The sound seen. An [in]finite retrospective

What does a book about art mean in this digital contemporaneity? This is one of the questions asked by the sound artist Jorge Haro during an interview with MUTEK, where he talks about The Sound Seen. An [in]finite retrospective, an interactive memory made by Platform Bogotá, interactive laboratory of the Art, Science and Technology Line of the Instituto Distrital de las Artes – Idartes.

Within its tenth anniversary, Platform Bogotá developed this exercise seeking to give visibility to experimental artistic practices, promoting the exchange of knowledge built and reconstructed in different spaces. These memory exercises also seek to consolidate a history of experimental art and the intersections between art, science and technology.

“Since 2017, Platform Bogotá has located different pioneering Latin American artists of electronic arts and generated a series of publications and research on the work of these creators. For the first version we introduce the artist Jorge Haro, one of the pioneers of sound art in Iberoamérica”, says Andres García, leader of the Idartes Art, Science and Technology Line.

On the other hand, the sound seen. A retrospective[in]finite seeks to have a cross-sectional view and an autonomous structure “allowing us to see those new scenes where it is no longer simply a concert, but where there are several spaces and telling a story from the periphery, or scenes having remained marginal, which allows an exercise in continuing to think”, explains Julieta Sepich, project’s editor.

This edition called a group of authors to trace different views throughout the artist’s work and process, but not from the usual essay, but from their own poetics. Sepich expresses “these multiple views of each author, where each one has had their own relationship with Jorge, is the main body of the reflection of the interactive memory exercise: having a transversal view and an autonomous structure that not only deals with the work of the artist, but all its edges”.

The publication, designed by Estudio Toquica and edited by Julieta Sepich, it had the participation of different authors such as the musician and the Spanish sound artist Javier Pinango, the Mexican composer and cultural manager Rodrigo Sigal, the Argentinian sound artist, teacher, composer and researcher Hugo Druetta, Spanish cultural manager and teacher Lidia Blanco, the Guatemalan writer and manager José Tono Martínez, the Colombian artist, curator and teacher George Boat and the Argentinian music critic, writer and teacher Norberto Cambiasso. Each one contributed a series of perspectives and reflections on Haro, his work and sound art.

Additionally, The sound seen. An [in]finite retrospective has an interactive component made up of four axes – text, vision, audio and window – developed by the Colombian collective Atractor Estudio, which allows the printed medium to interact with the digital one. This enables a way to be related to the text and its information from the creative use of technological tools transporting the reader to an experience built from a relationship with sound.

Jorge Haro mentions, regarding this component, that “within a series of particular interests there is also this kind of ambivalent two-sided attitude between control and chaos, or at least running through a good part of my work: having many things very controlled and others very chaotic at the same time”.

“Garcia also states “from Idartes it is important to promote different artistic practices, including their approach to science and technology, or from critical perspectives and in different formats. In addition, Haro has influenced the work of many of contemporary artists who work from this discipline; this way he will continue to be”.

The interactive memory will be available on the platform Idartes at home digitally and for physical consultation at the Platform Bogotá Documentation Center and at the Study Room of the Medellin Museum of Modern Art.