somerset House Studios, the piece features a guest appearance from cellist Lucinda Chua and production by Danny L Harle.

Palica

Palica was born from the union of Arj0na and ETM, a product of common ideas and sounds from both producers. Their influences, mostly characterized by trance music along with new sounds, have been linked under the same name, giving rise to their first release “Method”, where arpeggios and nostalgic pad’s are fused with euphoric and energetic melodies. “Method" is accompanied by Aryan Kaganof in charge of the project's footage, a South African writer and filmmaker who got international recognition during the nineties with movies such as 'Wasted!' from 1996. The combination of both tracks with his recordings result in a project that shines with its own light.
 

Verde Prato

A unique talent emerging from a wave of songwriters expressing their identity through the power of the human voice, the Basque artist Verde Prato’s stripped down but arresting neo-folk music leaves no-one indifferent.

Her hauntingly beautiful Basque language release ‘Kondaira eder hura’ (That beautiful story), re-casts traditional folk songs and stories as modern day post-pop, with reverb soaked drum-machines and casiotone synths replacing traditional instruments.

The result transports you into her world utterly and absolutely, transcending barriers of language and genre in the process.
 

Rakky Ripper

One of Spain’s most precocious and promising talents takes to the stage at SónarCCCB, with a live show created for the occasion that will serve as a calling card for her patented take on maximalist electronic pop.

Nurtured on the emo and pop punk explosion of the mid 00’s, before sneaking into dubstep raves, this young artist from Granada is flying the flag for a Spanish take on Hyperpop.

Proudly bi-lingual and filtering future R&B and Spanish trap tropes through a kaleidoscope of beats and synths courtesy of frequent collaborator Eurosanto, Ripper has already received support from artists such as Diplo and Dorian Elektra, who she opened for on two dates of their recent UK tour. The revolution starts here.

Space Afrika

On the surface a soundtrack for late nights and rainy days, Space Afrika’s Honest Labour LP is nowhere near as bleak as that suggests. From layers of textured pads, synth burps and warped vocal samples, the Manchester duo of Josh Reidy and Joshua Inyang manage to coax images of startling beauty, with the effect of a ray of sunshine emerging unexpectedly from behind a cloud.
Not content with fitting neatly into categorisations of ambient, or downtempo music, Space Afrika emerge from a revitalized Northern England electronic scene with one of the albums of the year, examining evergreen concepts of love and loss from a perspective all their own.


Presented by Elevate Festival.

object blue & Natalia Podgorska, Live AV

Few contemporary artists are as hard to categorise as object blue. Few artists for that matter go as hard when the beat kicks in. Taking her cues as much from sound design pioneers such as Richard Devine as from the epic rave hoover stabs of 90’s trance, the result manages to be both minimalist and maximalist at the same time. Icy grime beats and minimal techno snares co-exist with earth shattering arpeggios, having the effect of deconstructing, and decontextualizing club music, creating a tabula rasa from which to build sonic edifices all her own. Following a well received ep on Nervous Horizon alongside TVSI, and a string of prestigious fashion and music collabs, object blue will perform one of her first post-pandemic AV shows live at SónarCCCB. 


Presented by TodaysArt.
 

Tirzah

A songwriter and producer in a league of her own, South London’s Tirzah’s heartfelt,  lo-fi productions serve as the perfect hazy backdrop for her confessional kitchen-sink soul.

Since her early collaborations with Mica Levi on the singles I’m not Dancing and No Romance, she has emerged as a singular voice in UK music, squaring the circle between the freeform compositions of pioneers such as Harry Partch or Simeon Cox with a love of UK bass music in all its forms, from trip-hop to grime, garage to dubstep and beyond. An unmissable chance to see her take to the stage in support of her new LP Colourgrade. 

