Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona

Institut Ramon Llull, UOC – ISEA Barcelona, .BEEP { collection;}, NewArtFoundation, OFFF Barcelona and Hangar organize the Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona within the official program of the Ars Electronica 2020 Festival, which this year is held in distributed mode, with Barcelona as one of its locations.

From September 9th to 13th, Ars Electronica 2020 will take place under the title of Kepler’s Garden, a tour that from Linz (Austria) expands to other 120 cities. For the first time, the Festival becomes a sort of digital journey that will take visitors from all over the world to different biotopes and networked ecosystems where new alliances and forms of cooperation are possible. Simultaneously to local-physical and global online events, Ars Electronica appears once again as a laboratory focusing on experimental forms of analog and digital, real and virtual, physical and online coexistence.

Based on the notions of uncertainty and ecology, Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona presents a program that seeks to account for the diversity of relationships and interdependencies among the arts, sciences, technologies and critical thinking that make possible ways of thinking and doing that can provide non-univocal answers to the need to constitute and strengthen a material culture of life that will lessen the ecological and epistemic damage of capitalism, which the COVID-19 crisis once again puts into reconfiguration. The program of Ars Electronica Garden Barcelona is deployed in a variety of activities and formats that include exhibitions, live actions, round tables, shows or workshops, with a clear will to interconnect politics with art, technology and nature. Barcelona appears here through a network of heterogeneous agents that make theoretical positions converge with the practical work that multiple social groups, cultural producers, nodes, clusters or educational centres have been developing, interlinked with each other and with the world.

 

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Ars Electronica Barcelona Garden Show
Exhibition

The show will present the most recent acquisitions of .BEEP { Collection;}: the historical works Das tangible Bild and The Endless Sandwich both by Peter Weibel and Vestibular_1 by Albert Barqué-Duran & Marc Marzenit. Three brand new works will also be exhibited, produced thanks to grants awarded to Mónica Rikic, by New Home of Mind, Roc Parés by Doble Consciència and Santi Vilanova (Playmodes) by Forms. The three projects have been selected through a public call of the Institut Ramon Llull, NewArtFoundation and Hangar.

Date: From 9.9.2020 to 20.9.2020
Time: Tuesday to Saturday: 11 to 2 p.m. / 4 to 8 p.m. Sundays and holidays: 11 to 2 p.m. / 3 to 7 p.m. CEST
Format: on site
Location: Arts Santa Mònica. La Rambla, 7. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. No prior registration required.

On Bio_Sonic_Agencies
Roundtable hosted by Biofriction, project led by Hangar and co-financed by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme.

This panel proposes a conversation between Brandon LaBelle, author of Sonic Agency, and artists who work with biomaterials, sound and critically listening as an encounter(s) where other possibilities of relations with what we call nature or to non-human agents can be articulated. In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? In Sonic Agency, Brandon LaBelle highlights sound’s invisible, disruptive, and affective qualities and asks whether the unseen nature of sound can support a political transformation. What is the materiality of sound? How does the materiality of sound affect listening? What resistances can be configured from working with biomaterials and sound? Do these bio_sonic_agencies open up other possible spaces that do not exist in the visual regime?

Participants: conductor Laura Benítez Valero (ES) with Brandon LaBelle (US), Robertina Šebjanič (SI), Óscar Martín (ES) and Vanessa Lorenzo (ES) *

Date: Wednesday 9.9.2020
Time: from 3:30 to 5 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site
Language: English

Visitor information
Location: Disseny Hub Barcelona. Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, 38. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

* Brandon LaBelle (US), Robertina Šebjanič (SI), Óscar Martín (ES) and Vanessa Lorenzo (ES) will participate virtually

Art and Science of the Political Ecology of Disasters
Roundtable hosted by UOC

Catastrophes and vulnerability has once again brought us to the forefront the urgency of assuming and acting against the consequences of an Anthropocene that advances inexorably. Being aware of the interconnectedness of all has been our daily life, facing the interactions between biological and ecological systems, but also the media ecology, within a relational ecology of practices where art, science and technology collide. In this panel artists, scientists and theoricians will explore all those possible futures ahead of us.

Participants: conductor Pau Alsina (ES) with Joana Moll (ES), Andy Gracie (UK), Israel Rodríguez (ES), Ingrid Guardiola (ES). Relator Vanina Hofman (AR)

Date: Wednesday 9.9.2020
Time: from 6 to 7:25 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site
Language: English

Visitor information
Location: Disseny Hub Barcelona. Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, 38. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

An Uncertain but Irresistible Revolution
Roundtable hosted by OFFF

In a technological world in which the present has eternalized and the oblivion is the security of the next innovation, what we call reality is a magma in which floats an endless number of images, data, pieces of information, flashbacks and promises of liberation. This fact requires us to find other rules, other ways of reading and new ways of looking through unexpected paths.

