The city's quintessential International Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art has also been affected by the conditions of the pandemic and will not return to its usual format until June 2022, the month in which it has always been held. But to make the wait not so long, its directors Enric Palau and Ricard Robles bring us a new autumn proposal branched into three new festivals with the Sónar seal: AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival, SónarCCCB 2021, and OFFSónar by Night.
Since 1993, Sónar has been held annually and is considered one of the most prestigious events in Europe in its genre, being an essential event for cutting-edge artists, professionals and important companies in the world of electronic music and art, and an open yet demanding audience. In addition, its expansion has crossed our borders and there are already several editions held in Istanbul ---the last one was just at the beginning of October---, and next spring it will premiere in Lisbon. This autumn edition in Barcelona will be from October 27 to 30 and will feature more than 100 activities spread across the three parts.
The three festivals have a predominantly in-person character, following current regulations. But their hybrid format proposal, with digital events, will allow a part of the offer of the AI and Music Festival and SónarCCCB to be available online in a free streaming and will be recorded by Betevé for later broadcast and video on demand.
AI and Music S+T+ARTS Festival (October 27 and 28)
The first AI and Music festival focused on the applications and challenges of artificial intelligence in musical creation will be driven by the European Commission's S+T+ARTS program and will feature the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) and Betevé. It will bring together experts, scientists, professionals, and artists from around the world to discuss, explore, and demonstrate the interaction between humans and technology, with a wide program of concerts, demonstrations, conferences, and hackathons ---a gathering of programmers whose objective is the collaborative development of software---.
21 musical performances, most of them created ex profeso for this first festival, which somehow integrate artificial intelligence, and which have been developed by teams in co-creation by the artists themselves together with AI researchers from the UPC. This is the case of the inaugural concert on Wednesday 27 at L'Auditori, which will premiere the show Piano+AI by pianist and composer Marco Mezquida; the work of choreographer Kiani del Valle together with visual artists Hamill Industries, or the interactive proposal open to the public created by the Catalan production company Awwz.
Also within the framework of this festival, and in co-creation format, the research and artistic residency project of Holly Herndon, one of the pioneers in experimentation with voice and artificial intelligence, will be developed, together with local artists Tarta Relena and Maria Arnal, which promises to be one of the highlights of the event, and the collaboration of the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO) together with artists and researchers Reiko Yamada and Maciej Lewenstein, in their show Of Randomness and Imperfection.
Beyond the musical proposals, the AI and Music will focus on talks and round tables where the uses and potential of AI as a transformative element in music and how to bring it to the general public will be discussed. But the Thinking Lab will also be developed, a new meeting and sharing space for experts, scientists, artists, and professionals who want to exchange experiences and knowledge acquired during the event, which transcends the festival and culminates in a future book on music and AI.
SónarCCCB (October 29 and 30)
The Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) will once again host SónarCCCB, after the conclusion of AI and Music, in an expanded and more musical version than in other years, with more than 60 activities divided between concerts and DJ sets, the Sónar+D presentations ---conferences, demonstrations, workshops and screenings---, and audiovisual capsules, in addition to dedicating an exhibition space to local and foreign projects, and featuring an online content program that has been produced in collaboration with different national and international partners in cities around the world.
The bulk of this festival will be dedicated to an extensive musical program that will take place between the Hall and the Teatre of the CCCB, but also the Pati de les Dones will host a dozen artists representative of the city's musical ecosystem, curated by the radio platform Dublab.es. Names like BFlecha, Bikôkô, Cora Novoa & The Artifacts, Dania, Il Quadro di Troisi, Koreless, La Niña Jacarandá, Marina Herlop, Palica, Parrenin/Weinrich/Rollet, Tirzah, Verde Prato, Wave 131, or Zenjiskan, among many others, will sound during the two days, along with video capsules created for the occasion by artists such as JASSS b2b Cem featuring Harriet Davey AV set or Yeule, within the framework of the We Are Europe platform of the Creative Europe artistic curatorship program.
The bulk of this festival will be dedicated to an extensive musical program that will take place between the Hall and the Teatre of the CCCB, but also the Pati de les Dones will host a dozen artists representative of the city's musical ecosystemThe more theoretical part of this event is dedicated to the Sónar+D conference space, with a program divided into five thematic blocks ---sustainability, creative coding and artificial intelligence, new digital imaginaries, future cities and new digital economies beyond crypto platforms---, andcollaborative projects between local entities from the world of creativity, research, and training, such as that of artist and researcher Joana Moll with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and Aksioma called Carbolytics, or the audiovisual project by Cora Novoa together with Taller de Músics.
For the last day on Sunday and in collaboration with the In-Edit festival, a marathon of musical documentary cinema has been programmed, where the pre-premiere of the film Laurent Garnier: Off the Record will be screened, which covers the career of the French DJ, along with a session with unreleased videos of some of the most memorable concerts in Sónar's history.
OFFSónar by Night (October 29 and 30)
To celebrate that clubs are open again, two special sessions have been programmed for Friday and Saturday nights, headlined by two of the most important DJs on the international music scene, such as Nina Kraviz and Laurent Garnier, along with some of the most select local DJs ---Angel Molina, Anika Kunst, or Josephine and Luna Martínez from the Femnoise collective---.
This event will be held in the Plaza Mayor of Poble Espanyol and will be the perfect closing to four days of music, creativity and technology, before the celebration in June 2022 of the next Sónar.