Leon Vynehall Live

Following years as dance musics’ best kept secret, 2021 saw Leon Vynehall emerge from the shadows with Rare Forever, a record that showcases his extreme range as a producer, and as a lover of music, period. Encompassing Jazz, boom-bap hip hop, dubstep, UK garage and more besides, whilst somehow sounding utterly unique, the record is a strong contender for Album of The Year. This tapestry will come as no surprise to long-term fans of his genre hopping (and series defining) DJ-Kicks mix, or anyone who has caught him djing or performing at Sónar in the past. SónarCCCB sees him perform Rare Forever live at SónarComplex; a rare treat indeed. 


Presented by TodaysArt.
 

COUCOU CHLOE: 'OnlyONE'

Whether as co-founder of Nuxxe records (with Sega Bodega and Shygirl), or as the creator of innovatively produced, instantly earwormy alt-club bangers, COUCOU CHLOE is as influential as she is unforgettable. Following her epic remix of Lady Gaga's "Stupid Love"  COUCOU CHLOE performs in this exclusive A/V capsule for Sonar directed by Samuel Ibram.

Cora Novoa & The Artifacts

We are Europe presents a brand new project from Barcelona based producer, dj and cultural agitator Cora Novoa. At SónarCCCB Cora will be performing live with The Artifacts, a live band put together following a residency at Barcelona's Taller de Musics, in collaboration with Sónar and Acción Cultural Española. This new project takes Cora's forward thinking techno as a jumping off point to explore diverse genres from flamenco to dub to reggaeton.

The visual work of the project Cora Novoa & The Artifacts, developed by Tirador, questions authorship through the appropriation of images, dialogues with technology and analyzes the languages born on the Internet. The material has been manipulated according to the new aesthetics of the digital era, mixed and dirtied with all kinds of noises: glitch, 3D, VHS and analog film.

Cora Novoa is a music producer, creative director and researcher who works on the intersection of art and technology. She played her modular live around the world in festivals like Sónar Barcelona, Tate-Modern Museum or Magnetic Fields India; also she combines her artistic career with other professional facets as Ableton Official Trainer, musical content curator, doing masterclasses about music industry or creativity and the creative direction of her own record label SEEKING THE VELVET.

Diego López Bueno, the person behind the Tirador project, is a video artist based in Madrid who is dedicated to making visuals and moving image processing.
He has acted as visual curator and VJ on one of the stages of the last two editions of the Afterlife festival, both in Barcelona and New York, performing alongside Ben Klock, Chris Liebing and Kobosil, among others. He participated in the 2019 NAVA in Reykjavík with Örvar Smárason and in the 2018 Mira Festival alongside Objekt. He has also been the creator of the videos for Vetusta Morla's new album, Mismo Sitio Disinto Lugar.

His videos start from appropriationism and collage of moving images. He works with multiple layers and textures, different formats and material from different periods and styles.

Presented by Taller de Músics and Acción Cultural Española.
 

John Talabot & Desilence present Koraal - Magma. An audiovisual ritual through subterranean frequencies

Following it’s sold out run of shows at Sónar at IDEAL this September, a specially recorded performance of Koraal-Magma will stream as part of the SónarCCCB digital program. The immersive show, featuring original music performed by John Talabot and Arnau Obiols, and with visual design by Desilence,  is inspired by the same extraterrestrial landscapes of the Canary Islands  that informed last year’s ‘La Casa del Volcan’ LP, hypnotic melodies and percussive loops, building to an explosive climax: all the more pertinent given the current eruptions on the Island of La Palma. 

Iro Aka

Emerging from Barcelona’s dance music underground, the DJ and production Duo Iro Aka owe more than a little of their gently building, wavy electronica to the city’s sun soaked, psychedelic vibe. Releasing on fellow traveller John Talabot’s Hivern Disc label, a set from Iro Aka is a gently winding journey through tribal percussion, balearic beats and fried acid basslines, bringing to mind the early work of Andy Weatherall or the Orb.
 

Sau Poler Live

With a playfulness as inherent in his music as it is in his choice of moniker, Pau Soler has been a constant and beloved presence on the local scene for much of the last decade. From the sample based electronica of his early EP’s through to the psychedelic leanings of his recent releases the Badalona based artist has exhibited a love of and appreciation for global dance music in all its forms. This continuous journey of experimentation and learning has culminated (for now) in 2021’s Nocturno, an exquisitely produced slice of dub electronica perfectly suited, as its name suggests, to night time excursions. 

