BOA welcomes you!
BOA was the magazine of the Spanish Association for Electroacoustic Music during the 1990s and now holds within it both the memory of the association since its founding and of the community that comprises it. It also contains archival holdings where the marginal distribution of experimental music materials risks its current existence; materials that physically exist in a space granted to the association by the Community of Madrid, known as el pisito, which doubles as a collective artistic research space.
You can download the record of activities of the association - the document is in Spanish.
También puedes leer esto en español.
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It was in 1986 when a group of fourteen musicians associated with the Phonos laboratory in Barcelona decided to create the first attempt at an association for electroacoustic music in Spain. This initiative came from Gabriel Brnčić, a composer born in Santiago de Chile in 1942 and later exiled from Buenos Aires to Barcelona in 1974, where, upon arrival, joined Phonos as lecturer, contributing knowledge and experience in composition with electronic media. In Buenos Aires he had trained and worked with Francisco Kröpfl at the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales of the Instituto Di Tella, and when the Di Tella ceased operations due to political and economic pressures and the electronic music laboratory he assisted Kröpfl in was donated to the Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires and installed at the Centro Cultural San Martín, Brnčić himself began to direct it until his necessary departure from Argentina in the winter of 1974. This was necessary because three years earlier he had been kidnapped due to his openly known leftist militancy.
In Barcelona, Brnčić gathered an electroacoustic community around him as he taught successive generations of composers at the Phonos electronic music laboratory, which was established, the same year he arrived, on Santa Magdalena Sofía Street in the Sarrià neighborhood. The public inauguration of Phonos in the spring of 1975, which assembles the members of the newly founded Associació Catalana de Compositors, coincided with Phonos' first concert at the Fundació Joan Miró and the birth of the Grup Instrumental Català, which settled into the laboratory premises for rehearsals and held concerts at the Miró. This overlap fostered lasting collaborations between instrumentalists and electronic music composers, most of whom shared common educational roots of Barcelona, often further progressing to Darmstadt or Bourges.
Two seasoned composers joined Brnčić's circle of young musicians. Andrés Lewin-Richter, an engineer and composer born in 1937 in Miranda de Ebro, Burgos, had worked as Vladimir Ussachevsky's assistant at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York between 1962-65 and co-founded Phonos in 1974 alongside Josep Maria Mestres-Quadreny and Lluís Callejo. Before that, he had set up a home studio in Barcelona with some sound generators, modulators, mixers, and several tape recorders. Eduardo Polonio, born in Madrid in 1941, had been part of Alea - Spain's first electronic music laboratory - since the late 1960s, attended the Centro de Cálculo at the Universidad Central (Complutense) deMadrid, the Darmstadt Summer Courses, the Institute forPsychoacoustics and Electronic Music in Ghent, the 1972 Encuentros de Pamplona, and moved to Barcelona in the winter of 1976, engaging with Phonos at Lewin-Richter's suggestion (a Darmstadt acquaintance) while participating in the countercultural scene at Sala Zeleste (predecessor of Razzmatazz), organizing the Sis Dies d'Art Actual multimedia festival between 1983-85, dedicated to multimedia in the spirit of the Encuentros de Pamplona a decade earlier.
So, in October 1987, the Asociación Española de Música Electroacústica was officially founded in Barcelona with an initial capital of fifty thousand pesetas. Shortly after its registration, the term "Española," institutionally loaded and misleading about the entity's private legal nature, necessitated a name change to "Asociación de Música Electroacústica de España," subsequently better known by its acronym "AMEE."
Electroacoustics
Inasmuch as "electroacoustics" aims to convey a specific music genre, it faces stylistic assumptions that exceed its technical sense. The mid-20th-century paradigm shift of adding electronic means to Western music instrumentation (thus far, the technical meaning, hence "it's no longer about inventing the arranging elements, one must now invent the elements themselves;" Polonio) did not necessarily imply preferring specific stylistic features or creating a distinct sound unique to (and made possible by) those means. Two relevant events that popularized the term as a genre were: the first major US release of an LP of Xenakis' tape works, referred to in its 1969 original French release as "les œuvres de musique Electro-magnétique," under the decisive title Iannis Xenakis: Electro-Acoustic Music (1970), and the publishing under the Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires of the 1970 EP Música Electroacústica featuring concrete works by Hilda Dianda, Nelly Moretto and Luis María Serra - three artists of Argentine origin with European training or outlooks, the latter being several generations younger than the first two and a promoter of the record.
