The weekend in Barcelona, where the peculiar, the eccentrically curious, or perhaps the slightly disturbed, all gather within the same parameters to digest the beautiful and manic creations of our digital artists. As experimental as the festival has proven to be, the music and its intersection with visual art couldn’t make more sense; it captures a shared craving to feel something different, something more sonically and visually challenging to both our senses and our rational consumption of art.
By pushing the limits of what the digital realm can creatively offer, MIRA Festival cements itself as the annual gathering for the undeterred; a safe hub for electronic music heads to let their experimental side run wild, and a space where visual creators are granted the freedom to do exactly as they please. We attended the event, and this is what we got up to.
Day 1: Distortion and visual mayhem
The first day of MIRA Festival was a great experience, to say the least. Already encountering the entrance with Boreal Lights whizzing past the top of our heads and swallowing us into an attractive coop, we felt warmly welcomed. This first installation, designed by Barcelona-based digital arts agency Landscapes, set the tone for what was to come.
Once you crossed the first threshold, the space opened up into the centre of Fira Montjuïc’s industrial maze, filled with beaming lights and reactive soundscapes that drew the mesmerised crowd deeper into the festival’s rumble. It was impossible to miss Lumus Instruments’ installation as they unfolded their creative playground alongside Maarten Vos and Enequist, building an audiovisual structure made of LED bars tilting in a row, diagonally toward the floor. People would sit beneath them, where you could feel the rolling lights drifting in and out, making you feel oddly small in the process.
Stumbling a few steps further, Ferran Belmon’s visuals of Cíclic, expanded that same dialogue with a screen suspended between two beams of light and systematic breaths of smoke. Looking somewhat like a science experiment (at times, the light formed what seemed like DNA patterns) and that kind of dream you can’t quite place. At this point, between the background thunder from the main stage and the audiovisual chaos bouncing across the room, each sculpture felt as humbling as the next.
Unlike the clouds of smoke tracing shapes through beams of light, Solimán López’s Manifiesto Terrícola pulled us into another orbit altogether. With a single laser slicing through what looked like frozen blocks, reflecting in fractured patterns, the artist described it as “a speculative topography of the Svalbard archipelago”. A meditation on how climate change is both alarming and very much alive.
Its funny how we always seem to find ways to discharge deep pains or mutual horrors in such beautiful forms. Like the floating installation called The Media Cube; a piece made by postgraduate students from Elisava, which stacked old TV screens and modular gadgets into a cyberpunk reflection on how we communicate today. Or that sensor-embedded punching bag by La Salle Bonanova students, turning suppressed rage into cool sound and movement. Probably the most harmless outlet for existential frustration you could imagine.
Either way, with eyes needing a rest and ears getting restless, the shift from visual installations to live sound was seamless; Byetone’s performance hit meticulously at the Voll Damm stage, pleasing the senses with his minimal, industrial-leaning techno and punky attitude, as visuals resembling soundwaves rippled across the screen. The effect was pretty hypnotic. And if one of us hadn’t been dying for the toilet, we would’ve stayed for the rest of the set.
The chaos came on our way back, bumping into Lolo & Sosaku’s Perros. To set the scene: a big crowd gathered around, flashing lights, most faces in shock — and the sound, well, how does one even describe it? Nudging through the mass, a robotic orchestra emerged, with machines manipulating objects to create noise autonomously. It’s in these moments that you feel a sense of camaraderie with the other listeners. Because the industrial, concrete sound doesn’t exactly call for obvious pleasure, but it’s fascinating, cleansing, and you’re here digesting it together with a bunch of strangers.
Divide and Dissolve’s doom metal arrived to seal that similar feeling. Performing at the Landscapes Stage, her distorted guitars folded into unguessable psychedelic progressions. It was a post-punk sound revealing itself within drone-heavy music. Their performance was visceral and heavy, but profoundly cathartic – a perfect contrast before Floating Points took over, taking total command of the space with his long-form piece Cascade. He gave us a taste of those dancey, ambient rhythms he’s mastered so well, always a guaranteed pleaser.
We opted for food, but we were too far in the zone. So we ended up at Lechuga Zafiro and Verraco instead. It turned out to be the fuel we needed to give our all one last time. Their set was a breeze of fresh air, an eclectic selection that went from ambient to IDM, bursting into the euphoria of galloping club rhythms, tribal grooves, and even an unexpected, hilarious cumbia by Los Turros that had everyone’s hands in the air. The wide variety of party-igniting tracks and the high energy of both artists perfectly justified the name: Hyperverbena.
Day 2: Industrial raves and less blur
On Saturday, we barely moved from the Voll Damm stage. Once we got there, we were pretty much glued. Though side quests, obviously, emerged.
Wandering through the visual mayhem once again, the destination was Amnesia Scanner & Freeka Tet opening with S.L.O.T.H.. Their engine-room meltdown was deliberate; industrial, occasionally mutating into trap, and then collapsing into full-blown rave. It was pretty wild. And honestly, Freeka Tet completely stole the show with his visuals. His virtual animation was a mix of puppetry, diorama and uncanny animation that perfectly accompanied the music’s deliberate chaos. And, considering what he pulled off at the next gig with Oneohtrix Point Never, he stole it even further.
At some point between the two sets, a side quest brought us to I AM JAS’s second half of the set, washing away the previous intensity with mystical, deep, downtempo grooves and his harmonised vocals. But back at Voll-Damm, Oneohtrix Point Never and Freeka Tet picked up from the disarray and somehow turned it into an ambient liftoff. Still disorienting but still brilliant, Freeka Tet added a twist: by using a camcorder, he filmed his video-game-like visuals onto an old screen, occasionally letting them glitch into weird but really cool abstractions.
While OPN might have leaned into more surreal diorama visuals, Flying Lotus’s visuals went more architectural. Paired with his mix of hip-hop, drum and bass, and avant-garde style, things naturally tipped into the experimental. Especially when Blawan appeared later, with some of the coolest visuals so far. You can tell the guy is from Thurnscoe in the far reaches of the UK, because his sound is so raw; a garage and techno hybrid that felt diligently industrial, accompanied by metaphysical geometrics on the screen that were nothing but trippy. I mean, what could get more MIRA than that?
And closing out the night, after getting dizzy in the flying dome experience, we burnt off the last ounces of energy with Marie Davidson, who drew a way bigger crowd than expected, and switched things up completely. Her set leaned more club-friendly than usual, still keeping her signature vocal bits but pushing into faster, stomping territory.
MIRA Festival 2025 exceeded our expectations — what a shocker. With our ears rinsed and our minds pleasantly scrambled, we wrapped up another chapter feeling refreshed and, predictably, already hungry for more.