(Català) XERRADA I ACTUACIÓ

Cyborg artists Neil Harbisson and Moon Ribas will talk about their personal experiences with cybernetics and about Cyborg Art, an art movement where artists express themselves through new senses created by the union between cybernetics and their organism. Neil Harbisson was born colourblind but at the age of 20 he installed an antenna on his head that allows him to hear colours, the antenna is implanted in his skull and allows him to perceive colours that are outside human vision such as infrareds and ultraviolets. Moon Ribas has a sensory extension on her elbow that allows her to feel earthquakes through small vibrations, she applies this new sense to her artistic work. 

+ Seismic Percussion (performance de Moon)

Seismic percussion is a drum solo performance where the rhythm of the piece is dictated by the rhythm of the tectonic plates. It’s a piece that transposes the seismic activity that occurs in our planet into sound, into a musical composition that allows the audience to connect with the heartbeat of the planet, earthquakes. This piece can be performed in two ways. One is based on real time earthquakes so whenever there’s an earthquake as small as 1 in the Richter scale during the performance, Moon will play the drum according to the intensity of the earthquake taking place at that moment. So, if there are no earthquakes there will be no sound. The piece can also be performed by playing the earthquakes that have already happened in a specific place. Moon creates a score based on all the earthquakes that have taken place on a specific area (Mexico, Alaska, Greece,…) for an specific period of time (50 or 100 years), all the data collected is then transformed into a composition that is played in 10min. The act is accompanied with a projection that keeps showing the years Moon is playing on the drums. Seismic percussion is a performance where Earth becomes the composer of the piece.

FOR SEISMIC PERCUSSION:

+ Space Concert (performance de Neil)

Having internet connection in his head allows Neil to receive colours from other parts of the world, from external devices or even from satellites. The Space Concert is a piece where Neil connects his head to NASA’s International Space Station which allows him to perceive the colours from space, he then plays these colours to the audience. The notes keep layering up creating a sound atmosphere based on the frequencies of the colours from space. Perceiving the colours from space can be quite overwhelming because there’s a lot of ultraviolets (high pitched) and infrareds (low frequencies) out there, so when he does Space Concerts, it allows us to experience the frequencies of colours that go beyond sight and that we don’t usually perceive here in Earth. This combination of the sound of these colours is very different from the colour concerts that he does when he uses visual spectrum colours.

RECORDING DOCUMENTARY DIARIO VICE (Moon Ribas/Konvent)