Strictly speaking, the term "electroacoustic music" started as an American designation tied to post-war European concrete music stylistic developments. The 1970s showcased numerous examples of the European acceptance of this designation, referring to a type of creations that had been carried out for decades, preferred over other concurrent terms such as "tape music" or "electronic music," the former increasingly out of use, while the latter would become anything but obsolete. Two early instances of its use in Spain stand out in particular: the publication of Josep Lluís Berenguer's book Introducción a la música electroacústica in 1974, and the creation in 1983 of the Gabinete de Música Electroacústica de Cuenca - the first Spanish institution to adopt this term in its title.
The term is well established in 1981; this is evidenced by the creation in Bourges of the Confédération Internationale de Musique Électroacoustique, recognized by UNESCO. From that moment on, a series of controversies begin regarding the specificity of the reference to which this designation should allude. Strategic definitions abound, according to the benefits of different geographies and authors. These definitions commonly construct sequential relationships among what, since the mid-century, had been known as "musique concrète," "tape music," "elektronische Musik," and now (from 1981 onward) electroacoustic music, which subsumes the former terms, removing nuances. The definitions do not escape criticism from practitioners themselves. Unlike earlier designations referring to a current practice, electroacoustic music is born historical; it emerges by retrojecting an identity that brings a specific, compact, sometimes prescriptive aesthetic into the present that could still be opposed in the future, for electroacoustic music stands (as an elevated variant) in contrast to popular electronic music - i.e. dance music - which emerged in the 1980s and, through the decade and by virtue of proximity, influenced it leading to mutual differentiation and separate compactness. The tension produced by this makes progress difficult in the 1990s. Present practice renders historical definitions obsolete. Conceptual liberation, therefore, arises from definitions that return to the technical sense of the term, referring primarily to technological contributions.
As towards midcentury the musical employment of electricity increased so much as to form a noticeable artistic entityrivalling the use of conventional acoustic instrument, it was termed Electroacoustic Music by some Electronic Music by others. (Clarence Barlow)
Electroacoustic music is a field of research and experimentation on musical language through the use of electronic technologies. (Nicola Sani)
It is music made by the ears of the composer for those of the listener, thanks to instruments of an electronic nature. (Christian Clozier)
Electroacoustic: a general term applied to any type of music generated with electronic means. (Manuel Rocha)
Music that can only be heard through loudspeakers, and that in its conception and elaboration uses recorded or synthesized sounds. (Adolfo Núñez)
It may thus be preferable to refine our definition to, "music whose sounds are heard through loudspeakers." (Jean-Claude Risset)
Any artistic product that satisfies a defined set of aesthetic needs and takes sound as its main medium is called electroacoustic music to the extent that the intervention of any electronic medium is essential in its realization process. (Josep Manuel Berenguer)
The peculiarity of the electroacoustic task lies in the musician creating objects (sounds) that contain the genetic code of their mode of development; sounds that embody their functional laws. (Eduardo Polonio)
Electroacoustic music is another language with certain connections to traditional music but is certainly a different and much broader world; the only rule or real measure is the ear; all the existing literature on the medium is "literature" and not rules. (Andrés Lewin-Richter)
It is clear that although it is undoubtedly the heir of Western "classical" music, it is a mutation and must therefore be evaluated not only in the context of a certain historical continuity, but also as a unique and original musical approach. (Françoise Barrière)
Exogenesis
In 1978, Brnčić and Polonio attended the activities of what was then the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges - founded in 1970 by Françoise Barrière and Christian Clozier, which in 1994 would become the Institut International de Musique Électroacoustique de Bourges. From his successive trips, Brnčić brought back the idea of forming a national association in Spain that could affiliate with ICEM, the aforementioned International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music created in Bourges. And so it happened. The emergence of other national associations during the 1980s had the same origin. It is known, for example, that the Argentine Luis María Serra received, at that time, the task from Clozier to found the Federación Argentina de Música Electroacústica; this happened in 1984, and he asked Kröpfl to serve as president. The primary reason for the creation then of the Spanish Association for Electroacoustic Music, with Polonio as president (1989-94), was to legally participate in this international confederation composed of national associations and, as a result, to add international projection to electroacoustic creations of Spanish origin as a member-association.
