His instruments, participative installations and research have been presented within CTM Festival 2023 in Berlin, Goethe-Institut Venezuela and within HKW Berlin, Centre Pompidou in Paris and CCCB in Barcelona through the Cultures d’avenir program.
In parallel, he works as a freelance IDE (Innovation Design Engineer); Prototyping tools for learning, well-being, and creative expression in collaboration with EdTech/HealthTech enterprises, startups, universities, and clinics.
Photo by Julio Osorio
About <<Ensamble>>
Ensamble is an audio installation composed of 18 solenoids designed and programmed by Miguel La Corte over 6 paintings by Pepe López and a palitero drum from Todasana crafted by drum luthier Armando Pantoja. [More info on the installation here]
Ensemble is an exercise in reflection through rhythm. Based on the 6 rhythmic-visual abstractions painted by Pepe López[1], a process of collaboration and composition begins, aiming to identify the sequential key hidden within each of these abstractions. This means emphasizing the rhythmic motifs expressed through the color and form of each work.
Beyond this exercise of rhythmic convergence between sound and color, I aim to abstract a perhaps overlooked fact about rhythm: its movement and temporality is a basic function of communication; a fundamental element within any form of social synchronization. In other words, it’s a unique point for understanding, through the pure and immaterial essence of sound, who we are and where we come from.
We must pause to consider the complexity of conditions and social convergences that must occur for a specific sequence of beats (codes) to universally convey a compendium of emotions.
/ PUN KA TUN KI - PUN KA TUN KI - PUN KA TUN KI - PU PU PU PU PUN KA K TUN KI /
Natalio Galán[2], a Cuban musicologist and composer, explains (referring to some of the greatest rhythmic motifs known in Latin America, such as Son, Salsa, and Samba) that behind each of these lies a century of mystery—that is, pulses, vibrations, and movements that express the essence and emotional background of the very moment in which these rhythms were born.
Rhythm marks Time, and Time marks Rhythm.
It’s no coincidence that the rise of the first mechanical clock, attributed to Pope Sylvester II, coincided with the development of the popularized musical notation system designed by Guido of Arezzo. Both advances reflect the same medieval impulse to systematize, organize, and rationalize (to quote Max Weber) typical elements of daily life that carry and display that (rhythmic) essence of their times.
Contrary to the traditional notion that places the steam engine as the central element to ignite the development of the first industrial revolution, it was actually thanks to the clock and its ability to precisely time and configure labor, what marked the beginning of this era and all subsequent socio-technological revolutions. As a byproduct of precisely timed production processes, the portable watch then became much more accessible to the general public.
The portable clock created a new mental model for time, enabling broader synchronization of human behavior. It also began to center human daily life around the rules of strict mechanics, distancing us from the flexibility and variability of the natural world.
/ AAAA EEEE AAAA IIIII AAAA - AAAA EEEE AAAA IIIII AAAA - AAAA EEEE AAAA IIIII AAAA /
It is within this context that the exhibition Ensamble is presented. It exposes the long interdependence of communication (musical rhythm) with technological advances.
Through the mechanical possibilities of solenoids, Ensemble scrutinizes two traditional rhythms from the coastal town of Todasana, and presents them in a de-generative fashion, effectively destructuring these over time lapses of 12 minutes in an attempt to expose the inherent precise codes that, through their marking, make us feel our time.
That is, beyond seeing rhythm as a musical condition, we can understand how our music—through its rhythmic foundations—defines and expresses our social conditions, allowing us to grasp our time through its culture.
/ TAKA KATA KA - TAKA KATA KA - TAKA KATA KA - TEKE TETE KE /
References
1. Pepe López’s paintings present in the exhbition.
For over a decade, Pepe López has been painting drums crafted by Armando Pantoja for traditional festivals in the village of Todasana. The works here present are preliminary sketches for a group of cumaco drums made from avocado wood, which were used in the San Juan celebration in 2011.
2. Natalio Galán. Cuba y sus sones. Valencia: Soler, 1983.
3. Joshua Citarella.
“Today, the internet has given us a form of temporal contract, where we have lost a clear notion of our future at the cost of a hyper-specified time that grants us infinite archives of our past.”
4. Vice article: Remember When Swatch Invented a New Time System for the Internet?
“In 1998, the Swiss watch company Swatch, in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, proposed an unorthodox idea: to abolish real-time and replace it with a system adapted to the internet, without the need for multiple time zones. This concept of Swatch Internet Time would not be measured by the sun or moon but by 1000 “beats” per day, each lasting one minute and 26.4 seconds. Instead of being based at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, Swatch established its global meridian at its headquarters in Biel, Switzerland. “Cyberspace has no seasons, no day, and no night,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab, during a 1998 announcement, according to Wired. “Internet Time is absolute time for everyone. Internet Time is not geopolitical. It’s global. In the future, for many people, real-time will be Internet Time.””