More than 100 activities, concerts, lectures, demonstrations, workshops, screenings and audiovisual capsules will fill the spaces of the CCCB every day, from Thursday 28 to Saturday 30, from 11am to midnight. On the nights of Friday 29 and Saturday 30, between 10 pm and 4 am, the musical activity moves to the Plaza Mayor of Poble Espanyol. All the shows can be watched standing up and without social distancing at both venues.

Among the 61 musical performances, highlights include artists such as Koreless, Tirzah, Leon Vynehall, Space Afrika, Mouse on Mars, BFlecha, Dj Nigga Fox, Marco Mezquida, Marina Herlop, Object Blue, Rakky Ripper; the special collaborations between Cora Novoa & The Artifacts feat. Tirador A/V set, or the vocal ensemble formed by American artist Holly Herndon with Maria Arnal and Tarta Relena.

The virtual star of Thursday 28th is an artificial intelligence that will play the role of DJ in the Pati de les Dones of the CCCB, playing all day without human intervention a selection of music created by the same AI from the music of hundreds of sessions by other DJs.

Coinciding with the SónarCCCB festival, on the nights of Friday 29th and Saturday 30th October, OFFSónar by Night will celebrate the return of clubbing to the Barcelona night with two of the most important DJs in the world, Nina Kraviz and Laurent Garnier, in 2 extraordinary sessions at the Hivernacle of Poble Espanyol. Sharing the booth will be local hero Angel Molina and some of the most select DJs of the current Barcelona scene.

The program of lectures and presentations will focus on the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in music, the design of new digital spaces and imaginaries, new digital economies, sustainability and the city of the future.

Sónar acts as a physical and virtual hub to connect ideas and talent, and promote cultural innovation in Barcelona and aiding in its international projection. This special edition focuses on content and formats based on co-creation, collaboration and knowledge exchange between creators and entities from different disciplines, both artistic and scientific.

Examples of this are those shows developed for the AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival hand in hand with researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and: Pianist Marco Mezquida, visual design studio Hamill Industries with the choreographer Kiani del Valle or the music producer Awwz. Other examples of co-creation between art and science are those between the artist and researcher Joana Moll and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), Reiko Yamada with the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) or the live neuroscience experiment that will open SónarCCCB designed by the Ajuntament de L’Hospitalet with the Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica de Bellvitge (IDIBELL) and with the participation of the DJ Alicia Carrera.

The program of collaborations of this Sónar 2021 extends through projects carried out with numerous agents of the cultural and educational scene, both in Barcelona and the rest of Europe, such as the CCCB itself, the In-Edit festival, the IDEAL digital arts center, facilities such as L’Auditori, Hangar, Soko Tech, Factory Berlin, Bozar, Somerset House Studios and Sala Salamandra, training centers such as ESMUC, Eina, Taller de Músics, Eumes, IED and BAU or the contents developed by collectives such as Dublab, Artificia, Quantum Music, Polifonia and entities such as Òpera de Butxaca i Nova Creació (OBNC).

All activities at the CCCB and Poble Espanyol will be held without social distancing, shows can be watched standing up and dancing is allowed in all venues. Following the protocol by Procicat, use of a facemask is mandatory in all areas, except when eating or drinking in the designated areas. Access will be permitted upon presentation of the Covid EU passport showing full vaccination, or with a negative antigen test (taken 48h before access to the festival) or a PCR test (72h before), or proof of recovery rom the infection in the last 6 months.

AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival / Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th October.
The new festival of artificial intelligence and music, organized in collaboration with the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and betevé and promoted by the S+T+ARTS program of the European Commission, will bring together experts, scientists, professionals and artists from around the world to discuss, explore and demonstrate the synergies between music creation and artificial intelligence through a wide and impressive program of concerts, lectures, demonstrations and hackathons.

A total of 21 musical shows integrating artificial intelligence will be presented, most of them produced expressly for the festival, including the unprecedented collaboration between Holly Herndon, María Arnal and Tarta Relena or other artistic projects such as Mouse on Mars, Hamill Industries & Kiani del Valle, AWWZ, Nabihah Iqbal and Libby Heaney or Reiko Yamada, as well as a history-making DJ set by an artificial intelligence that will play, without human assistance, all day long at the Pati de les Dones, music created by itself from hundreds of music files of others.

On Wednesday night, October 27th, L’Auditori de Barcelona will present, in co-production with Sónar and UPC, the Inaugural Concert of the AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival, with the pianist and composer Marco Mezquida premiering the show “Piano+AI”.

SónarCCCB 2021 / Friday 29 and Saturday October 30.
For its part, SónarCCCB will feature 40 shows and DJ sets, with big international names of the avant-garde such as Koreless, Tirzah, Leon Vynehall, Space Afrika, Parrenin/Weinrich/Rollet, Object Blue A/V Live, Il Quadro di Troisi, Die Wilde Jagd or DJ Nigga Fox, as well as a wide representation of current national and local talent such as BFlecha, Rakky Ripper or Cora Novoa & The Artifacts feat. Tirador A/V set, among others. The radio platform Dublab Barcelona will curate the SonarVillage by Estrella Damm stage featuring a dozen of the most relevant emerging artists from the Barcelona music ecosystem.

To inaugurate SónarCCCB, Sónar, the City of L’Hospitalet and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) will present for the first time a neuroscience experiment to explore how human curiosity works through music. The festival will be used as a scientific laboratory to collect evidence to study the differences in curiosity among the SónarCCCB audience. On October 29th -at CCCB- and October 30th -at Sala Salamandra in l’Hospitalet-, participants will be exposed to completely new music. With the data obtained, differences between listeners will be evaluated, 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 SónarCCCB program is completed with the Sónar+D conferences and workshops and will culminate with a marathon of documentaries on electronic music on Sunday October 31 at Aribau Multicines in association with the In-Edit festival. The day before, as part of the SónarCCCB talks program, there will be a face-to-face conversation between Laurent Garnier and J.A. Bayona.