Participants: conductor Héctor Ayuso (ES) with Carla Cascales Alimbau (ES), Xavi Cardona / Boldtron (ES), Enric Godes / Vasava (ES)

Date: Wednesday 9.9.2020
Time: from 8 to 9 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site
Language: English

Visitor information
Location: Disseny Hub Barcelona. Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, 38. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

Facing Uncertainty And Its Discontents
Roundtable hosted by UOC

While we are getting used to deal with those events in which the probability of a certain situation occurring is not known, we ask ourselves what does it mean to live in a context of extreme uncertainty? How to take the risk of uncertainty and try to slide their gains? How arts, sciences, technologies and thought have learned from it and propelled their practices of uncertainty? In this panel, we will explore different approaches to this topic in the  global context of an imperfect predictability of the facts.

Participants: conductor Pau Alsina (ES) with Roc Parés (MX), Marina Garcés (ES), Joan Soler-Adillon (ES), Tere Badia (ES) y Pau Waelder (ES)

Date: Thursday 10.9.2020
Time: from 3.30 to 4:55 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site
Language: English

Visitor information
Location: Disseny Hub Barcelona. Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, 38. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

On Code. The Uncertainty Of Meaning And Doing
Roundtable hosted by Hangar

Code may be apprehended as a sort of text that tells a machine what to do, but also as text that helps us (inferring the human component of the cyborg) to make sense. In this panel, we delve into the interference of code in the listening process. Code allows the ear to navigate the listening interface, despite it happens to narrow its sensitive scope; code crosses the interface as the membrane which separates but also connects, and which unfolds at least two different dimensions: the vibration of the air from a sound source to our ears, and the zone of inter/intra-action, mediation, negotiation and distribution of attention and meanings, between the (dis)orders of the emitted and of the heard sounds.

Participants: Lina Bautista (CO), Daniel Moreno Roldán (ES), Ángel Faraldo (ES), Lluís Nacenta (ES), Agnès Pe (ES) y Carolina Jiménez (ES)

Date: Thursday 10.9.2020
Time: from 6 to 7:25 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site
Language: English

Visitor information
Location: Disseny Hub Barcelona, Barcelona. Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, 38. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

Algorave
Live show by Toplap Barcelona. Organized by Hangar

Algoraves bring together the improvisation and the code scope of a live coding session with the languages and the rituals of the dance floor. During the live writing and reading of the code, and the unfolding of the musical improvisation, the audience dances, thinks and listens in a uniquely intertwined way, helping musicians make sense and do the real creative work in making a great party.

Date: Thursday 10.9.2020
Time: from 8 to 10 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site

Visitor information
Location: Hangar. c/Emília Coranty, 16. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

Push My Buttons: Sequence All. Hacking Numeric Keyboards
A workshop by Kenneth Dow. Organized by Hangar

Workshop on how to hack a keyboard and turn it into a step sequencer or any other conceivable controller for synthesizers. We may undertake this transformation in such a way that no screen is required, creating a direct link between keyboard and sound operation, strongly relying on the musician’s hearing and memory. The focus will be placed on the conception of musical interfaces and their implementation in different hardware. Besides, we will find intuitive modes of interaction and elegant solutions to restrictions, the hardware imposes upon us. Code examples, microcontroller hardware and necessary tools will be provided. Please supply your own keyboard. The hardware should have no more than 16 keys and ideally has a large form factor. Dial pads and rings, doorbells, simple remote controls or toys may be used.

Please note that computer keyboards are not suitable for this workshop.

By Kenneth Dow (DE).

Date: Saturday 12.9.2020
Time: from 12 to 2 p.m. CEST
Format: Live. Streaming / on site
Language: English

Visitor information
Location: Hangar. c/Emília Coranty, 16. Barcelona, Spain.
Entrance: Free entrance. Prior registration required
Stream link: here

Ars Electronica Barcelona Garden Taxis

Visiting ateliers and studios TAXIS conducted by Antonia Folguera (ES) with Antoni Muntadas (ES), Antoni Abad (ES), Alba G. Corral (ES), Playmodes (ES), Josep Manuel Berenguer (ES), Marcel·lí Antúnez (ES), Eugènia Balcells (ES), Joan Fontcuberta (ES), Mario Santamaría (ES) and 300.000 Kms (ES), among others.

www.arselectronicagardenbarcelona.org