In addition, there exists in Spain a political climate aligned with the aforementioned context. In its new democratic era, cultural changes and shifts are largely driven by the urgent need to connect the country with international artistic scenes. The design of official strategies for artistic promotion and the creation of public institutions (Feria ARCO in 1982; Programa Estatal de Acción Cultural en el Extranjero in 1983; Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea - better known by the acronym CDMC - in the same year; Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música - or INAEM - in 1985; Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 1986) facilitate the fulfillment of this objective. Within this institutional framework, associations exist to represent sectors of civil society united by a common interest to serve a specific purpose, operating non-profit and through a democratic organization to which the law grants legal personality. Consequently, the initial activity of the AMEE consists of participating in events organized by the CDMC; these include the Festival Été Espagnol in Geneva (summer of 1989) and the II (winter of that year) and III (1990) Setmana Internacional de Música Contemporània a Barcelona.
Self-Catalyst
It soon became necessary to create new structures that could bridge the local groups of composers associated with one laboratory or another; structures capable of securing resources for the AMEE and public recognition for its field, ever more feasible at the change of the decade. It was at this time that Polonio conceived the idea of organizing the Punto de Encuentro festival through the association. It was envisioned as a biennial event funded by INAEM, which imposed it a certain inertia status from the start. The festival was organized in Madrid, for various and institutional reasons. One reason lies in Polonio's experience with the Sis Dies d'Art Actual festival in Barcelona, which was progressively funded-and-then-defunded by the Generalitat de Catalunya until it disappeared three years after it began. Another reason was that, by 1990, the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid had produced three anthological albums of Música Electroacústica Española (1, 2 and 3; 1987) and another individual album (4: Francisco Guerrero; 1990) and had hosted in its spaces the important experimental art exhibition Madrid. Espacio de interferencias. These facts reveal the momentary affinity of this institution.
At the end of 1990, the celebration of the 1st Punto de Encuentro festival in the Sala de Columnas of the Círculo de Bellas Artes demonstrated the purpose of "offering a broad and representative panorama of current electroacoustic creation" through conferences and quadraphonic concerts. For the latter, four Genelec 1024A speaker units from the Gabinete de Música Electroacústica de Cuenca and equipment from the CDMC Laboratorio de Informática y Electrónica Musical were installed in the space. The events paid tribute to two recently deceased figures, Lluís Callejo (1930-87) and Luigi Nono (1924-90), the latter an honorary member of the AMEE.
Two years later, the association published the double CD Presencia de Luigi Nono, dedicated in memory of the Venetian maestro, who had, on occasion, mentored a good number of its members. Likewise, with support from INAEM and the Sociedad General de Autores de España (SGAE), the AMEE organized the 2nd Punto de Encuentro. This event took place in October 1992, again at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, where, for the first time in Spain, the General Assembly of ICEM was convened, bringing together the principal representatives of the member-associations.
The festival featured concerts such as that of Fátima Miranda, for voice, and that of Françoise Barrière, for piano and tape.
For sound control of the concerts, the Gmebaphone was brought from Bourges - "a processor/simulator of sonic electroacoustic space, as well as a polyphonic acoustic synthesizer of musical spaces". A seminar on its operation was also held; in the photograph, Christian Clozier, Pierre Boeswillwald, and Gabriel Brnčić appear preparing the device, and among those attending are Julio Sanz, Juan Antonio Lleó, Arturo Rodríguez Morató, Alfonso García de la Torre, Josep Sanz, and Françoise Barrière, seen in the foreground.
Twelve hours of continuous listening to electroacoustic works were scheduled. Audience entry during the intermission of works was regulated by a traffic light - an invention by Eduardo Polonio, who was also the author of the photographs.
