sónar+D 2025 talks about art, music and creative industries
Sónar+D addresses the use of quantum science in art, making music with AI, experimental video games in performances, and what the future looks like in the creative industries in a series of talks at Sónar 2025. The event runs from June 12th to 14th, 2025, at Fira Montjuïc in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the annual electronic music and digital art festival. On these days, over 100 lectures, exhibitions, workshops, and performances take place at once. designboom also hosts discussions during the festival, interviewing artists Yolanda Uriz, Dmitry Morozov aka ::vtol::, and George Moraitis on their practice and the making of their modern art, sound performances, and stage designs.
Yolanda Uriz uses physical phenomena, vibration, electromagnetic waves, and chemical molecules to decode sound, light, and smells in her installations and performances. This adoption of sound is also present in Dmitry Morozov aka ::vtol::’s robotics and installation, placing emphasis on the link between emergent systems and new kinds of technological synthesis. Even George Moraitis works with sound to narrate memory, experience, and a sense of history through sound art, audiovisual installations, and two-dimensional works and performance. Designboom’s talks take place on June 12th from 5:30pm. Historically, Sónar+D was established in 2013 as a platform for creatives to examine the ways technology, and now AI, influences art, music, and even society. This edition’s conferences focus on three main thematic areas: AI + Creativity, Futuring the Creative Industries, and Worlds to Come.
Meet us at Sónar+D – tickets here!
images courtesy of Sónar, unless stated otherwise | photo by Cecilia Diaz Betz
AI + Creativity explores the politics of the new technology
For the AI + Creativity during Sónar+D (tickets are available here), the section explores how creatives can use AI production, music, and audiovisual design. The talks also dive into the ethical and political aspects of artificial intelligence. It starts with Introducing AI & Music powered by S+T+ARTS, a forum that leads the discussion of AI and sonic creativity. In another room, Libby Heaney performs Eat my Multiverse performance using quantum computing for visuals, sounds, and music development in a way typical composition doesn’t use. Jordi Pons’ Artistic Trends, Music & AI discusses new musical genres and sonic structures from AI algorithms, while Rebecca Fiebrink hosts Design your dream music AI tool, a session on AI tool design accessible to users without programming knowledge. Joanne Armitage’s Automating Bodies: Power, Music and AI explores the power dynamics when users adopt AI for creative production. The talk includes examining gender bias in algorithmic music, too.
It’s about machine learning and treating it as ‘resonant entities’ in Marije Baalman’s A Musical Understanding of AI as Resonance, while there’s also a masterclass on using real-time audio machine learning for culturally specific sound with Lamtharn (Hanoi) Hantrakul, known as ญาบอยฮานอย (yaboihanoi). In his lesson, he covers integrating AI with traditional Thai music. The viewers can, or should, participate in AI Performance Playground, an AI & Music Hacklab that allows visitors to use AI as an actual instrument. In this section, +RAIN Film Festival also shows films produced with AI models, and AudioStellar’s Territorios sonoros emergentes demonstrates how motion tracking and AI can power dance for visual and sonic performances. At the same time, Maria Arna premieres Ama, a live musical performance using AI with the human voice.
Sónar+D addresses the impact of AI in music, art and more through a series of talks during Sónar 2025
Discussions on present and future of creative industries
Inside the Futuring the Creative Industries section, conversations spotlight the changes and opportunities within the creative sector amidst new technologies including, but not limited to, AI in music, art and performances. The discussions center on how audiences, instead of the creatives, shape the curation, the way people create, and what they’ve produced. The forum How to future the creative industries is an example which examines cultural organizations’ roles in a changing online world. This forum – participated by the New Museum in Manhattan, Serpentine Galleries in London, and the Onassis Foundation – touches on economic, technical, and administrative support for new forms of art.
There’s also a related panel named Cracks in the foundation: Curation in 2025, presented in collaboration with the TIMES project. It features directors from different museums and creative spaces who share their experiences and insights about the current challenges and changes in the field of curation. Salome Asega, the director of NEW INC, the New Museum’s digital arts incubator, gives a talk exploring institutional role, while Spanish cultural analyst Julieta Wibel and technologist Mike Fernandez lead a discussion with artists Samantha Hudson and YESSi PERSE. The remaining sessions include Berta Segura and Francesca Tur’s Hacking the world and Aquelarre Futurista, both of which explore how geopolitics, technology, and digital culture shape the interactions between artists and audiences.
the event runs from June 12th to 14th, 2025, at Fira Montjuïc in Barcelona | photo by Nerea Coll
The last is the Worlds to Come, a thematic area that explores speculative futures and human-technology interfaces. It examines the relationship of today’s technology with culture and society. It begins with the audiovisual lectures of Xin Liu’s Cosmic Metabolism, a dive into technology affecting planetary metabolism and individual development. Albert.DATA’s SYNAPTICON even involves neurohacking via a Brain Computer Interface (BCI), transforming brain signals into public audiovisual content as a way to address neural rights and surveillance. There’s also Tega Brain’s Questions of Automation, which suggests intermittency in technology. Her projects, such as a Wi-Fi router linked to moon phases, can demonstrate environmentally conscious design.
In this section, Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti) also presents Human Unreadable, a generative choreography project that showcases on-chain method to explore human presence within technical systems. Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley’s WE CAN’T PRETEND ANYMORE combines video game and live performance to test digital identity limits all the while focusing on the Black trans experience. The Lux Mundi Installation reinterprets Sant Climent de Taüll’s apse using projection mapping and generative visuals. Each of these talks and forums contributes to the overall purpose of Sónar+D, which is to create a space for knowledge exchange between different professional fields. These programs coincide with the Sónar 2025 festival, which runs between June 12th and 14th.
Actress & Suzanne Ciani present ‘Concrète Waves’ during Sónar by Day at Stage Complex+D
Stage+D by MEDIAPRO, Playmodes, UPC-Telecos present Astres | photo by Nerea Coll
Lux Mundi installation by by Alba G.Corral, Massó, Desilence & Hamill Industries with Tarta Relena at Sónar+D
Sónar+D shows a replica of the apse of Sant Climent de Taüll to host Lux Mundi
Yolanda Uriz’s Chemical Calls of Care | image courtesy of Yolanda Uriz
Chemical Calls of Care (2024), an installation on audio-olfactory communication | image courtesy of Yolanda Uriz
Edge is a kinetic, sound and light object | image courtesy of ::vtol::
iPot is a device for performing a digital tea ceremony | image courtesy of ::vtol::
Schematic by George Moraitis | image courtesy of George Moraitis
Xe by George Moraitis | image courtesy of George Moraitis
project info:
event: Sónar 2025 | @sonarfestival
program: Sónar+D
location: Palau de Congressos de Fira Montjuïc, Barcelona, Spain
dates: June 12th to 14th, 2025
photography: Cecilia Diaz Betz, Nerea Coll | @ceciliadiazbetz, @nereacoll
entry: tickets here
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