Nearly 200 technologists, cyberactivists, researchers, scientistsand artists from the fields of music, videogames and immersive creation will offer talks, workshops and lectures in a summer edition of Sónar+D especially dedicated to learning and participation.

Main names and themes.
Among the conferences on experience design, the congress includes the presence of technologist Timoni West, director of the XR unit at Unity Labs, the R&D laboratory of the most important video game engine; Juha van ‘t Zelfde, a solidarity activist who advocates collective joy and founder of Progress Bar, a conceptual political party that supports diversity, inclusion and radical club culture; Natalia Fuchs, new media curator and co-founder of the GAMMA Festival in Saint Petersburg; and Alba G.Corral, visual artist and creative programmer renowned for her impressive audiovisual performances.

The internet to come, or the challenges and reflections on the next 30 years of the internet, will be another of the main topics of discussion by the hand of Xenia Ermoshina, researcher at CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research in France) and analyst of the technologies of surveillance and censorship against journalists and activists; Marta Peirano, journalist specialized in free culture, security and privacy, Internet rights and author of the book “The enemy knows the system”; and Jay Springett, theorist “solarpunk”, the new utopian trend of science fiction that imagines a green future with free energy sources and decentralized energy infrastructures.

Quantum computing and its impact on science and technology in the not-so-distant future is another of Sónar+D 2019’s themes. It will discover how it works, what impact it will have in the future and how it can be explored and understood through creativity. To delve deeper into it, Sónar+D invites Libby Heaney, a British artist and quantum physicist whose artistic practice focuses on the impact of new technologies; and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS), Spain’s National Supercomputing Center specializing in high-performance computing (HPC), which is currently developing its own quantum computer.

The theme of sound and music technology is joined by the British project The Rattle, a London and LA incubator for musicians and music technology entrepreneurs: its two founders Jon Eades and Chris Howard will offer a talk on financing for artists.

The SonarMies programme will present the annual sound intervention of the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona pavilion, which this year will feature the piece ‘Dazwischen’ by Colombian artist Lucrecia Dalt. In this sound and architectural investigation of the pavilion, the artist takes up ideas from the architect, such as spatial continuity or open-plan structure. In ‘Dazwischen’ (German word meaning between unexpected and intermediate condition) Lucrecia Dalt will propose an experience using sound to question the spatial limits it occupies. The work also has a textual and vocal deconstruction component that turns the pavilion into a talking entity.

Jules Laplace and Los Voluble join the workshop program: Jules Laplace, the programmer who has developed Holly Herndon’s “Spawn”, the “baby” of AI, will offer a workshop to understand what neural networks are and how to train them to work with sound; and the activists of audiovisual experimentation Los Voluble will give a workshop on political remixing and live cinema. Other workshops already announced are those of the CANADA studio, Hamill Industries, Peter Kirn or teenage engineering.

Programme.
Sónar+D 2019 will hold its 7th edition on 17, 18, 19 and 20 July and will bring together in Barcelona nearly 200 technologists, cyberactivists, researchers, scientists and artists from the fields of music, videogames and immersive creation, will offer talks, workshops and lectures in a summer edition of Sónar+D specially dedicated to learning and participation.

Main Thematic Axes.
These are the thematic axes that will channel the contents of this 7th edition of Sónar+D: 
1) THE DESIGN OF EXPERIENCES as the creative language par excellence of our time (installations, video games, virtual or augmented reality pieces and audiovisual experiences). This axe will feature conferences and workshops by leading artists and companies in this field such as the prestigious teamLab studio, the interdisciplinary immersive digital technology in conversation with Honor Harger, director of the ArtScience Museum of Singapore, whose permanent collection is the work of teamLab itself.

Other guests will be the founders of Nómada Studio, created in Barcelona by Conrad Roset, and the programmers Roger Mendoza and Adrián Cuevas, who will unveil the secrets of Gris, an artistic video game with great international repercussion together with Timoni West the Director of XR Research at Unity, where she leads a team of cross-disciplinary artists and engineers exploring explore how game authoring, AI, deep learning, computer visualization, VR, AR and storytelling will radically change gaming and immersive experiences in the next decade; the acclaimed studio CANADA, creator of the video clips of Rosalía, Tame Impala, Bad Gyal among many others, which will participate with a conference and a workshop; Hamill Industries, known above all for their continued work with Floating Points, unites narrative and technology to create live visuals, artistic installations and music videos, and will offer a conference and a lasers programming workshop.

