Sónar+D is the international conference that brings together a combination of activities with a common theme: the relationship between creativity and technology, and the digital transformation of the cultural industries involved. The 2016 edition’s taking place May 16, 17, 18 in Barcelona in Fira Montjuïc includes Brian Eno, Universal Visual Artists, Royal College of Art, Google Data Arts, Arts @ Cern, Semiconductor, and others.

The celebration, parallel to Sónar by Day, and brings together experts from around the world (technicians, entrepreneurs, artists, companies and researchers) to present initiatives and tools that will shape future creative experiences in the fields of music, visuals, interactive content and transmedia platforms.

Sónar+D is a meeting point with an interdisciplinary approach. It targets professionals within the creative, technological and cultural industries to pursue their interaction. The conference facilitates the exchange of knowledge, debate, exhibiting talent, and generating business opportunities. In more than two decades of existence, Sónar has made a name for itself in the discovery of emerging artists and music, giving it value as a multidisciplinary cultural event.

More information and Sónar+D programme

Meet Simone Giertz a maker, robotics enthusiast, and non-engineer who calls herself ‘somewhat of an expert in shitty robots’. Simone runs a YouTube channel where she employs deadpan humor to demonstrate mechanical robots of her own creation to automate everyday tasks; despite working from a purely mechanical standpoint, they often fall short of practical usefulness, for comic effect. These creations will never work as you’d imagine, but will remain hilariously funny to reduce your fear of Skynet. See below.

Watch more at Simone’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/simonegiertz

SCREEN_ [read “screenspace”] is a email-based art “space” that produces monthly artworks, sent/received via email.

Email often acts as a container or vehicle for disseminating images of art, but here it becomes an art object in its own right. Our inboxes already constitute private, unorthodox art viewing spaces; we encounter art related emails almost daily. But these emails are mostly cropped and reframed as press releases and show announcements. SCREEN_ looks to the history of Ray Johnson and Fluxus mail art as it seeks to create a distinct system of art dissemination and reception.

Each participating artist creates a unique artwork for each installment. Email recipients are asked to subscribe. This opt-in structure is meant to elicit an engaged audience and help the project avoid spam status.

Mailchimp is used as the project’s platform. Mailchimp is the default art professional newsletter generator. This project encourages artists to hack the format, write their own code, ignore design standards and make something that is specific to the form.

Subsribe to SCREEN_ at http://www.screen-space.info/subscribe/

CellF is the world’s first neural synthesiser created by Guy Ben-Ary. Its “brain” is made of biological neural networks that grow in a Petri dish and controls in real time it’s “body” that is made of an array of analogue modular synthesizers that work in synergy with it and play with human musicians. It is a completely autonomous instrument that consists of a neural network that is bio-engineered from my own cells that control a custom-built synthesizer. There is no programming or computers involved, only biological matter and analogue circuits; a ‘wet-analogue’ instrument.

There is a surprising similarity in the way neural networks and analogue modular synthesizers function, in that for both, voltages are passed through components to produce data or sound. The neural interface we developed juxtaposes these two networks and in a sense creates a continuum that creates one unified network. With CellF, the musician and musical instrument become one entity to create a cybernetic musician, a rock star in a petri dish.

Premiering on October fourth, 2015, in Perth, Western Australia, CellF performed a live set with Tokyo based Australian musician Darren Moore. Sound from Darren’s drums was fed as electrical stimulations into CellF’s neural network which then responded through the modular synthesizers, its ‘body’, to create an improvised post-human sound piece. During the performance there was a clear sense of communication and responsiveness between the 2 musicians.  CellF represents a radical new way to think about what a musical instrument can be and how music can be made.

The development of cellF posed enormous technological challenges. Establishing unique publishable biological protocols for differentiation and electrophysiology, developing a custom made all analogue neural interface that allows interaction with the neurons through simulations, building the biological lab that is embedded into the sculptural object and contains DIY high precision tissue culture incubator and a DIY certified class 2 laminar flow biological safety cabinet to work with human genetic modified material and more…

The Controller by artist Diva Helmy features various experiments with The Human to Humans Interface (HHsI), a DIY neuroscience interface produced by neuroscientist Greg Gage. The HHsI allows one individual to wirelessly control the arms of mutiple bodies with their brain signal. Especially interested in intimate interactions between humans, the artist emphasizes our ability the evolution of technological fitness as the device forms a physical network of electrical discharge between humans, one that causes the controlled users to mirror the behavior of the controller.

The device consists of TENS unit nerve stimulators, electrodes, radio frequency modules and custom hardware from the team from Backyard Brains to transfer the brain signal of one person to the ulnar nerves in the arms of several individuals. The first human’s EMG signal (neurological activity in muscle cells) is recorded as they move their arm. The value of the signal activates the nerve stimulators via radio frequency which then sends an electrical sensation through the arms of the controlled bodies forcing them to move based on when the first individual sends a brain signal to move their own arm. All arms move simultaneously based on the brain signal of the first individual, the controller. The film presents a collaboration between the controller and the controlled to perform certain tasks. Controlled users were asked to perform an activity such as writing, playing a harmonica and touching the hands of other users. The objects and the way in which their function and products are affected by the interface serve as evidence of this biological experience in which loss of control causes products such as handwriting to change.

Notes On Blindness: Into Darkness is a VR and interactive experience produced by Ex Nihilo, ARTE France, and the French startup AudioGaming, in co-production with Archer’s Mark. It uses new forms of storytelling, gameplay mechanics and VR to explore John’s cognitive and emotional experience of blindness. Each scene addresses a memory, a moment and a specific location from John’s audio diary, using binaural audio and real time 3D animations to create a fully immersive experience in a world ‘beyond sight’.

This interactive experience complements the story world of the feature film, but aims to open up a public discourse about blindness, allowing audiences to understand and ‘feel’ their way into that discussion.

Made with Unity, the experience will be released on Samsung Gear, Cardboard and Oculus for the VR, and on all IOS and Android devices for the 360° version.