[ISEA2022] Artists Statement: Sebastian Seifert & Santiago Bartolomé — Fractal Listening

Artists Statement

Performance, June 14, Main Ceremony, Sant Pau

Keywords: fractal, ambient, music, electronic, performance

Named “Fractal” by the Polish scientist Mandelbrot in 1975, these elements of nature can be digitally recreated from mathematical functions. For Argentine artists Sebastián Seifert and Santiago Bartolomé, the Fractal universe is the conceptual trigger for a collaborative live/AV multimedia performance project from which a music album also emerges.

There is in nature, a mysterious and complex mathematical system that repeats itself over and over again, an underlying geometric pattern in forms as disparate as clouds, mountains, trees or our own circulatory system. Its distinctive feature is self-similarity, the same configuration that is repeated at different scales, branching out infinitely. There are those who believe that it is “God’s fingerprint”, “the absolute truth of the universe”.

In Fractal Listening, any attempt at stylistic corseting is diluted in the hybridization of artistic languages. Thus, the fractal images dialogue with acoustic and electronic sounds in an interweaving of infinite kinesthetic notes. In this way, abstract figures in strident colors outline mandalas and enigmatic portals, piercing the virtual canvas with three-dimensional shapes that evoke sacred geometry. This incessant algorithmic repetition generated by pre-established codes, sometimes follows a visual choreography and other times -altered by the frequencies of live sound- it improvises an organic dance, introducing variations to the original pattern. Simultaneously, the sound dimension is embodied in layers and loops, intertwining the electronic bases of IDM, ambient and experimental with the live chords of a guitar. Intervening the work, a trumpet interprets vibrant and moving jazz melodies with harmonics that generate sensations of body and spirit, closing the virtuous circle with a sensory, immersive and enveloping atmosphere.

In 2019, Microfeel & Santiago Bartolomé began their collaborative work with the aim of furthering their respective creative pursuits. This path of experimentation materialized in different artistic proposals. In 2021 they created the live show AV Fractal Listening, the work combines digital art, electronic music and the guitar of the multimedia artist Microfeel (Sebastián Seifert) with the trumpet and processes of the musician and composer Santiago Bartolomé.

  • Sebastián Seifert (Argentina), a.k.a. Microfeel, is a multimedia artist, designer and music producer. He has lived and worked in Barcelona since 2002. His career has developed at interdisciplinary points of convergence, maintaining digital electronic poetics as the support, concept and format of his productions. He has an International Master’s Degree in Media and Interactive Systems at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and ESDI (2002) and the Design, Image and Sound Career at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). In the field of media art, he has developed net-art projects, interactive installations and multimedia performances, serving as curator of these languages ​​at the “la Caixa” Foundation (Barcelona) from 2003 to 2011. With the audiovisual project “Microfeel ”, the artist highlights his transdisciplinary vocation, creating worlds that combine visuals and sound. He has taken his audiovisual concert to festivals like MUTEK (ES/AR/MX), SONAR, SZIGET, CTM, FILE and AMURAL, among others.
  • Santiago Bartolomé (Argentina) is a producer, curator, composer and trumpeter musician from Córdoba, Argentina. From this scaffolding he approaches his artistic explorations to build, in his own language, a sound cartography in which acoustic vibration and electronics coexist. His trumpet is the instrument to experience different atmospheres by erasing border lines, a tool that he considers essential as an agent of transformation of reality. His work, irreverent and enigmatic, is affirmed in “the search for sound” as a constant, versatile and possible future. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Córdoba Symphony Orchestra and Band (Argentina). Likewise, he is collaborating with different projects, favoring his interest in the intersection between artistic languages: Leonardo Prakash (Mexico, World Music), Eduardo Castillo (Mexico, electronic music) and with the audiovisual collective “Reality Soup” (Mexico, Augmented Reality and VR). Since 2021 he has been co-director and artistic director of the “Córdoba Music Biennial”.