From 16th to the 29th December, Barcelona’s Plaça Universitat will host a large-scale interactive audiovisual installation, measuring 6 meters wide and 3 meters high.
This is ‘Analema’, a large-format work developed by the Barcelona creative studio Glassworks and curated by Sónar for the Barcelona Christmas Festival, a program by Barcelona City Council.
Featuring a made to measure soundscape by the Catalan duo Tarta Relena, the installation will capture the movements of the public every day for 10 hours, triggering musical loops with each interaction. The data captured will in turn generate a unique and unrepeatable nightly light show, illuminating the sky of Barcelona and observable from different points in the city.
Times of operation
The installation will operate every day between December 16 and 29, from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., and will take two distinct states:
From 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.:
The public will be able to interact live with the installation. This will capture the movements, transform them into data and convert this information into light and musical loops, which will be synchronized with the vocal samples prerecorded by Tarta Relena.
· From 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., during daylight hours, each of the prisms will emit the sound of each of the samples, depending on the movements of the audience.
· From 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., already under the night sky, each interaction will cause one of the ‘Analema’ light sources to be activated, so that attendees will be illuminating the Barcelona skyline with their presence and movement.
From 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.:
Every night, during this time period, a large column of vertical light will be projected into the sky that will offer a choreography, which will be the result of all the interactions recorded during the day. In this way, the experience of each night will be unique and unrepeatable. A five-minute exhibition that will be repeated every quarter of an hour and can be seen from different points of the city.
Tarta Relena will participate live in the installation on December 16 and 21
The vocal duo Tarta Relena, accompanied by four more singers, will carry out a symbolic inauguration of the installation with a live performance. Each prism will have an assigned tone that, when activated, will trigger a sonic environment in which melodies and choreographies of light are placed. Through experimentation with space and distance, possible combinations of light and sound will appear, in celebration of the arrival of the winter solstice.
Sónar, also represented in the Sounds of the City concert cycle
Sónar will also present the concert by the Barcelona producer Adelaida for free during these holidays. This show is included in the 100 musical activities that make up the Sounds of the City concert cycle presented by the Barcelona City Council, as part of the Barcelona Christmas Festival.
The concert, which will take place on Saturday, December 23 at 6:00 p.m. in the Placeta de Montcada, will allow citizens to discover the dream world of Adelaida, one governed by voice and full of fantasy.
With a background in Fine Arts and taking part in choirs during her childhood and adolescence, her approach to music is unorthodox and deeply personal. Adelaida will explore the expressive limits of her voice, creating songs with infinite layers, and combining track from ‘Cántaros’, her debut album, with unreleased cuts from a second work that is more baroque, dark and marked by minimal electronic beats. Adelaida will also be performing at Sónar 2024, on June 13, 14 and 15 next year.