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The BOA Magazine
Ambiguous regarding the institutional optimism of the period ending in 1992 with the celebrations of the Seville World Expo, the Barcelona Olympic Games, 'Madrid, European Capital of Culture' and the '5th Centenary of the Discovery of America,' the BOA - an acronym for "Boletín Oficial de la AMEE" - emerged that same year in the format of stapled photocopies, distributed to subscribers by post or by hand. In its beginnings, it took the Array newsletter for members of the International Computer Music Association as its model - that is, rather than being a scientific journal, it aimed to serve as an instrument for raising awareness and internal dissemination. Issue 0 of the BOA was published in February 1992, comprising opinion pieces, relevant information, and reviews without selection or preference, as long as submissions were sent to the editors on a floppy diskette. Thirteen more issues of the BOA with similar content were published until January 1997. The widespread adoption of the Internet made it unnecessary thereafter. The magazine proved more valuable as a common historical testament than as material in itself; strictly speaking, the BOA filled the gap of collective narratives on electroacoustic music in Spain, in contrast to the predominant authorial or official ones.
Glimpses of future
In early June 1994, Sónar was inaugurated with the slogan "festival de músiques avançades" and the following statement: "sounds that bring us glimpses of the future or tell us that the future is already here." The festival attracted around 6,000 people to the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB) and the Sala Apolo. It established four thematic areas: "electroacústiques i experimentals," "noves músiques," "ambient," and "dance-music and techno." In fact, these themes represent only two areas, as the first two are considered to diverge from a common academic starting point and the last two from a self-taught one. They differ from each other in conceivable locations, times, and modes of reception, based on which the festival already establishes its characteristic distinction between day music (the first three areas) and night music (the fourth). Other labels also prevail for the first two, such as "avant-garde music" or "abstract music," where the abstract is the concrete aspect of music, sound itself; whereas, for the latter two, artist pseudonyms and titles filled with references to cyborgs or futuristic fantasies dominate, in the ambiguous gap between social reality and science fiction (as noted at the time by Donna Haraway and later Kodwo Eshun), despite the fact that the techno and ambient music of that time and place were concerned with sensations rather than meanings.
These terminological vacillations evoke the emergence of an electronic music culture and industry and the resulting shift in emphasis from production to reception or consumption. It is the moment when electronic music ceases to be a niche practice and becomes something globally widespread, albeit divided generationally and into market segments or niches. Thus, the daytime festival includes a record and publishing fair, a technology fair, performances, installations, and concerts that sequence on the same day and in the same space (June 2; CCCB) a performance by Phonos (affiliated since that same year with Pompeu Fabra University) with the instrumental group Barcelona 216 (named after the room in which the group members used to rehearse during their time as students at the Conservatori del Bruc) and another by the group Esplendor Geométrico (a precursor of so-called rhythmic noise) as two well-known extremes to each other; and, simultaneously, a symposium on electroacoustic music whose interest in bringing together key national figures to "exchange experiences and consider the future" is heightened "given the current development of telecommunications, which very soon promises real, rapid, and massive connectivity among members of communities on a planetary scale. In this 'global city,' each community will be a 'neighborhood' (one being electroacoustic music), and the purpose of the Spanish Association for Electroacoustic Music is to impart character to every imaginary from the perspective of individuality, personality, and locality through 'En Red O,' the 1st Symposium of Electroacoustic Music in Spain."
From this point onward, this annual symposiums where based on different themes each year ("Incentives for music creation and new technologies," "Plunderphonics," "Soundscape," "Electric Songs"), which invited broad participation. Initially, they were organized by the AMEE in collaboration with Côclea as part of the Sónar festival (until 1998); later, they were organized outside of Sónar by the Orquesta del Caos at the CCCB (until 2003). Their initiator was Josep Manuel Berenguer, who held this role while serving as president of the AMEE (1994-99) and for several years thereafter. The following are his words, translated here from French ("Situation politique et culturelle de la Musique Électroacoustique en Espagne," a presentation given at the ICEM meeting in Geneva in September 1994, published in BOA issue 9):
A difference exists between the situation in Spain and that of other countries where the latest major development in the music market occurred later than that of electroacoustic music: in Spain, there was not enough time to introduce electroacoustic music before other forms of music, more powerful from a market perspective, which used nearly the same technological means. Where we are from, electroacoustic music, little known by most of those responsible for the country's major cultural institutions and sometimes disdained by those who do not understand it or who may see it as competition, is currently placed on the same level as other forms within what is called "new music." Here is an interesting point to note: although for many in Spain, electroacoustic music still has a cultivated and "scholarly" aspect, for the public that is encountering electroacoustic music today along with other technological music, it retains only its aesthetic appearance, less bound to any kind of constraint, further removed from a clear and specific social function, and thus more free and experimental.
