The Sónar creative technology congress will become a creative ‘summer school’ from the 17th to the 20th of July in Bar

This year’s edition opens with a conversation between Andrew Melchior, current chief technical officer of Massive Attack and Robert del Naja, the visible face and ideologist of the Bristol band. Melchior has developed apps that remix the songs of Massive Attack using the sensors of our mobile phones while we walk, as well as artistic-scientific projects such as the coding of their classic album “Mezzanine” into DNA chains inside spraypaint. For his part, Robert del Najaleads one of the most innovative bands of the past three decades when it comes to using technology to heighten the experience of music, both recorded and live. In conversation at Sónar+D they will share their ideas about how to connect music and technology.

A key name at this edition is the interdisciplinary teamLab Studio, who are reinventing the experience of exhibitions through their multisensory projected environments. “Borderless”, their digital art museum in Tokyo, is one of the most influential cultural experiences of the moment in the new creative scenes. Other creators of noteworthy experiences included in the program are the immersive art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, and Jessica Brillhart, founder of Vrai Pictures, who will present, for the first time in Europe, “Traverse”, an unprecedented platform of “spatial audio” (sound distributed in space) that allows the creation of musical compositions through which the user will be able to walk.

Sónar+D will also focus on the tools that are shaping new creative languages through experience design. Perhaps the most important is Unity, the three-dimensional graphics engine for video games, AR and VR, which has jumped from video games into industries such as film or architecture. Timoni West, the director of Experience Research for Unity Labs, will be in Barcelona, as will the Swedish company teenage engineering, who are reinventing the aesthetics of synthesizers as well as the way they are played.

The national creative scene is represented by names such as Nomada Studio, authors of the multi-award winning video game GRIS (which can also be experienced in concert format at the festival) and CANADA, the Barcelona-based production company that has become one of the most important teams of music video makers in the world, and that at Sónar+D will make a collectively created animated film in which all those attending Sónar will be able to participate.

Artificial Intelligence is the new great creative frontier which today’s artists and musicians approach with the intention of opening new horizons. Holly Herndon -one of the key figures in digital music in 2019- and her collaborators Mat Dryhurst and Jules LaPlace will share the design and creation process of SPAWN, the ‘AI assistant’ with whom Herdon has composed her acclaimed album “Proto”. Daito Manabe, a Sónar+D regular, returns, presenting his groundbreaking collaboration with the scientist Yukiyasu Kamitanifrom Kyoto University, using “Machine Learning” to recreate the images produced by our brain, visualizing our neuronal activity.

Beyond Artificial Intelligence, Sónar+D looks to the future, with sessions on the new creative horizons that will emerge from emerging technologies such as Quantum Computing, with Holly Cummins, IBM‘s IBM Q initiative, the Barcelona Supercomputing Centerand artist and physicist Libby Heaney. Sónar+D will also explore the Next Internet with experts such as solarpunk theorist Jay Springett or journalist and writer Marta Peirano talking on open culture, internet rights, security and privacy.
The conferences on innovation and business include figures such as James Down and Errol Baran, the respective heads of innovation departments at large corporations The Guardian and BBC Global News. who have led the processes of digital transformation of their media business.
In previous years the congress has featured figures such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jean-Michel Jarre or Brian Eno, and 2019 is no different, with the appearence of one of the key artists when it comes to understanding the relationship between music, art and technology in recent decades: Christian Marclay. A pioneer whose influence is felt on generations of producers, remixers, creators of visual mashups and all those who cross the line between popular and experimental culture.

Sónar+D reinforces its formative dimension and doubles its offer of conferences, masterclasses and workshops by world-class creators, technologists and scientists.

Thanks to the more than 1,200 places available, attendees will be able to learn, build and share knowledge first hand from recognized experts and world leading companies in the following topics: the creation of immersive experiences, artificial intelligence as a tool for artistic creation, quantum computing and its impact on science and technology, the Internet over the next 30 years and the most recent technological innovations in the music and sound industries.

The contents of Sónar+D this year will reflect more than ever the didactic approach that unites science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics: STEAM, with the aim of promoting attendee’s practical and theoretical approach to these disciplines through experiential, collaborative and immersive learning of the creative process.

Masterclasses in the new Sónar+D Auditorium by SEAT

A new addition to the congress this year comes in the form of Sónar+D MasterClasses by SEAT. An innovative learning format in which the best international talent will share specialized knowledgeand tools that will inspire attendees in their professional future. These masterclasses will take place at the purpose built Sónar+D Auditorium by SEAT, a space in the form of an agora with a capacity for 80 people where users will have the opportunity to interact directly with the best specialists in their sector. Among the first names to be announced are Timoni West, with a masterclass of spatial computing on technology that explores how users interact with space in VR and AR environments; and Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne, who will give an introduction to Machine Learning.

