[ISEA2022] Paper: Ricardo Dal Farra — A forgotten, almost lost, and partially hidden piece of history: new media arts in Latin America

Abstract

Second Summit on New Media Art Archiving
June 11, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Long paper.

Keywords: Latin America, new media art preservation, electroacoustic music history, sound art, cultural decentralization

UNESCO’s DigiArts project was a major initiative “aiming at the development of interdisciplinary activities in research, creativity and communication in the field of media arts.” The Daniel Langlois Foundation is a leading organization focused on preserving and archiving media art, including the Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection.

Who tells history? We can find multiple versions of the new media art history, most of them with subtle differences. Still, until a few years ago, it has been unusual to find references pointing to countries out of a small group from Europe and North America. Several projects have been developed to change that situation. UNESCO’s Digi-Arts project, and the Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection, hosted by The Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, are examples of the relevant role and the impact that the preservation and documentation of electronic artworks, together with its public access, can play in having another perspective on our recent history.

  • Dr. Ricardo Dal Farra (AR/CA) is professor of music and electronic arts at Concordia University, Canada, and director of the electronic arts center CEIARTE-UNTREF, Argentina. He is the founder of the international symposia Balance-Unbalance (BunB) and Understanding Visual Music (UVM). Dal Farra has been director of Hexagram in Canada, coordinator of the Multimedia Communication national program of the Federal Ministry of Education in Argentina, senior consultant of the Amauta New Media Art Centre of Cusco in Peru, and researcher of UNESCO, France, for its project Digi-Arts. He designed university programs on art-science. Ricardo created the Latin American Electroacoustic Music Collection. He is a board member of ISEA International, and a member of several editorial boards: Leonardo/ISAST (MIT Press, USA), Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press, UK), and Artnodes (UOC, Spain), among others. Dal Farra is a composer/artist specialized in transdisciplinary actions with science and emergent technologies. https://www.facebook.com/ricardo.d.farra