I will give a few examples to illustrate this new situation. ... The AMEE was invited by Sónar to organize a gathering of important figures in Spanish electroacoustic music, including most of the heads of the country's studios. Given this occasion, the AMEE set up an exhibition of musical materials from various electroacoustic music studios around the country and also organized a concert-performance in which most of the guests at the gathering participated: there were 7 DAT devices, a mixer for these sources, and a sound system. A set of magnetic tapes provided by the musicians, who were on stage at all times, inserting them into the players, were "live"-mixed for 25 minutes. This small performance was a great success among the audience and the organizers. For most, it was their first electroacoustic experience. It was something new, well-executed, and free from the constraints inherent to the music they normally listen to. Judging by the comments, no one needed to understand anything to appreciate such an bizarre concert; and it is important to note this, as the most widespread objection to contemporary music among the scholarly and "cultivated" public is precisely this: "but what is one supposed to grasp from this musical discourse to understand something about it?" This is a question without a real answer, as it touches on a realm far removed from language. ... The only thing we can suggest is that, to begin with, it is better to listen more, try to experience more of what we hear, and stop trying to read while we listen.
The list of participants and descriptions suggests a heterogeneous mix of micro-spliced tape fragments. Mixed music. Computer music. Music that replaces refrains with molecular shifts, that turns the form song into a valley of intensities. Music that emulates no existing sound, that does not mourn the death of any lost sound. Indifferent to tradition, it sacrifices the past for the now. Even in the mid-1990s, a festival, a symposium, or a performance is more an occasion for a communal, group, or sensory experience than an intellectual, consumerist or individually promotional event. This is important to note because, while popular-rooted electronic music would generally tend toward the latter for its social justification, electroacoustic music would pursue the former for its institutional survival. This is explained by the criticism from the cultural sponsoring bodies of the time, most of which were official entities, that the first was "light," lacking in substance, while the second was elitist, with little ability to draw an audience. In spite of the period's acquiescence of the prejudice, the simplicity of this framework makes it difficult to validate.
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Decentralization
Dear friend: I would like you to know how difficult it's being to carry out the 1994 Punto de Encuentro festival and the other projects that contribute to shaping the reality of the AMEE. We continue to have no money in our account. Both the SGAE and INAEM have committed to supporting the production of Punto de Encuentro, but despite all the paperwork, meetings, phone calls, and exchanges of views... that have taken place, these funds have yet to materialize. In particular, the paperwork requirements from the Ministry of Culture's controllers have been an obstacle course capable of exhausting anyone's energy and morale. This situation has resulted in a state where the AMEE exists solely thanks to the quotas paid by its members and to the investments of money - which we will necessarily have to repay - and energy - which we, by all rights, must appreciate - from those directly involved in the projects.
What this letter (BOA issue 9) conveys should be updated to include the roundtables held at the end of 1994, followed by concerts by students and faculty from various cities' institutions. This finally comprised the line-up for the 3rd Punto de Encuentro festival, no longer at the Madrid Círculo de Bellas Artes nor with large participation. Nor was it international, as the 1993 crisis, the postponement of the General Budgets, and the progressive devaluation of the peseta made foreign participation unfeasible - this, however, fostered solidarity and community development within the association.
By the mid-decade, there were around fifty members from diverse regional backgrounds, enough for the 5th (1996), 6th (1997), and 7th (1998) editions of the Punto de Encuentro festival to be held, respectively, in Valencia, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (where the annual General Assembly of the ICEM was also held), and various cities in the Basque Country - in addition to Madrid, which continued as headquarter. This geographical dispersion, along with the AMEE's participation in the Jornadas de Música Electroacústica in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1996 and the Festival Internacional de Música de Cádiz in 1998, demonstrated the then initiated decentralization of the associative activity, which had previously been split between Barcelona and Madrid.