Presentations will include Chris Sharp, as the contemporary music programmer at the Barbican Centre in London, who has expanded the offer of this art centre into the field of electronic music and audiovisual shows, provoking collaborations between artists and curating exclusive concerts; Juha van ‘t Zelfde, founder of Progress Bar, a conceptual political party that supports radical club culture, inclusion, diversity and emerging talent; Natalia Fuchs, curator, teacher and co-founder of the Gamma Festival in St. Petersburg, an event that brings together music, culture and cutting-edge artistic research and also is an advisor on an exhibition on AI to be inaugurated at the Barbican; Ouchhh Studio, an independent new media studio based in Istanbul working with AI, data sculptures, kinetic sculptures, immersive experiences and computer graphics; Push 1 Stop, the Canadian visualist who specialises in translating sound into image and in immersive formats that experiment with the balance between human error and computational behaviour; Alba G. Corral, visual artist and creative programmer known for her impressive audiovisual performances, where she integrates code and drawing in real time in collaboration with musicians and sound artists.

This year Sonar360º by MEDIAPRO, the dome dedicated to fulldome audiovisual work where the audience is completely surrounded by image and sound, returns MEDIAPRO will premiere exclusively at Sónar+D a piece of its own production in 360º format. In addition to this premiere, the programme will include a selection of immersive audiovisual pieces.

2) The most recent technological INNOVATIONS IN THE MUSIC AND SOUND INDUSTRIES. In the field of sound and music technology, the programme dedicated to this theme will include the conference and workshop of teenage engineering, the Swedish designers of cult synthesizers on modular synthesis; the conference of one of the world’s leading specialists in immersive narrative and XR or mixed realities, Jessica Brillhart, founder of Vrai Pictures, on new experiences that combine augmented reality and “spatialized” sound combined with a workshop by Vrai Pictures installation “Traverse” developer Igal Nassima; Peter Kirn, the director since 2005, one of the most famous music technology media Create Digital Music, interviewing David Möllerstedt, one of the founders of teenage engineering who will also offer a virtual synthesizer workshop; the founders of The Rattle, Jon Eades, who was the director of innovation department of the legendary Abbey Road studio, and Chris Howard, a startup consultant at the MIT Global Startup Workshop, a London incubator that funds artists and musical startups who will offer a talk on financing for artists.

3) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A TOOL FOR ARTISTIC CREATION. Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more important in the field of artistic creation. Confirmed names include the teams formed by the Japanese technologist Daito Manabe in collaboration with the neuroscientist Yukiyasu Kamitani, who will offer an amazing live show and a conference to reveal Kamitani’s personal line of research focused on the use of artificial intelligence to visualize the content of brain states; Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst will present their “baby” Spawn, an intelligent computer application who “learns” from the voices of her “parents” and nearby artists participating in Holly Herndon’s latest show PROTO. The show is an exploration of the ‘protocol era’: in a sense how we all, machine and human alike, are defined or not by our programming; Jules Laplace, the artist and programmer of the voice synthesis for Holly Herndon’s Spawn project, will offer a workshop designed to understand what neural networks are, what it is possible to do with them and train them to work with music and sound.

4) THE NEXT INTERNET. Challenges and thoughts about the next 30 years of internet. In 2019 the network celebrates a triple anniversary: 50 years of the first computer-to-computer connection, 30 years of the creation of the WWW and 20 years of Napster, three milestones to celebrate and reflect on the next 30 years of the web. Renewing the web means making your infrastructure visible to build new, decentralized, free and environmentally sustainable.

Three activists and researchers will shed some light on a surveiled future: Marta Peirano is a journalist and writer specializing in free culture, security and privacy, and internet rights. She is the author of the book “The enemy knows the system” on platform capitalism, computational propaganda and communication infrastructures; Xenia Ermoshina is a CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research in France) researcher, activist and internet freedoms analyst. She investigates the control of information in the post-Soviet space, especially in the analysis of surveillance technologies and censorship against journalists and activists; Jay Springett is a “solarpunk” theorist, the new utopian trend of science fiction that imagines a green future exploring the possibilities of free energy sources and decentralized energy infrastructures. Where cyberpunk is darkness and dehumanization, solarpunk is technology, nature and humanity.