The educational and professional communities at Sónar+D

UPC Arts joins the program of credits aimed at the educational and professional community of the creative industries that has already supported more than 100 education centers. With the aim of bringing the contents and professionals attending the congress closer to new generations, Sónar+D offers a discount program on the different types of accreditations available. This culturally pro-active initiative enables students and young professionals to establish direct contact with emerging creators and actively participate in different activities, emphasizing the interaction between culture and technology within the unique framework of Sónar+D.

The UPC Arts project is a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) initiative that revindicates art and culture as allies of science, bringing the different cultural proposals of the cities where the UPC has a presence closer to students and the entire UPC community.

Workshops

With the aim of reinforcing the learning aspects of Sónar+D, this year’s workshop programme has been expanded to 20 workshops with more than 1,200 places available. The workshops offer a unique combination of activities taking in both music and the visual arts, as well as practical sessions aimed at creators who want to become professional and make their work known.
Workshops that stand out in the program include those exploring emerging technologies; spatialized audio with technologist Igal Nassima and machine learningwith Jules LaPlace.

Sound design plays a fundamental role in the programme with a series of proposals ranging from modular synthesis (with workshops by teenage engineering and Peter Kirn), and the creation of sound through hardware hacking, with Nicolas Collins a key figure in this field.

Practical workshops focused on artist professionalization are those offered by The Rattle(Jon Eades and Chris Howard) and that by Soundcloud, featuring Cora Novoa.

Hamill Industries will direct a workshop in creative laser programming, while audiovisual experimental activists Los Voluble will give a workshop on political remixing and live cinema.

SonarHub is the meeting point for the creative community, an exhibition space open throughout the day, where all the phases of conception, creation and commercialization of a project are present: ideas and talent are represented at the University Hub; content creation at the Immersive Hub, indispensable tools for creators at the Creative Tech Hub and the Audio Tech Hub, and business development and creation at the Startup Hub. Meanwhile, through the Sónar+D Innovation Challenge, the talent of creators meets the innovation needs of companies, closing the circle.

A stand out participant at University Hub, is the Royal College of Art with an interactive experiment in which the function of an everyday object is reinterpreted through sound. At the Inmersive Hub – where the contents and technologies of VR and AR come together – the virtual reality piece Ayahuasca (recently premiered at the Tribeca festival) and Traverse – the immersive sound experience by Jessica Brillhart‘s Vrai Pictures studio will be on display. At the Creative Hub, Kickstarter – with a selection of its most famous projects – and Barcelona Supercomputing Center, with its data analysis and visualization project#cuéntalo, will be two of the protagonists. At the Audio Tech Hub, the Barcelona-based company BMAT will present a selection of its latest digital identification and monitoring technologies.

Startup Hub in collaboration with 4YFN

Co-organized with 4YFN, Sónar+D‘s Startup Hub is an exclusive program for startups, investors, mentors and companies in the creative industriessector that focuses on business development and connecting with strategic players in the business world.

The Startup Hub is a space dedicated to the business ecosystem of creative technologies where only 21 startups are selected to benefit from a programme of activities designed to boost their promotion, networking and funding opportunities. These activities include Meet the Investor, Mentoring for Startups and Expertise Sessions.

A standard-disrupting program for startups, consisting of a full day exhibiting at SonarHub with a potential audience of 61,000 visitors, allows startup participants to introduce themselves directly to their potential consumers, along with two days of training sessionswith professionals from the entrepreneurship ecosystem from specialized investors, with recognized mentors and qualified experts in fields such as communication and marketing or public finance programs.

Participating investors include funds such as Notion.vc, with more than 100 million to invest in Spanish startups, or Plus Eight Equity Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in music technology companies. Mentoring sessions will be conducted by executives from Warner Music or Native Instruments, among others.

Local talent will be represented through a selection of startups sponsored by the Instituto de Comercio Exterior de España (ICEX) and Red.es, Barcelona Tech City, the Ajuntament de Barcelona through Barcelona Activa and the Institut Català de les Empreses Culturals (ICEC).

Innovation Challenge

At Sónar+D Innovation Challenge, the open collaboration platform in association with the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University, technology companies introduce challenges that will be developed by multidisciplinary teams (programmers, artists, hackers, makers), and will show the results of their prototype at Sónar+D 2019.The companies participating in this innovation process are: Telefónica Alpha with a challenge to rethink the future of education by creating a game that detects affective states and delivers content in real time; Universal Music Group with a challenge that designs the future of digital music services; everis, challenging participants to devise and implement a prototype that, given a set of data for a group of people (such as an organization, city, country or company), produces a soundscape or a musical identity that represents its diversity, and the hotel group ME by Meliá which will challenge participants to make physical spaces more welcoming through their personalization using social data, transcending the barrier between the digital and physical worlds to create the ‘suite of the future’: a space that adapts to the needs and desires of each occupant according to the data they decide to share with the world.