Another situation making this decentralization understandable was that of the Spanish state and society at the time. These years coincide with those of greatest impact on the government budget reductions that the transfer of powers from the state to the regional governments, as a necessary step in the decentralization, meant for the General State Budget. The Royal Decree of December 5, 1996 ordered the incorporation of INAEM, previously an autonomous entity, into the new Ministerio de Educación y Cultura and authorized the territorial distribution of the budget. Concentrating a festival in a single location was no longer politically appropriate, although it would continue, adapting to regulations, for twenty more editions.
Unrelated Simultaneous Transmissions
The year before, a telematic multimedia project for networked, live radio had emerged: Horizontal Radio. It was initiated by the Ars Acustica group of the European Broadcasting Union, and
Radio stations from around the world participated, connecting to a polymorphic network for twenty-four hours without structured hierarchy, using voice and FAX telephone links, audio and digital satellite, Internet, shortwave, and Integrated Services Digital Networks. Based in Helsinki, Madrid, Rome, Vienna, Graz, Berlin, Athens, Melbourne, Moscow... each broadcaster independently chose the content of its broadcast, the periods during which it would store information from the other "partenaires," as well as the time slots during which it would broadcast its own radio soundscape. ... Through Real Audio - a special software still in its beta form - sounds could even be transmitted over the Internet with only a slight delay. Manipulations on file servers at various stations generated MIDI information, whose musical meaning was broadcast across the corresponding radio spaces. Additionally, direct actions on the "webs" of certain centers remotely triggered the playback of compact discs specially produced for the occasion. By means of ftp, the content of large sound files - entire pieces of music - also traveled that day over the Internet from one file server to another. I doubt that anyone was able to form a comprehensive idea of the event's shape. At most, one could only create allegorical images.
These are the words of Josep Manuel Berenguer in a 1995 lecture, published in BOA issue 13. Horizontal Radio was followed by Rivers & Bridges (1996), in which the AMEE also participated, collaborating with the Ars Sonora program of Radio Nacional de España. In both projects, the hierarchical, vertical demarcation of broadcaster-receiver was replaced by a communal platform of alternating communication flows and a collective body of broadcasts conducted via telephone, ISDN, Internet, and satellite. Millions of bytes traveled, yet only a few human bodies moved. This double dissolution of boundaries - both territorial and aesthetic - transcends the isolation of artists faced with centralized systems of cultural production and fosters more cohesive, relational, everyday, and ubiquitous forms of creation and dissemination.
Analogy Machine
By 1995, electroacoustic music had become akin to = akin to = etc. This analogical extension allowed it to gain ground in other fields. Until then, it had been defined by its content (sound) while the concert as its primary container prevailed in a way that needed to be surpassed at that time. The 4th edition (1995) of the Punto de Encuentro festival included not only several concerts but also various sound installations. Aside from the individual works of Eduardo Polonio and José Iges + Concha Jerez, there was a noteworthy collective installation involving a Yamaha Disklavier piano connected to a Macintosh computer. In the following edition the number and variety of these kinds of proposals increased. Internet terminals were made available from which attendees could access electroacoustic music files located on servers around the world. The audience could also create MIDI files to be played through a set of sound reproduction devices. Similarly, a collective installation was set up for the continuous listening of computer-controlled music.
In parallel, Ciber@RT - a festival dedicated to technologies applied to infographics, Net.art, CD-ROM art, interactive installations, and electroacoustic music = music intended for listening through loudspeakers - took place in the city of Valencia. The 2nd edition (1996) combined the festival with a conference on virtual reality, its social and artistic implications, practical applications, modes of communication, and virtual communities. The AMEE participates with a continuous audio installation broadcasting electroacoustic music and with several concerts.
In its latest edition [1996], ARCO fair initiated a series of events on sound art and net art, aimed at testing the interest of the public, gallerists, and critics in these emerging trends. ARCO Electrónico '97 is divided into three sections: sound art, video art, and cyber art. It will provide information on the possibilities that new media offer for both the creation and the dissemination and documentation of electronic and non-electronic artworks.
