Barbara Sansone

The Influencers 2012: War Through Art

Barbara Sansone
This year ìThe Influencersî promises to be a very exciting festival, but being quite honest, when on earth†has it ever disappointed? Or, hasnít it positively surprised those people who visited it for the first time? The most original and dynamic festival of Barcelona is at its eighth edition in 2012 and, as ever, itís taking place at CCCB, from 9th 11th February.... READ MORE...
ActivismArticlesDigimag - Issue 71, February 2012

Explorations Of The Invisibles. Freedom & Power In The Electromagnetic

Barbara Sansone
The exploration of this landscape is indeed what the exhibition Invisible Fields -Geographies of radio waves, proposes. Opened on 15th October 2011 at the Arts Santa Monica in Barcelona, it will run until the 4th March 2012. Curated by José Luis de Vicente and Honor Harger, from the digital culture agency Lighthouse (Brighton, UK), it has been realised in collaboration with the British Council, the Bureau du Québec in Barcelona / Le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec, the LABoral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial of Gijón and the B˜lit-Centre d'Art Contemporani of B˜lit-Girona.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 70, December 2011 / January 2012Sound

Touching The Music. Baschet Laboratory Of Sound Sculpture

Barbara Sansone
They are strange, colorful, made of cardboard, tinfoil and glass sheets, this strings of metal. They are beautiful to behold. Above all, they make you feel like you want to touch them. The ambiguity of the verb tocar a term that in Spanish means also to play (a musical instrument) appears to have originated from them. It is sufficient to touch them with your fingers slightly wet. They will emit magnificent sounds, sounds that you could produce using a traditional instruments only after years of hard practice. These objects go by the name of Cristal Baschet and other works produced by the brothers Francois & Bernard Baschet, to whom Museu de la Musica di Barcellona is dedicating a solo exhibition, which will last until December 19, 2011.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 67, September 2011Sound

Offf 2011. Year Zero, In Which Sense?

Barbara Sansone
OFFF, the international festival for web design, graphic animation and post-digital culture, is back to Barcelona. It is not back because it has not reached its goals during its three years abroad, like Ivˆn de la Nuez, director of the the Department of Cultural Activities of the CCCB Center of Contemporary Culture , wants to point out. To claim the authorship of such a successful event is perfectly comprehensible, but it is also coherent with the politics of a city which tends always more to be a brand of industrial culture, disadvantaging in many cases the minor artistic trends, even if they are significant and committed.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 66, July / August 2011

Multisensory Space. Interview With Sonia Cillari

Barbara Sansone
We are obviously talking about Sonia Cillari, original artist carrying on by long time a personal and coherent project, by offering to the public a way to enter, feel and live her work with body and soul. Awarded with a Honorable Mention at 2007 Prix Ars Electronica, Interactive Art, she is today a professor at Frank Mohr Institute, IME Interactive Media Environment Department, and she is part of Optofonica Laboratory for Immersive ArtScience based in Amsterdam.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 63, April 2011Science

The Rules Of Improvisation. Ruth Barberan And The Catalan Scenario

Barbara Sansone
Maybe not everybody knows that Barcelona and Catalonia in general, more than everywhere else in Europe, is hosting a rich panorama of improvisers, forced to play a secondary role and work in very little amounts of time. Among them we chose to interview Ruth Barberˆn, for she is a clear example of musician with a academic education passed to research, and she is involved in the organization of little events and concerts contributing to enrich scenarios and ideas of local sound and music experimentation. We chose her because she is a woman, but it is better not to say it loud for she does not like discrimination, no matter if even good one, although she admits the need of filling a still existing gap.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 60, December 2010 / January 2011

The Charm Of Precariousness. A Conversation With Jose’ Luis De Vicente

Barbara Sansone
A few years ago, there was an omnipresent personality to be seen at any digital art event organized in Barcelona (amongst other places). This personality was José Luis de Vicente, a writer, theorist, curator, and researcher actively involved in events like Sónar (http://www.sonar.es), OFFF (http://www.offf.ws) and ArtFutura (http://www.artfutura.org).... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 59, November 2010

Ars Electronica 2010. Art And Technology For A Better Future

Barbara Sansone
Talking about an event like Ars Electronica is far from easy, first of all due do its sheer size, Size about the multiplicity of possible activities (attending exhibitions, conferences, laboratories, performances, projections; resting and exchanging views at the meeting points; participating to a variety of parallel activities,), the creative sites whose boundaries fade one into another (video, cinema, dance, music, ininstallations, handcrafting, animation, sustainability, architecture, games, science, medicine, biology and the wide extension of spaces across which the festival is articulated.... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDigimag - Issue 58, October 2010

