articles

Goodbye to 20th Century's Sonar?

By Quim Gil, 10 July 2001

Eight years ago three young guys from Barcelona who were into electronic music and multimedia arts organised an event they decided to call Sonar.

It set about scanning the intelligent life under the surface of mainstream music and visual arts. Through persistence, hard work and dedication, these founder enthusiasts have succeeded in bringing their sounds, images and interactions to a growing audience. But, this year's ‘audience’ equalled 75.000 people and the ‘advanced music’ was in many cases assimilated by the mainstream standards of the very mainstream sponsors. Success or defeat? Scanner for the masses or rave for the cool conoisseurs? Choose your place in the grayscale.

Quim Gil <qgil AT metamute.com> is a multiversatile non-specialised anartist/anarchist primarly obsessed by chaos, emancipation and networked decentralisation. Once a journalist, now not so sure. Mute staff member anyway.

Sonar – Barcelona International Festival of Advanced Music andMultimedia Arts, 13-16 June[http://www.sonar.es]