Josep Manuel Berenguer – Metamorphora + Josep Vila (poetic action)

Metamorphora is a proposal for the live construction of a sonorous and visual near future in present dialogue with the recent sonorous past, for processed guitar, electronic sounds and fractal images by Clara Garí and processed in real time.

Guitar and generation of sounds and images, Josep Manuel Berenguer.

Music, both for those who make it and for those who enjoy listening to it, like any other cultural production, is, to a large extent, the fruit of a dialogue with memory. This proposal explores various aspects of this question related to the consideration of the generative possibilities of audio-visual improvisation in terms of dialogue with recent sound memory. It proposes an interaction between the present moment and the immediate baggage of musical events that the performer and the audience have just experienced during the improvisation session itself. This idea, consciously applied, turns improvisation into an experience of rich dialogue between the immediate past and the present, which, anticipating the immediate future, raises layers of depth for both performers and listeners.

Links of interest:
https://jmb.sonoscop.net/
https://www.youtube.com/c/JosepManuelBerenguerAlarcón

Josep Manuel Berenguer (Barcelona, 1955)
Josep Manuel Berenguer is a composer and guitarist, coordinator and professor of Psychoacoustics and Experimental Music in the Master's Degree in Sound Art at the University of Barcelona and director of the Orquesta del Caos. He has been a consultant in Sound in multimedia systems at GMMD-Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and in Digital Sound at ESDI-Universitat Ramon Llull. He has also collaborated with other universities and artistic research institutions such as Metronome, MECAD, IUA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Elisava. Intermediate artist, founder of Côclea with Clara Garí - where for more than a decade he directed the Música13 Festival - and also of the Chaos Orchestra, collaborator of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France), he was the designer and first head of the sound and music laboratory of the CIEJ of the Fundació la Caixa de Pensions, as well as professor of Electroacoustic Music at the Conservatoire de Bourges. Former president of the Association of Electroacoustic Music of Spain and of the Foundation of Visual Artists of Catalonia, he is currently Honorary President of the International Conference of Electroacoustic Music of the CUMBRE/UNESCO, President of Quantum Arte Lab, member of the Académie Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique/Bourges and of the Board of Trustees of the Phonos Foundation.

His musical work, published in World Edition, Música Secreta, Hyades Artes, Chrysopée Electronique, Côclea, la Ma de Guido, Akademie der Künste, has received commissions and distinctions from institutions such as the Internationale Ferienkurse of Darmstadt (Germany), Gaudeamus Foundation (Holland), Prix de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France), Concorso di Musica Elettronica de la Fondazione Russolo-Pratella (Varese, Italy), Gaudeamus Foundation (Holland), Prix de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France), Concorso di Musica Elettronica de la Fondazione Russolo-Pratella (Varese, Italy), Tribuna Internacional de Música Electroacústica de la CUMBRE/UNESCO, Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea. INAEM. Ministry of Culture, Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, RNE Radio Clásica, Gabinete de Música Electroacústica de Cuenca, Festival de Músicas Contemporáneas de Barcelona, Akademie der Künste Berlin, among others. With Clara Garí, in addition to the intermediate shows presented by Côclea, he created and produced interactive installations - Metronomia or Policrònic/Politòpic with Côclea, and El Pati respira i canta, with the Orquesta del Caos, are some examples - and several videos, such as Aigua, Augia, Augen or Mancha : Linde, Tajo. The latter won the Castilla-La Mancha Video Award. Among the numerous collaborations with other authors, it is worth mentioning the production of the soundtrack for the film Dead, Slow, Ahead, by Mauro Herce, the video by Clara Garí, La Muda de la Serpiente, or the videos by Joan Pueyo, such as Maria Muñoz, Soy Yo, El inmortal, as well as dance performances such as et si la pièce est trop courte, on y rajoutera un rêve, by Lluís Ayet, etc.

Much of his work has been oriented towards sound installation as a means of presenting his artistic and compositional proposals, as well as, despite his epistemological doubts about the appropriateness of these terms, real time and interactivity. The themes developed include questions related to the philosophy and history of science, the limits of language, ethics, life and artificial intelligence, robotics, information metabolism, as well as the very limits of human understanding and perception of the world. His work in this field includes installations and monographic concerts such as Silenci, Tránsfer, La Casa de la Pólvora, Mega kai Mikron, Minf, On nothing, @bienenVolk, Bienen, among others. Luci, who explores complex behaviours emerging from the sum of simple elements, won the ARCO-Beep Electronic Art Award in February 2008. His latest installations are Habitar significa deixar empremtes (El Born, Centre de Cultura i Memòria, 2023) and Invisibles i observables (Capilla de Sant Corneli, Cardedeu, 2024). His musical work in lambda/itter, with flautist Jane Rigler, which takes the form of an audiovisual performance based on the ideas of flow and turbulence, reflects on the musical gesture. The latter, together with Desde dentro, a concerto for microscope, electric guitar, sound and electronically generated images, Expanded Piano, a concert in duet with the pianist Agustí Fernández, for piano processed by electronic devices, Expanded Voice, a composition presented as a performance for solo voice, sound and electronic image based on texts from Walter Benjamin's Book of Passages, and others, make up a type of compositional work that, due to its duration and intensity, requires the programming of a complete concert.

Other conceptions by Josep Manuel Berenguer, such as Sons en Causa, Sobre el Control, Barcelona : só límit, Sons del poder-Escoltes de la por, El so de l'altre : la raó de l'altre, Absolutely plugged, El so a la cova, Ciutats en xarxa, Hyperexperimental and others, are global creative projects based on the concept of soundscape that have led to the presentation of hundreds of artists from all over the world at the Zeppelin Festival, at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.