In the pavilion dedicated to electronic art four individual listening stations are displayed. Through the Fair's public address system, a selection of pieces from Horizontal Radio, Rivers & Bridges, and programs from the Festival Punto de Encuentro editions of '95 and '96 are also played. "Electroacoustic music" can now be read as "electronic art" = as "sound art;" and "sound art," like any historical category, will gradually shift and expand in meaning over time. The need to establish itself as a specific and autonomous reality within contemporary art and to overcome the strangeness and misunderstandings surrounding an imported concept - sound art - places this category at the outset in a position of constant recognition of its nature, in line with each new technological adoption.
Peaks and Plateaus
Josep Manuel Berenguer stepped down two years later, and until 2002 the presidency was assumed by José Iges, who had been directing the radio program Ars Sonora since 1985. At that time, the AMEE had close to eighty members. In theory, each member contributed an annual fee, but this was not always the case. In order to raise funds, the institutional route was chosen; Berenguer and Zulema de la Cruz had succeeded, in 1999, in securing AMEE's inclusion in the General State Budgets - a status that was lost the following year due to the tightening of cultural policy during the second government of President José María Aznar. From then on, the institutional route proved insufficient. The administrations had found in associations a convenient interlocutor to demonstrate representativeness, democratic dialogue; and if it was the associations that received public funds to be distributed among the artistic community, then any failure, protest, conflict, or deficit became the responsibility of the associations alone. Furthermore, it was more feasible for the administration to provide them with minimal resources than to maintain a public festival, a creation center, or a laboratory such as the Festival de Música Contemporánea de Alicante, the CDMC, or the laboratory dependent on said center, all of which disappeared years later.
On the verge of the new millennium, AMEE's programming was sparse, uneven, and intermittent - compared to previous years - for the reasons stated above. Punto de Encuentro, however, continued to be held, though its events were concentrated in Madrid, excluding other venues. The festival shrank in 2000 and in 2001 it was directed by Polonio at Iges's suggestion. The accession of Arturo Moya to the presidency in 2002 brought enthusiasm and greater openness, which materialized the following year with the participation of Alvin Lucier in Punto de Encuentro, held in Madrid, Málaga, and Albacete. To fund the festival, regional subsidies were sought, though some money transfers were delayed by several years. Naturally, this affected payments as well. Many members voiced complaints, some were exhausted, and others dropped out, a result of a community organization burdened with individual interests. This did not include all members by any means, nor did it reflect the character of those who led the association, but rather the orientation that historical events themselves lent to the understanding of the association as such.
VLC
Three years after the sudden cessation of activity, new glimpses of associative interest began to emerge. From this headless and dispersed situation arose a new concentration and leadership in Valencia. Gregorio Jiménez, who had founded the electroacoustic music laboratory at the Conservatorio Superior de Valencia in 1995, assumed the presidency (2006-14). This becomes the seed for a return to the association's electroacoustic identity, and in 2008 an album was released to mark the 60th anniversary of musique concrète. A new understanding between the electroacoustic musician and their environment thrives, conforming its raison d'être in teaching. By then, electroacoustic music had become inseparable from computer music. This encompasses interaction with acoustic instruments. The space of possibility emerges from boundlessness, hence its convening a tradition, an academic affirmation.
Every year, important collective CDs are published to coincide with notable anniversaries, restoring the association's community spirit. To fund these, subsidies and sponsorships are sometimes sought, while at other times, costs are shared equally by participants. The programming of activities focused on concert electroacoustics, designed for live audiences rather than installations or radio waves. Naturally, there were exceptions. Milestones in this regard included hosting the annual ICEM General Assembly in Valencia in 2009 and Jean-Claude Risset's participation in that year's Punto de Encuentro (16th edition) with a monographic concert and a course on composing sound with computers. Also noteworthy was the programming, through ICEM, of electroacoustic works by composers from Poland, France, Greece, Cuba, China, Costa Rica, the United States, Sweden, Mexico, Argentina, along with the reciprocal inclusion of works by association members in festivals and albums in several of these countries.
With the onset of the 2008 crisis, funding was successively reduced, and the festival was primarily established in those music conservatories where association members could host occasional programming. A special case was the Club Diario Levante, which collaborated with the AMEE for eight years in organizing and sponsoring the festival. By 2014, the concert audience consisted almost exclusively of students and the musicians scheduled to perform. That same year, the proceedings of the conference held two years earlier to mark the 25th anniversary of the AMEE were published.
