We’ve finally reached a countdown to the most compelling festival in Barcelona. Equally random and perfectly timed each year, MIRA Festival returns for its 14th edition on November 7th and 8th. As a great anticipation for all digital arts and cyber exploring enthusiasts, the city’s most restless artists are gearing up to transform Fira Montjuïc into something that muses half lab, half music studio.
During these two days, MIRA will host 38 musical acts and 26 digital art proposals. Each one poking the boundaries to spark a new perception, specifically born from the collision of music and visual experimentation. No longer just the famous digital arts festival, people consider the event a yearly standup of how far the conversation between humans and machines has actually come.
Musical features
If there’s some through line in MIRA’s soundscape, it’s that it refuses to stay under the radar. This year’s music gang starts with Flying Lotus leading the charge with a casual twist on hip-hop, jazz, and experimental electronica. Then Blawan returns to the frontlines of industrial techno, this time joined by motion designer Laia Ferran. And Floating Points with Hamill Industries will be turning data and light into something close to meditation.
The lineup then flows amongst the best: Oneohtrix Point Never and Byetone exploring texture and minimalism; Ali Sethi + Nicolas Jaar drawing away from cultural and sonic borders; Amnesia Scanner + Freeka Tet folding chaos into performance art. The festival even adds a touch of visceral punk with Divide and Dissolve, whose instrumental doom metal raises a wall of sound against systemic injustice. On the warmer, more melodic end, Erika de Casier, Marie Davidson, and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith bring pop and poetry into focus. And local voices like nara is neus, LANAV, and Latineo ground the festival back into Barcelona’s locals.
Audiovisual features
Now to the spicy stuff. As we all know, MIRA has always been about what happens when sound and visuals collide. Therefore, this year’s installations will be turning into an immersive hazard once again. There are many to mention on the line; from Solimán López’s Manifesto Terrícola, a time capsule encoded in bio-printed DNA, to Lolo & Sosaku’s robotic dogs pacing through questions of autonomy and control. As well as Nick Verstand’s algorithmic light sculptures, Polynode Phase (created by Lumus Instruments), Enequist, and Maarten Vos, who’ve abolished all remnants of a stage.
Even the musical performances themselves offer the likes of audiovisual installations, as mentioned earlier. Ferran’s visuals for Blawan are set to flood the space in brutalist colour, while The Outcome, a VR experience by Onionlab, basically invites you to take a virtual journey with them.
AI and digital innovation
While Sónar and other festivals are rightly celebrated as leading festival innovators, MIRA distinguishes itself entirely by making the connection between electronic music and the live visuals of multimedia artists. Therefore, as scary as it is exciting, it was inevitable that artificial intelligence would rapidly become an essential part of the event’s creative philosophy. And it now holds the watch of all intrigued by the ever-growing digital essence, both in our artistic and day-to-day lives.
For example, Albert.DATA’s SYNAPTICON showcases neuro-hacking in a performance that maps brain activity in real time. Displaying the scientists’ ongoing research in the future of human cognition – and the ethics behind it. Then other installations build on similar dialogues and questions: where does human intention end and algorithmic intuition begin? Or works such as Akyute‘s A Skin of Soil pose another basic question: What role does the body play in the digital age? The debate shall be elaborated in due time.
This entire conversation will be taking place inside Fira Montjuïc and around the city with the festival’s Side Events. If you want to get stuck in even further, you can roll up your sleeves at the different art workshops in Fabra i Coats. Or grab a seat for talks at Casa Bonay. But ultimately, MIRA challenges the norm; it’s basically like that person who points out the elephant in the room, but precisely about the future of electronic music and the position of being human in such a digital age. However, if you’re just there for the music, you know where to go.
