Variación de Voltaje (voltage variations) is an encyclopedic project by Carlos Prieto Acevedo, based on critical interpretations of sound art, electronic and electro-acoustic music in Mexico.  With the first of three Variación de Voltaje volumes just published in January 2014, author Carlos Prieto Acevedo appears at CTM 2014 to discuss his research and the project’s further development.

Variación de Voltaje assembles detailed research and interviews conducted over the last five years, weaving together testimonies of composers, DJs, sound engineers, electronic music producers, and sound artists with the aim of creating an intersection of ideas about the transformations in the cultural and artistic identity in Mexico against a backdrop of sound and technology. Through the project, Prieto Acevedo aims to be a structure or foundation that will stimulate thought and reflection on the various ways that music and sound have given meaning to the “modern” within the Mexican context during half a century of cultural collisions and aesthetic metamorphoses that have given rise to an intense relationship between machines and creativity.

Book Trailer: VARIACIÓN DE VOLTAJE / VOLTAGE VARIATIONS a project by Carlos Prieto Acevedo from Pensée Sauvage Films on Vimeo.

The publication regroups 25 interviews and conversations with a very diverse group of artists, from the creators of the Nortec movement to the pioneers of radio, from electroacoustic composers who have driven experimentation within academic circles to the first auto-didactics who have interlaced and mixed musical genres, and to DJs who have shaped the vast experience of electronic dance music. The most recent attempts by sound art to translate our ways of experiencing the world are also examined. Variación de Voltaje also includes an extensive glossary of terms dealing with the aesthetics of sound, audio technologies, and musical genres; institutional monographs and biographies; rich visual documentation in the form of facsimiles and other images, as well as three downloadable music compilations.

The lecture is followed by two additional short presentations from mexican sound artists who live and work in Berlin:

• Lvis Mejía
• Mario de Vega

Kindly supported by the Embajada de México.