DeForrest Brown Jr. 'A bitter but beautiful struggle'

As Speaker Music, the musician and academic De Forrest Brown Jr. disrupts the accepted narrative of Black electronic music, foregrounding its revolutionary elements (both sonic and conceptual) to create a powerful and political reclamation of the role of Black Art in contemporary culture.

For SónarCCCB’s digital program, Sónar will stream the AV film "a bitter but beautiful struggle". Produced by Brown, Jr.'s partner visual designer Ting Ding丁汀 (HECHA / 做), the film uses a combination of web cameras, open source broadcasting software, and cinematic editing to create an extended multi-textural music video that corresponds with Brown, Jr's music, drawing upon the themes of in his 2020 album Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry, created in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the four hundred year long history of African American music, community development and liberation movements.
 

Materia

Materia is an experimental music project where cyclical and minimalist guitars are aligned with dense and disturbing keyboards. This sum, transports the listener to a dreamlike state, calm, but always tense. On May 14, 2021 they released their first work, "Temor Cíclico", edited on their own label, Objetos Perdidos. An album recorded during lockdown as a way to escape and endure the isolation and the months of uncertainty. Conceived from the fragments of sound that the two musicians sent each other from their respective homes, the result approaches a dialogue between two friends, talking to each other from a distance.
 

Die Wilde Jagd

Under his Die Wilde Jagd moniker, Berlin based artist Sebastian Lee Philipp has released three records in the last 5 years, with each release further expanding his sonic palette and particular take on post-industrial electronic pop. 

Inspired by the disconnect between nature and the modern world, a concept he further explored as recent participant of the Sónar+D x Factory Berlin Artist in Residence program, his most recent work Haut is a masterpiece of involving sound design and aural world building where the barriers between electronic and analogue instrumentation are all but dissolved. At SónarCCCB, this album will be performed in its entirety with Philipp on guitar, electronics and vocals, Lih Qun Wong on cello and vocals, and Ran Levari on drums.


In association with Factory Berlin.
 

Marina Herlop

To say that Marina Herlop squares the circle between jazz, classical, opera and advanced electronics, actually falls short of describing the astounding talent of this young Catalan artist, who in a relatively short time has created a dense imaginary all her own. Following two LP’s, 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babooshka, that each revealed a little more of the artists’ ambition and creative worldview, her forthcoming LP on PAN, is set to be another high point in an already stellar career. Inspired by theatre, dance, Ukrainian folklore, anime and fantasy, and armed with a hauntingly beautiful voice, Herlop weaves a sonic tapestry that transcends genres and traditional constraints. 
 

Parrenin/Weinrich/Rollet

Recorded previous to the Pandemic amidst the Gillet Jaunes riots of 2019, Jours de Grève, an unlikely collaboration between the neglected doyenne of french freak folk Emmanuelle Parrenin and German sampletronica master Detlef Wienrich aka Tolouse Low Trax, was for many the lockdown record par excellence, thanks to its brooding air and moments of heady beauty.

Unknown to all but the most dedicated diggers of obscure French Folk, Parrenin’s 1977 record Maison Rouge took folk into new territory, particularly on the spellbinding Topaze whose dubby dirge and de-tuned hurdy gurdy sounded for all the world like a Dennis Bovell production. This similarity was not lost on Weinrich, whose deft production across the album picks up where that track left off, juggling dub, post-punk and electronic funk to almost perfectly capture the feeling of cyclical drudgery mixed with occasional surprise that most of us felt at home over the last 18 months. At CCCB the duo will be accompanied by Quentin Rollet, the clarinetist who has collaborated with Nurse with Wound and Red Krayola, and also put his unique imprint on the record.
 

