Barcelona Metropolis

Business is booming for audiovisual creation studios in Barcelona now that virtual reality, immersive installations and digital animation are stirring up more and more interest. These creators, mainly based in the 22@ district, squeeze out all the potential of the most innovative technologies, outdoing themselves on each project and making what once seemed like science fiction a reality. We talked to the digital arts professionals who worked on the latest immersive exhibition at the Ideal Centre, dedicated to artist Frida Kahlo, and on many other projects.

The Martes Studio headquarters are exactly what you would imagine an office in Barcelona’s 22@ district to look like: a single, long room with infinite tables, on which one Mac is lined up after another. At the entrance, we find various bikes and a lit-up sign that says ‘Life on Martes’. At the back, tropical plants lean towards the light pouring in through the big windows. On the left, a pool table and a ping-pong table offer something to do during time-consuming renders.

Founded in 2017 by Roger Amat, Joan Molins and Xavi Trilla, this studio is in charge of the immersive installation currently being hosted by the Ideal Centre, where an immersive biography of Frida Kahlo is being projected onto 800 square metres of screen, creating a hypnotic, absorbing experience that uses 27 synchronised projectors to conquer the walls and floor. These are cutting-edge audiovisual techniques being met with increasing appreciation from the public, companies and institutions alike. ‘These techniques have been in development for ten or fifteen years, but now they are being consolidated’, Joan Molins explains. ‘There’s starting to be more investment, more spaces, more museums, more infrastructure, more opportunities’. Roger Amat adds, ‘It’s not just that there’s more money around; these kinds of productions have also got cheaper to make. The technique has been democratised’. Xavi Trilla concurs: ‘It’s got to the mainstream: it’s now for all audiences. Therefore, there’s more supply and more movement’.

The interview with Jordi Massó takes place in a kind of production room with four monitors, which are used to check that the facility’s projectors are working properly. Massó is also the creator behind the mapping of an exhibit at the Frida Kahlo event titled El somni [The Dream], a projection that depicts the Mexican artist’s long and painful, yet creatively fruitful, convalescence after a road accident.

When asked about his own dream, Jordi reveals that he would love to be the audiovisual director of an opera. ‘Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Verdi’s Requiem. I listen to it a lot’. He fell in love with this genre after working with La Fura dels Baus and multidisciplinary artist Franc Aleu: all pioneers in the use of cutting-edge audiovisual stage design in operas. Massó considers himself a potential artist: ‘To give yourself the artist label, you have to have your own style and language, and I’m still looking for mine’.

Painting with code
Another of the creators behind the ‘Frida’ exhibition, Sergio Albiac, supports this concept of the artist in the digital world: ‘I feel like an artist, 100%. I paint with code. Throughout the history of art, artists have always used the most advanced technology available to them at the time’. For the Ideal exhibition, Sergio has developed a photo booth that works using artificial intelligence.

The feminisation of the digital arts
Mariona Omedes wanted to be a painter, but then she discovered the world of post-production in London and she said to herself: ‘I’ll paint using movement’, she explains through laughter on a video call. Omedes is the co-founder of Nueveojos, the studio that has contributed to the Kahlo exhibition with a multilayer installation, in which five transparent layers are superimposed on one another to create three-dimensional images. Nueveojos works for public institutions, production companies and agencies, and for two years now, it has been in charge of the visual stage design for the Goya Awards.

Mariona, who began to manipulate images digitally in 1989, has witnessed ‘a crazy evolution’ in the technical sphere and in terms of access to equipment. She has also seen the recent, gradual incorporation of women into a highly male-dominated industry: ‘It’s really exciting, because I haven’t come across many [women] in the process, and I really like how they work. I’ve had to deal with a lot of alpha males’.

Lucia Segurajáuregui, co-founder of Play a Bit, confirms that the sector is becoming more feminised: ‘In the Matics collective, there are as many women as there are men. And I’d say we women are more hardcore’, she says with a chuckle. The group she is referring to, Matics, is a non-profit association that seeks to create a community that revolves around the digital arts. According to Lucia, the whole sector is characterised by team spirit.

This is evidenced by the installation Play a Bit created for Ideal: an ‘infinity room’ where the visitor can interact with a host of animations from the Mexican artist’s imaginary, including flowers, fruits, hummingbirds, monkeys and skulls, all constantly moving. To calculate the spatial measurements for this sensory, interactive installation, she sought help from her friend Diego Suárez, who is also a member of Matics. ‘In two seconds flat, I had his help’, Lucia explains.

Toni Jaume, Lucia’s business partner, points out that the sector is growing because ‘more and more curators of cultural events are thinking about these new languages: they no longer focus on a print, an analogue sculpture or a bog-standard audiovisual piece. They are thinking digital. We are living through a turning point: the paradigm of entertainment and cultural leisure is changing’.

Barcelona: capital of the digital arts?
Most of those interviewed believe that Barcelona is home to so many studios dedicated to the digital arts because of its baggage in the areas of architecture and of graphic and industrial design. ‘We have a long design tradition’, Xavi Trilla muses. ‘Before, it was graphic design, and now it’s digital. We’ve wised up and modernised. We’ve evolved’. Sergio Albiac highlights the importance of schools like Eina, BAU and Elisava.

Mariona Omedes, of Nueveojos, puts the city’s status down to a balanced combination of aesthetic instinct and work ethic: ‘There is a lot of good taste in Barcelona, as well as artistic culture and aesthetic discernment. There might be guys with incredible skills in the USA, but their work is mediocre. On top of that, we Catalans have a special way of working; we’re very thorough, professional… This makes us stand out, because I can assure you that the world is full of people doing the same thing’.

The challenges faced by the digital arts
There is a consensus that the main obstacle in the sector is budget. ‘Our products are fleeting. Sometimes they are shown once for four minutes and nobody sees them ever again. It makes the client reluctant to dedicate a lot of money to them’, Marc Colomines laments. For Jordi Massó, the problem is ignorance. ‘People know little about this field, and they think projects can be completed in a few days. Sometimes you have to leave in order to be valued’.

‘I've worked twenty hours in a row sitting at a computer’, Mariona Omedes recognises, ‘and on crazy projects that require months of work–sleep–work–sleep–work–sleep. I’m not sure everyone is cut out for this job’. Toni Jaume corroborates her account: ‘I’ve found myself in stressful situations many times, not knowing whether or not the effort is worth it, but we always end up getting it done and achieving success’. In Sergio’s eyes, the most satisfying part of the job is ‘the feeling that you’re working in a field with no limits’.

For Marc, one especially fond memory is working at Medusa Festival, an electronic music festival for which he and his colleagues designed some spectacular visuals and stage design. ‘When you see a crowd of 50,000 people take out their phones to record what you made, you know you’ve done well’.