MUTEK in Chile
Mutek is an organization based in Montreal. It supports and promotes emergent forms of digital culture including music, sound, as well as a diverse body of work concerning the production of visual arts. Mutek’s bet is based in the intersection between the intellect, the creative practice and the use of new technologies.
The Mutek festival (which happens every year) is the principal event organized by this entity. To organize this festival, Mutek invites the most prominent people in the field to show their work in a "serious" environment of fun. During December 2005, the Mutek festival that took place in Chile was organized in the cities of Santiago and Valparaiso. In these two locations, two academic institutions were affiliated with the project consequently. Mutek seeks to discuss and intellectualize the production of these new types of artistic manifestations, while also promoting the work of new and consolidated artists. The festival contemplated a unique session supporting many different types of work within diverse parameters of digital culture. The production was the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration between musicians, electronic engineers, designers, visual artists, as well as architects. The event that took place in Chile was organized by Andres Ortega and Luis Muñoz, with Paul Taylor as the strategic consultant for the event.
Some of the artists participating in the event in Santiago and Valparaiso were Alisu, Akufen, Alejandro Vivanco, Andres Bucci, Augias Amena, Burn Fire Project, City of Gold, Deadbeat, Cinetik, Crackhouse, Danieto, Diego Morales, Felipe Venegas y Jose Luis Santorcuato, Funzion, Lineas de Nazca, Miguel Tutera, Monolake, Namm, No1, Original Hamster, Pheek, Pueblo Nuevo, Skoltz_Kolgen, Steve Beaupre, Tim Hecker and Vincent Limieux.
In Santiago, the event lasted for two days, and took place at the Cultural Center of Universidad Católica de Chile. The event focused on the contemplation and understanding of the parameters of music within digital culture. Panels including the work of important artists articulated theoretical discussions. Invited presenters for the conference "Digital Tools in Creative Processes" were Dominique Skoltz (Canada), Robert Henke-Monolake (Germany), Roberto Farriol (Chile) and Pablo Hermansen (Chile). At PUC, the event also contemplated new prominent artists from this emergent country, the session was titled "nueva electrónica." Some of the presenters were Teledeck, Antara, Letu, Receptor and Flipper.
In Valparaiso, the event lasted for one day. It took place in Deck_00, an alternative space located in the Muelle Baron. This session was bigger than Santiago, and was organized as the culmination to the 2005 festival in Chile. This second occasion in Chile was also the culmination of the advanced studio "Spaces of/for Performance" that was taught during the second semester of 2005 at the school of architecture at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa Maria. In one semester, the studio lead by Rodrigo Tisi, Roberto Barria and Pablo Silva, had the task to discuss and evaluate different ideas "to build an evening of experience" for the closing night of Mutek. The result was an interactive installation that lasted for one day titled Plastic Forest.
Students in the studio at UTFSM built a structure made out of 850 plastic pipes (which are normally used for electronic networks). The pipes were placed in series, at a distance of 30 by 30 centimeters to complete a virtual volume located on the main ramp of Muelle Baron. The structure was constructed an analogy of a forest, in other words, it encouraged the participants to experience it at the same time that they were walking through it. The Plastic Forest was conceived in a flexible material to make sure that its movement will activate a landscape similar to the one that leaves and branches on a series of trees have. The wind, a natural condition of the pier, as well as the movement of the participants activated the surface of this virtual volume. This single gesture expressed one "live" aspect of such construction. The idea of interaction behind Plastic Forest was to have people manipulating and somehow playing with the plastic construction. At the same time that they were manipulating these pipes they were producing sound or perhaps, a more intellectual acoustic performance, after all, the consciousness of the participants were activated in one way or the other in relation to the possibilities offered by the structure (an open architectural program).
The digital aspect of the installation was activated by a sophisticated mechanism of lighting as well as recording (sophisticated in the way the outcome was conceived). The installation was simple, cheap and low-tech due to budget constraints (as is the case most times when doing art in Chile). Three levels of illumination were designed to activate the surface of the Plastic Forest at night. One level of 300 red LEDs produced random and intermittent signals of light located at 15 centimeters parallel to the level of the ramp (the inclined ground). Also, 240 white LEDs were placed equidistant in 40 of the main plastic pipes, placed in an oval space at the center. These white LEDs were connected to presence sensors. Every time a body was near these pipes, the sensors reacted by activating the white points of light. A landscape of white points annunciated the presence of the participants in the heart of the piece. Finally, a double-sided illumination projected the curve of the sound produced in the site. The curves were captured by an oscilloscope, so that the beat of Mutek was recorded and at the same time projected onto the surface of the Plastic Forest. This projection articulated the surface of the ideal forest by making visible the sound of its branches (the plastic pipes). People walking through it and the music performed by the different artists in the back, was displayed after being captured by the technological machine (the oscilloscope). The aim of the installation was to combine aspects of sight and sound in one simple piece that was disposable (the piece was site-specific and only available for the duration of the event, a one-night stand).
Although the event in Santiago was much more about the intellectual practice of musicians and visual artists, the interactive installation in Valparaiso was perhaps shaping another aspect of the collective event, where the performers are not only the ones on stage producing but also the ones participating. Everyone that came to experience the closing night of Mutek was somehow the creator of a one-night experience: music, sound and visuals, combined with drinks and fun. Plastic Forest not only considered the rational intellect of the individual experience but also the gut and the natural impulses of the group participating in the event (within the space of a cool party).
The Plastic Forest was somehow reconstructed at the end of this session. Wild participants, after hours of good music and fun, decided to approach the forest in a different way. A new shape for the forest was implemented: the destruction of it. This evidence is perhaps related to the similar experience that takes place when someone goes into a virgin forest. The person has to make his own path in order to penetrate it deeply (no conscience). The natural aspect of the forest is then somehow reshaped (humans leave traces). The destruction of Plastic Forest, at the end of the closing night, is then symbolic because it represents the end of the performance that took place in the Muelle Baron of Valparaiso during the 2005 version of Mutek in Chile.
Plastic Forest was presented in the international symposium of Performance Design held in Rome during January 2006. For more information visit: www.mutek.cl
