LABA Valencia

The Fundación Épica La Fura dels Baus collaborates with LABA Valencia, the Spanish headquarters of the prestigious Italian art university LABA – Libera Accademia di Belle Arti with 20 years of experience in artistic teaching of Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. 

The Foundation’s team collaborates with the university as part of the teaching staff of the first edition of the International Master’s Degree in Multimedia Creation for the Performing Arts. The Master explores, through five core modules, the relationship between multimedia and performance. The course proposes a working on the concepts, techniques and software necessary to approach the scenic creation of the future, integrating new media and innovation in the performing arts: video in its multiple formats, sound creation, sensors and interactive elements, interaction with the audience, together with the production or visualisation and study of reference works.

Throughout the course, the students receive the described knowledge related to the objective of putting it into practice, materialising the theory learnt in the creation and presentation of an end-of-course project: a stage show presented in front of 300 invited people. 

In the first part of the master’s degree, students are trained in the most professional software currently available: Madmapper for videomapping and videoscene, Ableton software for sound editing and live composition, Touchdesigner language for lighting and interaction, as well as interaction tools such as Kalliope, the flagship of the Epica Foundation.

In addition to the knowledge of technological tools, sessions on art direction are given by Pep Gatell, as well as on production by Nadala Fernández.

After completing the core subjects, the students, guided by the Master’s teaching staff, are immersed in the phase of inspiration and generation of ideas and proposals. Students will present their ideas, which will serve as the basis for the third phase, the public presentation of the results.

Once the phase of conceptualisation and presentation of ideas and proposals has been completed, the master’s degree management, supported by the teaching staff, builds the final sample “Amor”. The proposal revolves, as its name suggests, around love and is divided into two parts. The first is directed by the president of the Epica Foundation La Fura dels Baus, Pep Gatell. The second, by the director of the Master’s, Cristina Casanova. The final show will be presented on 11 December at the Teatro El Musical in Valencia.

Pep Gatell, together with the students, proposes an action in the foyer of the TEM that consists of an interaction between the public and a virtual entity, communication between which will arise through the Kalliope application, downloaded free of charge by the audience before the premiere of the work.

The action begins with a direct invitation to the audience to be part of the scene. The application establishes a first contact with the audience through a 50-metre connected line of LEDs, with which it proposes geometric figures to be developed jointly by the whole audience. Through this exercise it communicates with each of the smartphones and the individual memories of all of them.

So, the virtual entity, an A.I. called “Eros”, reaches into the audience’s databases to try to understand love, to practice it and to find it among the audience. He will observe and ask the audience about their experiences in this area, propose games and activities related to love, come to his own conclusions and finally recreate an image of one of the participants with whom he thinks he is in love.
In other words, a socialising laboratory through a tool which a priori is exclusive to each person and which in a certain way isolates us from the outside world, but which is used as a socialising device for a group of people who, for a moment and with simple operations, end up making complex choreographies of movement and intention, in an efficient and effective way.