Sónar opens 2016 with the new media art installation Earthworks

Created by the British studio Semiconductor and co-produced with the Fundació Sorigué, this immersive work of more than 25 meters in length is the main protagonist of the third edition of SonarPlanta.

Art and science go hand in hand in the great new media installation that Sonar de Día hosts from today Thursday until Saturday 18 June. Created by the British studio Semiconductor and co-produced with the Sorigué Foundation para SonarPlanta, Earthworks is a piece of more than 25 meters in length that represents the geological evolution of the Earth through the centuries until the Anthropocene, the current geological era that is defined by the impact of human activities on terrestrial ecosystems.

With this great installation, Sonar is inaugurated 2016 turning Barcelona into the world epicenter of electronic and digital culture. An appointment that they will attend close to 300 proposals, between concerts, conferences and dozens of technological and creative innovation projects.

As we already mentioned in Digital AV Magazine, this work, made by the British artist duo Semiconductor, She is the protagonist of SonarPlanta 2016, a joint initiative of Sónar and Fundació Sorigué, that started in 2014, and its purpose is to promote and celebrate research and experimentation of creative languages ​​around technology and new media art..

“With this work we want to create an experience that talks about the phenomena of landscape formation, using the languages ​​of science to study these phenomena; using seismological data to control geomodels. We not only want to play with the idea that seismic movements have shaped the landscape around us, but also with the fact that, being phenomena that have taken place beyond the existence of man, can only be experienced through the scientific mediation of nature. “We want the viewer to consider the problem of experiencing nature solely through scientific and technological observation of it.”, its creators comment.

The Earthworks work is made up of five giant 5.5 meter screens placed in a zig-zag pattern on which animated graphics inspired by the strata of earth around Planta will be projected., the industrial complex of the Sorigué group in Balaguer (Lleida).

The graphics of this spectacular installation are activated from seismographic data converted into sound, extracted from earthquakes, volcanoes and glaciers, as well as data obtained from human activity through the machinery that excavates in the Plant.

To obtain the seismographic data that drives the piece, Semiconductor has worked in collaboration with geotechnology experts from the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the University of Barcelona.

Clicking on this link You can access a video of this immersive work.