Madatac

Garrett Lynch & Frédérique Santune (Irland & France), *Best of luck with the wall* (video installation)

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
Niels Bohr

From February 13 to the 24, Madatac (Muestra de Arte Digital Audiovisual y Tecnologías Acontemporáneas, or Digital Audiovisual Art and Acontemporary Technologies Exhibition) will reach its tenth edition by bringing to Madrid the most innovative and avant-garde elements within the realm of audiovisual art, nationally and internationally speaking. This showing will take place by means of projections, performances, talks, audiovisual concerts, and interactive installations that are going to be showcased at the NH Collection Eurobuilding, Cineteca Madrid, Medialab-Prado, Círculo de Bellas Artes and the new exhibition area at La NAVE Digital.

Saint Machine (Marilena Oprescu Singer) (Romania)*, Hybrid Sensorium* (interactive installation)

Post-Digital Star

In this exhibition of audiovisual art, spectators are asked to consider the interrelation between art, technology, science, and creative development associated with contemporary media. Projections, video installations, concerts, and other proposals where image, light, and sound are fused together and envelop the audience in a world of sensory, mental, and emotional throbs by means of visual and loud stimuli.

I had the opportunity to speak to Iury Lech, the director of Madatac, to speak about the exhibition: «Surrounded by this atmosphere, one can ask several questions: where does the artist that works within the digital world stand? Is there hope for something different or will artists keep on working with the same resources? And the thing is that audiovisual art unfolds an entire philosophy to shine some light on the crossroads where the human being finds himself right now».

Alfredo Barroso (Spain), *Virtual Ritual* (virtual-reality installation)

The Boundless Proposal

Since the Big Bang, the Universe has been in constant expansion. But, what happened before the Big Bang? What Stephen Hawking proposes in his no-boundary theory is that the actual boundary of the Universe is that there is none. Or, which is the equivalent, that before the Big Bang time did not exist. Therefore, analogically, the Universe pre-Big Bang could perhaps be a standstill moment captured in a frame or picture. After this come time and the happenings of history, and with them, movement, music, cinema, virtual realities… Perhaps audiovisual art is the critical point immediately after the Big Bang, considering that, when we gaze at it, something that does not constitute a narration in itself takes place before our eyes. However, we can perceive the vibration of the temporal dimension. Discourse slows down and almost stops. Wrapped in these projections, we change Newton’s laws, by which the microcosm operates in atomic levels. There is uncertainty (Heisenberg) and everything can happen, even the possibility of opening up to a reality of cosmic, unimaginable worlds and to abstraction. We only have left the probability of finding, then. Welcome to Madatac.