5) QUANTUM COMPUTING and its impact on science and technology in the not so distant future. Quantum computing is a technology which has now moved from the theoretical to the practical. With the first quantum computers and their increasing computational power also comes the promise of great scientific and technological advances in all fields (computing, medicine, energy, finance, etc.).

Sonar+D will reveal how quantum computing works, what impact it will have in the future and how it can be explored and understood creatively. To this end, art, quantum physics and high-performance computing will be explored by artist Libby Heaney, a British artist and quantum physicist whose artistic practice is related to the impact of new technologies in the future and scientists from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain’s National Supercomputing Center specialized in high-performance computing, currently building their own quantum computer.

Tech Shows at Sónar+D.
This year Sónar’s tech-shows feature the relationship between brain and music, artificial intelligence and the dialogue between light and sound.

Science and Music.
Artist Daito Manabe and neuroscientist Yukiyasu Kamitani will present “dissonant imaginary”, an audiovisual show that explores the relationship between music and brain activity; and “Superstrings” by the Turkish creative studio Ouchhh who, in collaboration with the Barcelona Za!, are going to present a live show in which the brain waves of the musicians will be visualized in real time.

Artificial Intelligence.
Holly Herndon will present “Proto”, a show that unites the human voice and the non-human voice of Spawn, an artificial intelligence entity for the generation of sound and vocal process; machine learning neural networks also drive Actress’s AV/AI show and his non-human assistant, Young Paint.

Light and Sound.
“Audible Spectrums” is the proposal of Hamill Industries & Shelly, a show inspired by analog technology and retro-futuristic aesthetics; the Italian Quiet Ensemble will present “Back Symphony”, a live exploration of light starring lights, strobe lamps, cables and electricity; Us artist Lotic will be accompanied by lighting design master Emmanuel Biard in his show “Endless Power”; Push 1 Stop and Wiklow will present “Membrane”, a generative audio and image show halfway between performance and installation that brings digital forms into physical space; a special mention for Berlinist, who will perform the soundtrack they have created for the Gris videogame – one of the most famous videogames of the time – in synchrony with images manipulated live by its creators, Nomada Studio.

We Are Europe Selects More Than 60 Cultural Personalities.
Sónar+D is part of We Are Europe (WAE), the unique and innovative cooperation project supported by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme. This project, which began in 2016, brings together 8 European cultural structures, each of which organises a music festival and a congress dealing with issues relating to the evolution and future of culture. We Are Europe has just launched a new three-year cycle (2019-2021) in which the artistic teams of the 8 European festivals that are part of the project have selected 64 cultural personalities who will play a central role in the programming of the project’s activities. These include artists, musicians, researchers, journalists, philosophers, designers, filmmakers, programmers, activists, writers, etc. The complete list can be found here

The 8 festivals that are part of We Are Europe are: c/o pop festival and c/o pop convention (Cologne, Germany), Unsound Festival and Unsound Discourse (Krakow, Poland), Elevate Festival and Discourse & Activism (Graz, Austria), Insomnia Festival and Insomnia Insights (Tromso, Norway), Nuits Sonores Festival and European Lab Camp Forum (Lyon, France), Reworks Festival and Reworks Agora (Thessaloniki, Greece), TodaysArt festival and TodaysArt Context (The Hague, Netherlands) and Sónar and Sónar+D (Barcelona, Spain).

Voices of Sónar+D for ME by Meliá.
After the success of the previous edition, Voices of Sónar+D for ME by Meliá returns to Madrid and London, and for the first time to Milan, to hold a series of talks on the design of experiences with some of the most powerful studios of the moment.

The series will open on April 4 in Madrid with the immersive technology development studio BroomX, and will continue in London and Milan on May 8 and 16 respectively. At the London event the guests will be the British Marshmallow Laser Feast, specialists in immersive media; and in Milan, the new media studio Studio Folder and the specialist digital art publication Digicult. The call to attend will be open two weeks before each event and registrations will be made through http://www.sonarplusd.com

Sónar+D 2019 in Hong Kong.
Sónar+D Hong Kong 2019 will be held on 13 April and will feature a programme of workshops, conferences and spectacular audiovisual and new media shows by emerging Asian artists such as Meuko! Meuko! featuring NAXS Corp, Hong Qile, Nerve x, Pink Money and sound and visual artists such as the British Mileece and the Spanish Clon x NWRMNTC.

All information and registration here

H/T Sónar festival.