Sónar+D will bring to Barcelona the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality applied to the arts from Google’s research & development teams.
Sónar+D, the congress dedicated to creative technologies which will take place in Barcelona on June 14, 15, 16 and 17, announces today the program for its 2017 edition. The congress will bring together more than 100 activities, 180 speakers and around 5,000 accredited professionals from 2,100 companies and 60 countries. During 4 days, key figures and projects shaping the future of design, music and creative technologies will assemble in Barcelona.
For the first time, Sónar+D will host a Networking Day on Wednesday, June 14, exclusive to Sónar+D pass holders, opening one day before the main festival begins. The day will be dedicated to professionals, creators, companies and entities, and will include blocks of conferences and workshops with an extended duration specifically designed to encourage deeper debate and the exchange of knowledge. Immersive environments, Artificial Intelligence and music industry metadata will be central themes at the Networking Day.
Kenric McDowell, who leads the Artists + Machine Intelligence program at Google Research, Freya Murray, program manager director of Google Arts & Culture Lab, and Edu Pou, executive creative director of the multi-award-winning US Virtual Reality studio Here be Dragons, are just some of the experts who will participate in the 4-day congress.
Sonar360º is among this year’s new innovations, a curated space in collaboration with Montréal Society SAT (Societé des Arts Technologiques), featuring projections and workshops of immersive audiovisual “fulldome” pieces.
The business area Startup Garden powered by MIGRATION specializes in and fosters 30 startups focused on selected creative industries around the world. Mentors such as Joyce Lu, ex memeber of the MacBook Air design team; Jon Eades, head of the startup incubator for the legendary Abbey Road recording studio; and investment funds such as Edge Fund, one of the UK’s key cultural and entertainment funds; and Entrée Capital, which includes Snapchat among its successes.
Sónar+D will host the international Open Music Initiative meeting. Open Music Initiative is an ambitious project led by the Berklee Music College, the MIT Medialab research centre and the IDEO consultancy. The initiative aims to create new standardised practices to unify digital music distribution and will bring together dozens of industry experts from companies including YouTube, Spotify and Universal.
“Entropy”, a scientific lecture by the astronomer and cosmologist Dr. Dida
Markovic together with duo DopplerEffekt and visualists Antivj, is a transmedia show about the origin and end of the Universe. It has been conceived as an immersive experience somewhere between a conference, an audiovisual concert and a live documentary. It will be presented at the SónarComplex auditorium on Thursday, June 15 for all Sónar by Day attendees.
Creators such as Memo Akten, one of Europe's leading digital artists, or the bot programmer and Twitter artist Darius Kazemi round out a program that looks to a future where our ideas of intelligence and creativity will have been radically transformed.
More info and to secure your ticket – www.sonar.es / www.sonarplusd.com