Il Quadro di Troisi

Originally conceived as a one off performance for Terraforma festival, Il Quadro di Troisi is a duo comprising of two heavy hitters of Italy’s techno and experimental electronica scene, creating blissful and evocative synth-pop loosely inspired by the surrealist comedies of late director Massimo Troisi. Analogue synths and drum machines form the backdrop to exquisitely realised pop songs evocative of aperitivos at sunset captured on overexposed 35mm film.


Presented by Insomnia Festival.
 

BFlecha

Always with one eye on the outer reaches of electronica and sound design, Belen Vidal has been a trailblazer over much of the last decade, both on a sonic level and more generally for creating an autoctonous space for Spanish women in electronica. Following her acclaimed releases βeta (2013) and Kwalia (2017), in 2021 BFlecha released her new album Ex Novo, an ambitious blend of atmospheric electronics and future r&b that propels her into a new space, way above the Kármán Line.
 

PRSNT

A reflection on the attention economy, as well as an invitation to exist in the present moment, PRSNT is an inter-disciplinary project, conceptual art piece, and objet d’art. This pioneering adventure is created by the record label Modern Obscure Music and the studio Created by Us with the collaboration of the production company Blur Films.

Original 30second compositions by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Laurie Spiegel, Kelman Duran, Lafawndah, Pedro Vian, Nicolas Godin and more, are paired with visuals by a host of groundbreaking directors including Diana Kunst, Carlota Guerrero, Karim Huu do or Balthazar Klarwien, inviting the viewer to stop skipping and pay attention.

Koreless

Koreless is the alter ego of Lewis Roberts, the Welsh producer and artist who last wowed Sónar in 2016 with ‘The Well’ an unforgettable AV spectacle designed together with lighting designer Emmanuel Biard. In the time since, Roberts has been working behind the scenes, producing for FKA Twigs, and as Koreless, putting the finishing touches on his long awaited debut Agor- a genre defining slice of contemporary electro-acoustic music which manages to encompass advanced sound design, classical song structures and the swing of UK bass music. 


Presented by Insomnia Festival.
 

Dj Nigga Fox Live

Crashing the gates of the electronic music party in 2013 with his blinding ‘O Meu Estilo’ EP on Principe records, DJ Nigga Fox has always done things differently. Using technology in all the wrong ways to create an absolutely sui generis blend of afrocentric beats, locked grooves and psychedelic synths, the Portuguese DJ essentially carved a new path for Black electronic music in the 21st century, one that continues to be trod by heirs such as Slickback, Nazar or Principe labelmate Nidia. For SónarCCCB, the artist will perform live, coaxing complex polyrhythms from a minimal set up, and resulting in an absolutely unique sonic experience. 

JASSS b2b CEM Feat. Harriet Davey AV set

Placing two of Berlin’s most acclaimed DJ’s in a custom built XR environment designed by Harriet Davey, this b2b set pushes the boundaries of digital AV performance. Commissioned and created especially for the digital program of SónarCCCB 2021, the capsule re-contextualises the figure of DJ as a literal pilot, taking the viewer on a journey through an imaginary world that morphs and changes in real time. Turn the lights off and the volume up, for an unexpected journey through dark involving techno and high concept rave from JASSS and CEM. 
 

Return of the Web

In this session we will celebrate the web as an artistic space: to create, to show, to learn, to reflect and to criticise. We will focus on NFT platforms and the metaverse, and how they are already an integral part of the new art ecosystems. We will answer questions (or at least we will try) about sustainability, both economic and ecological: Do these virtual spaces present new opportunities for artists to make money with their work?, What is the environmental cost of digital art and its market?, and above all: How do we build robust creative and technologic ecosystems where both the artist's practice and the environmental impact are sustainable?

We will chat with two artists and a curator and researcher: Sofia Crespo, Joanie Lemercier and Victoria Ivanova, strategic R+D Lead at Serpentine Galleries.

Sofia Crespo is known for her "neural art" and for her landscapes and artificial creatures created with help of artificial intelligence and inspired in nature and life, very early on she started mining NFTs.

Joanie Lemercier doesn't need many presentations, the visual artist and environmental activist, has been one of the voices that in recent years has questioned the sustainability of digital art.