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Sound Art in '15
Electroacoustic music was increasingly linked to so-called "contemporary music" - an academic tradition with historical roots with which it shares elements from which the latter - despite the strength of its relational adjective, has neither been able nor willing to emancipate itself. A change in leadership occurred, marked by a cautious ideological conflict with a tradition inherited from the previous period - namely, the more conservative aesthetic trends within electroacoustic music that partake in the aforementioned atavisms. Ferrer-Molina, a sound artist from Valencia, is now president (2014-18). The acronym "AMEE" remains, but at the 2015 General Assembly, it was renamed the "Asociación de Música Electroacústica y Arte Sonoro de España" to achieve greater reach, membership, and resources. In 2016, the association counted 150 affiliated members, double the number recorded in previous years. Activities were concentrated in Madrid, with partial continuity in Valencia and Granada, and occasional events in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Málaga.
Above all, the intention was to conduct activities outside Spain. Three editions of the Punto de Encuentro festival were held in Berlin, and sporadic activities were organized in New York. This marked a substantive change that had not occurred until that point. The goal was to secure strategic invitations for a large number of international actors to make the preceding initiatives possible. From New York, these included Richard Garet, Cecilia Lopez, Daniel Neumann, Phill Niblock, Sarah Goldfeather, Seth Cluett, Maria Chavez, and Jaime Oliver. From Berlin, there were Lucio Capece and Brandon LaBelle. Targeted collaborations were sought with Rodrigo Sigal, Guy-Marc Hinant, Caleb Kelly, Florencia Curci, Luis Alvarado, Philippe Blanchard, Manuel Rocha, and Susan Campos, some of which were realized and others privately pursued.
The presence of these international actors at the 2015-19 festivals was made possible thanks to funding from Acción Cultural Española and the increase in the annual budget from 9,000 euros in 2014 to 30,000 euros the following year. This amount was maintained each financial year until 2018. Since the end of that year, the presidency has been held from Madrid by Víctor Aguado. The model endured, and 2019 closed with 50,000 euros in revenue, most of which came from public funds. The 2020 crisis led to the suspension of activities and consequently the cessation of subsidies.
Domestic Period
Intermittent states are sustained until they become prolonged thresholds. Instead of demanding inclusion in existing sociopolitical structures, the management of the association clings to the possibility of temporarily withdrawing it from visibility. This reduces the number of associated members.
In 2016, the lack of young artists participating in the association and its activities was already noticeable. Thus began, in parallel to the festival, a program of gatherings among young people aimed at recognizing shared interests in experimental music creation, sound art, and sound studies, where learning was conceived more as a result of group exchange than of external tutors. This program was later replaced by another called Sub 25; its purpose is now to foster new forms of community organization among the association's younger members and by the members themselves. Sub 25 is not a pedagogical program; it is a gathering space and a self-regulated learning environment for its participants. Initially, the facilities at Medialab-Prado Madrid fulfilled the need for a place to meet, until that cultural center was disappeared. In 2020, the Community of Madrid granted a space to the association, and the youth gatherings prevailed. Protocols were established for a work and coexistence environment free from sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or any other behavior stemming from discriminatory, oppressive, or abusive attitudes. These were also years dedicated to internal tasks of archiving and digitizing materials resulting from AMEE's activities since its inception. Such work renders obsolete any attempt at individual interest. There is a lack of a word opposite to nostalgia to name the act of remembering what one still has, of writing and describing material reality.
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Written in May 2024, this text is the result of archival and historical research on the association carried out by Víctor Aguado in collaboration with board members Ramón and María del Buey and Alberto García Aznar, and previously Anne-Françoise Raskin, initiated in 2018. The text absorbs the language of the period and of the authors it mentions and has been enriched by references and observations contributed by Eduardo Polonio, Josep Manuel Berenguer, Mercè Capdevila, Adolfo Núñez, Marina Hervás, Andrés Lewin-Richter, Miguel Copón, Josep Lluís Galiana, Gregorio Jiménez, Arturo Moya, and José Iges, and by the work on the re-issue of the Llorenç Barber and Montserrat Palacios' book La mosca tras la oreja.
This website text was translated into English by Miguel Ballarín.