Visual Phonic is an avant-garde artistic initiative that was born in 2016 as the result of an agreement between DJ and music selector Javier Verdes, founder of the legendary record store Verdes Records, and the Filmoteca de Catalunya. With the aim of attracting a younger audience to the classic cinema sessions, Verdes was responsible for sounding live and for about six years thirty classic silent films with electronic music. But the idea was to extrapolate the project, a dialogue between silent cinema and electronic music, which ended up transpiring in modern art museums, cultural forums and such emblematic spaces as the auditorium of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art from Ibiza. Then the pandemic came and the schemes were broken. Until Visual Phonic moved from the movie theater to a more social, more interactive space. This is how the initial plan has become another immersive 360º that is presented today as a pioneering event at the Nau, a space for musical creation in Poblenou.
It is a revolutionary installation with a vibrating floor and three-dimensional sound that immerses the viewer in a unique sensory world through a special homage to the classic Metropolis (1927), by Fritz Lang, with a creative reinterpretation of the film movie “We have been working on this project for six months and the aim is to start it in order to document it and see its potential”, says Giovanni Jubert, executive director, to this newspaper. The event will take place in three private sessions, with three screenings in a row and around 50 people per session. “We have designed an immersive space made up of two screens 12 meters long by five meters high and with curved shapes, and the viewer is placed inside the two screens”, explains Fausto Morales, artistic director.
They opted for a science fiction icon like Metropolis because “it’s futuristic and we’re reinterpreting it almost a hundred years later. We have updated it in the 21st century, we have given it a new reading and we have made it sensorial, since it has gone from the original 153 minutes to one hour and five minutes each session”, says Morales, in charge of laposada in the immersive scene. “The film has some very interesting shots and counter shots. What we have done is put the shots on one screen and the counter shots on another. Thus, the visitor is located in the center and can enjoy it as long as they want. On a sensory scale there is something new, and it is very immersive. You don’t just walk through a space where there are projections and sound. The body physically receives vibrations from music that is exclusive. It’s digitized vinyl music,” he says.
Visual Phonic 360º Metropolis is conceived as “an artistic installation” that the organizers want to present at film, light and electronic music festivals. “This experience is so incredible that even deaf people can perceive it.” A “risky and bold” bet that aims to “circulate on an international scale”.