Sónar, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and betevé are partnering to present, for the first time in Barcelona, the AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival; an initiative of the European Commission that places focus on applications, challenges and opportunities of artificial intelligence in music creation.

The AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival will feature nearly 30 activities, including shows, presentations and lectures by artists who incorporate artificial intelligence as an essential element in their musical projects.

World Premieres and Co-Creations.
Among the 21 shows on the program, most of them absolute premieres, feature co-creations developed expressly for the festival in which the artists have worked hand in hand with artificial intelligence researchers from the UPC. These include the opening concert from pianist and composer Marco Mezquida, the show from choreographer Kiani del Valle together with visual artists Hamill Industries or the interactive show with audience participation created by the Catalan DJ and producer Awwz.

Also co-created for the occasion, the AI and Music Festival presents a research project and artistic residency from Holly Herndon, a pioneer in experiments with the human voice and artificial intelligence, together with Maria Arnal and Tarta Relena. This unique vocal ensemble, under the title ‘Holly+’, will create a human and virtual polyphony, exclusively for the festival. Another highlight of the program is “Of Randomness and Imperfection”, a show whose concept comes from the collaboration between artists and researchers Reiko Yamada and Maciej Lewenstein, in collaboration with the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO).

In a total exclusive, the Pati de les Dones stage at the CCCB will feature an “AI Rave”, a DJ set created by a neural network that will generate brand new music from the archive of programs from the last five years of Dublab Barcelona radio station’s history. This performance is designed by Berlin-based artists Dadabots and Hexorcismos, both Alumni of Sónar+D’s Artist in Residence program with Factory Berlin.

The full list of shows taking place.
Marco Mezquida “Piano+AI”, Holly Herndon “Holly+”, feat. Maria Arnal, Tarta Relena and Mathew Dryhurst, Mouse on Mars AAI Live, Hamill Industries & Kiani del Valle “Engendered Otherness. A symbiotic AI dance ensemble, AWWZ b2b AI DJ, Bot Bop “Integers and Strings”, Nabihah Iqbal and Libby Heaney, ”Interpreting Quantum Randomness”. Reiko Yamada and Maciej Lewenstein, Rob Clouth A/V Live, Franz Rosati “Latentscape”, Hongshuo Fan “Metamorphosis”, “Polifonia”, “Jazz as Social Machine”, “AI Rave” developed by Dadabots and Hexorcismos.

AI and Music Broadcasts by YACHT, “Chameleon’s Blendings’‘ interpreted by the String Quartet of the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya-OBC and pianist Fani Karagianni, Human Brother, Hexorcismos, LP Duo and DIANA AI Song Contest and many more.

Talks.
The AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival will also offer a series of talks and round tables on the Auditori CCCB by NTT Data stage with the participation of scientists, artists and professionals who will discuss the uses, experiments and potential of AI as a transformative element in music and how to bring it closer to the general public, emphasizing, for example, new instruments and ways of performing and creating or how to teach machines to listen, see and feel in a human key. The titles of the talks are Musicians Learning Machine Learning, Teaching machines to feel like humans do, AI and future music genres and Make way for the new music instruments!

Also within the framework of the festival and taking place on October 27 and 28 at the headquarters of the SGAE in Catalonia will be “AI Ópera AI”, a conference on the new technological challenges and artificial intelligence in the field of contemporary opera creation. A number of creators and scientists will participate in this meeting to analyze the latest advances in this field. The conference will end with the premiere of the chamber opera “Andrómeda Encadenada” at the Palau de la Música Catalana, on Thursday October 28th at 8pm.

The majority of the content of the AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival can be enjoyed in streaming produced by betevé, in collaboration with the Institut Ramon Llull, through sonar.es and beteve.cat.

Hackathons.
The defacto start of the festival will take place on Saturday October 23 with the celebration of two 24hour hackathons, developed by UPC in face-to-face and online format: one on AI and education, An EducationalHack presented by Ableton, (developed by the UPC in collaboration with SokoTech), and a LiveCodingHack, presented by NTT DATA (developed by the UPC in collaboration with Hangar).

Thinking Lab.
Beyond the event itself, the Festival has created the Thinking Lab, a space for debate and co-creation, coordinated by UPC and Sónar, which transcends the festival. The Thinking Lab counts with the participation of experts, scientists, artists and professionals who exchange experiences and knowledge that have served to nurture some of the presentations and shows of the festival and whose conclusions of which will be published in a white paper on music and AI.

Institutions, Partners and Sponsors.
AI and Music Festival is an initiative of S+T+ARTS, the European Commission, Sónar, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and betevé, in association with Institut Ramon Llull, Factory Berlin, c/o pop Festival, Bozar, the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO), Barcelona Supercomputing Center-BSC, Quantum Music, Polifonia, Artificia, L’Auditori and ESMUC, Soko Tech, Hangar, Ópera de Butxaca y Nova Creació (OBNC) y el British Council. AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival cuenta con el patrocinio de NTT DATA y Ableton.

More info and tickets on aimusicfestival.eu

All activities will be face-to-face and much of the offer of AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival and SónarCCCB will also be available to stream online, produced by betevé, presented by Estrella Damm and with the collaboration of the Institut Ramon Llull, through sonar.es and beteve.cat.

H/T Sónar festival.