The Poetics Of The Intangible. A Conversation With Jaume Plensa

Barbara Sansone
In 2007, during the ArtFutura festival, I witnessed a brief conference by Jaume Plensa and it was love at first sight. His art, his thinking and his way of presenting them to me seemed something able to accompany the viewer into a higher dimension, to transmit an almost mystical energy. This artist joined the small circle of my idols and so, without realizing it, I ended up convinced that he was a superhuman being who was not really living on earth like us ordinary mortals.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 57, September 2010

The Softspace Of Usman Haque. Choreographies Of Sensations

Barbara Sansone
Architecture, according to Vitruvius, is the sum of three factors: utilitas, venustas and firmitas. Usefulness and beauty are for sure features that cannot be renounced in order not to cross the border into sculpture or into the simple and unfortunately rampant building industry. But what about permanence? Is it truly something that cannot be renounced ? Is it truly a must that an architectural work has necessarily to be solid and lasting over time ? When, on the contrary, a work is ephemeral, short-lived , transient cannot belong anymore to the domain of architecture ? And if the term 'ephemeral' rather than bearing the negative connotation of something fragile and subject to speculation, could instead carry a different meaning?... READ MORE...
ArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 54, May 2010

Donkijote By Cristian Bettini. The Sustainable Slowness Of Being

Barbara Sansone
Once upon a time there was a man who was travelling with a donkey. With them was also a GPS, a solar panel, a PC with a modem and a video camera. The donkey's steps guided the man through nature - steps that were very different from those that men have taken since they have been walking through cities. The donkey was called Minuto, and the Italian Cristian Bettini used him as a guide and as a metronome for his journey through an artistic project (Donkijote - third chapter of a complex project that started off as Lasino.org, and then continued as Donkeypedia) which allowed him to discover the fascinating Asturias region in Spain with his feet firmly on the ground.... READ MORE...
ActivismArticlesDigimag - Issue 53, April 2010

The Influencers 2010: Art, Action, Disobedience And Alchemy

Barbara Sansone
Heroes? Not really, according to them. They do what we all could do, what we all should maybe do: to denounce, inform, express ourselves, find our spaces, make our voice being heard (especially when who should be representing us, does not actually do it at all) and yet defend freedom, enjoy ourselves, try to be fine and take charge of the consequences of our lifestyle over human kind and the environment. Without being afraid, without being submissive, get what is ours, in a creative way, in a cultuerd, artistic way.... READ MORE...
ActivismArtArticlesDigimag - Issue 52, March 2010

Acoustics And Serendipity. An Interview With Jose’ Manuel Berenguer

Barbara Sansone
We had the pleasure and honour of going to meet José Manuel Berenguer in his home. José Manuel Berenguer is a key figure in the electro-acoustic experimental scene in Spain. A polyvalent artist, with a rich CV of experiences in various fields, and also co-director of the Orquestra del Caos, he is a likable man, open to dialogue and of enormous cultural knowledge. You could listen to him talk for hours without lowering your level of concentration. His professional and artistic journey is fascinating.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 51, February 2010Sound

Art Tech Media 2009. Sci-fi Journey Between Science & Culture

Barbara Sansone
After a year of intense activity, including Espacio Enter in Tenerife in September, the European Congress at the Guggenheim in Bilbao in October, the continuation of project emc27 and the preparation of an experimental research centre also in Tenerife, and some other art projects in progress (not least the forthcoming further edition of the Nomadas project), the tireless Montse Arbelo and Joseba Franco concluded their 2009 with panache in Barcelona with the II International Art Tech Media Congress.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 51, February 2010Science

Happy Birthday Artfutura

Barbara Sansone
Artfutura has just turned 20 (a really venerable age for a festival on such a topic). It celebrated its birthday at the IMAGINA building in Barcelona.For people thinking they were going to miss the traditional Mercat de le Flors (in fact this would have surely been a more adequate location for it) it has in fact turned out to be amusing to attend this festival in the famous catch@22, the district of innovation which has been the subject of a series of debates, an area still gutted due to never-ending work-in-progress but already with a futuristic stamp.... READ MORE...
ArtArticlesDesignDigimag - Issue 49, November 2009

Raul Martinez: The Tenderness Of Metal

Barbara Sansone
Although Digimag deals with digital culture, this month we want to devote a well-deserved space to an artist, whose work does not exactly fall within this category, but it perfectly places itself within that field of research that our magazine carries out in the framework of (applied and reused) technology, mechanics and art. The general trend does no longer lie in the celebration of technology in itself, but aims to grant priority to the concept and the tangibility, also when, in order to obtain them, the artist uses techniques and materials that are not exactly the latest fad.... READ MORE...
ArticlesDigimag - Issue 48, October 2009