Victoria Ivanova, curator, writer and strategic consultant, is Strategic R+D Lead at Serpentine Galleries (London), and editor of Future Art Ecosystems, an annual report published by the gallery.


Presented by Insomnia Festival.

‘How to have fun!’ with Vincent Schwenk, presented by Patreon

Hamburg-based Vincent Schwenk finds it tricky to explain just what he does, as he does so much. Call him a 3D designer, an artist, a director, a motion graphics designer, a motion designer... or even just someone who makes TV ads, it’s all true. But those titles don’t really even do justice to what Vincent does create: futuristic, candy-coloured blobs, perfectly designed tools and glossy shapes and creatures, impeccably finished. From album sleeves to corporate branding projects, to animations, Vincent’s skillset can really be applied to anything that his imagination dictates. In this capsule we will enter a universe of shapes, colors and textures that form the personal imaginary of Vincent Schwenk.


Presented by Patreon.

SYNX Symposium

Synthesizing sense and movement data to re-imagine our urban present, SYNX is a project by Eina Idea in collaboration with MindSpaces and SónarCCCB that encompases art, architecture and interactive storytelling in a game-like experience. 

Taking the form of an exhibition and a symposium at SónarCCCB 2021, the show will present the current research of the six contemporary artists as part of the MindSpaces residency program, an initiative of S+T+ARTS and the European Commission.

SYNX will present digital works by Haseeb Ahmed, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Sarah Derat x The Radicant x ExperiensS, Emanuel Gollob, Joao Martino Moura, Michael Sedbon, with the special collaboration of Zaha Hadid Architects. Students and professors from EINA University Center of Design and Art and ESDi School of Design have also collaborated in the project.

SYNX has been co-designed by Ignasi Ayats, Miquel Cardiel, Manuel Cirauqui, Alex Cordon, MANS O, Marta Pardina, Flor Salatino, and Alexandre Viladrich, with the assistance of Clara Cubo-Gasch, Dani Hernández Palomeque, Júlia Hernández González, Iraida Serlavós, and the special collaboration of Marianna de Nadal.

Full access to this experience, taking place in the exhibition area of the festival on the 28th 29th and 30th  will be offered in VR thanks to the partnership of Pico Interactive. Meanwhile, an embedded, online version of SYNX will be launched and made available to players worldwide through Sónar’s website and social media.

The virtual exhibition will be accompanied by a symposium streamed live on October 29th, in which the exhibition artists and designers will share ideas with leading voices in science, urban planning, artistic research, and design fiction to discuss the topics of SYNX. Guest participants in the symposium include Elena Bartomeu, novelist and speculative design professor at EINA; Lluís Nacenta, musician, theorist, and director of HANGAR; Artur Garcia, head of quantum computing at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center; and Mel Slater, neuroscientist and virtual environments expert at the University of Barcelona. The event will be conducted and moderated by Béatrice de Gelder, head of the Neuroscience Laboratory at University of Maastricht, and Manuel Cirauqui, director of Eina Idea, and will include a virtual tour of the exhibition.


Presented by MindSpaces, S+T+ARTS and Eina Idea.

Digital Surgery Aesthetics

Conversation with no filters with four artists that overflow the limits between the physical and the virtual. Regardless of the format of their choice, since all of them have a multidisciplinary profile, this generation of artists thinks in three dimensions and imagines places, landscapes, bodies and identities that only technology can make possible.

In this session we will get to know closer the unique language of Filip Custic, known for creating the image of “El mal querer” and for his collaborations with fashion, he has a limitless imagination that transcends any format; we will delve into the creative process of the dj and performer María Forqué, who in each of her instagram posts she transforms, deforms and augments her body; we will travel through the sci-fi landscapes of Sevi Iko Dømochevsky, digital artist and music producer that has collaborated with Grimes, Arca or Holly Herndon; and we will explore digital identities with Saúl Baeza, creative director of DOES studio, works at the intersection of art, design and academia using the technologies of control as tools for freedom of identity.

Carbolytics

Through her artistic research Joana Moll investigates the materiality of the internet, its infrastructural elements and the invisible processes that have a social, economic and ecological impact that often go completely unnoticed.

Her latest project, in which she is still working at the moment, is called Carbolytics and she is carrying it out in collaboration with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
Carbolytics investigates the ecological footprint of advertising cookies. These pieces of data, which may seem at once threatening, annoying and even insignificant, are also energy consumers that have both an ecological and economic cost, which in the end, we the users pay.

Joana Moll will present the project together with Patricio Reyes, computer scientist at the BSC’s Scientific Data Visualization department. This group works on creating visual and algorithmic tools to analyze and study large volumes of data, helping extract knowledge from complex sources and produce better informed decisions.

Carbolytics has been commissioned by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana. In the frame of konS – Platform for Contemporary Investigative Art.
Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the European Regional
Development Fund of the European Union, and in collaboration with Sónar+D and Barcelona
Supercomputing Center.


Presented by Aksioma in collaboration with Elevate Festival.

Laurent Garnier Off the Record. In conversation with JA Bayona

SónarCCCB receives two creators that are absolute leaders in their respective fields: music and film, and whose passion for what they do is kept intact.
We are talking about Laurent Garnier, who is premiering “Off the Record”, the documentary about his more than 30 years old career experience, and J.A Bayona, award-winning filmmaker and producer. Both creators have outstanding careers in which authorship prevails beyond the demands of the cultural industry.

The conversation will be chaired by Jaume Ripoll, co-founder and editorial director of the audio visual streaming platform, Filmin.

‘How to have fun!’ with Vincent Schwenk, presented by Patreon

Hamburg-based Vincent Schwenk finds it tricky to explain just what he does, as he does so much. Call him a 3D designer, an artist, a director, a motion graphics designer, a motion designer... or even just someone who makes TV ads, it’s all true. But those titles don’t really even do justice to what Vincent does create: futuristic, candy-coloured blobs, perfectly designed tools and glossy shapes and creatures, impeccably finished. From album sleeves to corporate branding projects, to animations, Vincent’s skillset can really be applied to anything that his imagination dictates. In this capsule we will enter a universe of shapes, colors and textures that form the personal imaginary of Vincent Schwenk.


Presented by Patreon.

World Building

If the smallest unit of meaning in audiovisuals is the frame, when we talk about immersiveness (virtual reality, augmented reality, metaverses, etc.), this unit is the world. Just like that. World building is how the design of fictions and imaginary worlds is defined, whether in a three-dimensional digital environment or in the pages of a novel.

At a time when the need to press the reset button is becoming increasingly urgent, we sit down to reflect and imagine how to build new worlds beyond the virtual one, stopping at science fiction (which has always been very effective in predicting the future) in design, video games and other disciplines that give us ideas on how to build new worlds without ever leaving this one.

Join the artist and researcher Caroline Sinders, whose work explores the impact of design technology (specially machine learning) in society; transmedial artist Sammie Veeler, co-founder of New Art City, a virtual gallery and toolbox for digital art; and Lalin Akalan, Sónar+D Istanbul curator and founder of the immersive experiential agency xtopia


Presented by TodaysArt.

20 years of Processing

A part of art history (in all its forms) can be told through its tools. 20 years ago, the artists and programmers Casey Reas and Ben Fry created Processing with the aim of making coding accessible to visual artists and designers, regardless of their technological knowledge.

Nowadays, Processing is part of the toolbox of artists (it is a favorite for creating generative visuals) of journalists and researchers, who use it to visualize data, and educators: this programming environment is used in classrooms of computer science, design, fine arts, and humanities as well.

We want to celebrate Processing’s 20th birthday along with one of its founders, Casey Reas, visual artist and professor at the University of California; with Tega Brain, artist, engineer and professor, and co-author (with Golan Levin) of a handbook of creative coding for teachers; and with the artist (and also teacher) Anna Carreras, who in her PhD, is exploring complexity (of systems, science, philosophy, and of course, art).