Warning: Constant DB_CHARSET already defined in /home/wdoorg/public_html/wdcvalencia2022.com/wp-config.php on line 82
‘Erotica techno in Valencian architecture’, a publication and an exhibition to explore the links between techno music and modern buildings - WDC2022
‘Erotica techno in Valencian architecture’, a publication and an exhibition to explore the links between techno music and modern buildings
26 Feb 2021 /

‘Erotica techno in Valencian architecture’, a publication and an exhibition to explore the links between techno music and modern buildings

’Erotica techno in Valencian architecture’ explores the relationship between the architecture of the modern movement and techno music. The project takes Valencia as its study area and sets out to enhance both manifestations of cultural heritage via channels other than those habitually used, such as photography, music and exhibition.

The project includes editorial, photographic and sound material, which can be discovered at Las Naves from Thursday 4 March. The presentation of the book, edited by Daniel Escobedo and Ricardo Ruíz, directors of the project and founders of Valencian publishing house Altre,  will be accompanied by an exhibition of some of the photographs included in the book. This project, promoted by World Design Capital Valencia 2022 in collaboration with Las Naves and the City Council of Valencia, arose from an idea by Valencia Techno Culture, a group that uses different initiatives to teach and disseminate Valencian techno music.

’Erotica techno in Valencian architecture’ includes two short essays by Débora Domingo and Mario Montesinos, doctors in architecture and experts on the subject, together with a photographic essay by the architect Ricardo Ruíz, thus presenting a route through all those architectural (and sound) landscapes, where the rhythmic and repetitive structures of the concrete, with its light and shade, carry us to the sound structure of a techno song.

Designed by Daniel Escobedo, the publication represents a true architectural catalogue of Valencian buildings and constructions formed by black and white photographs, dark and with no human presence.

As Daniel Escobedo and Ricardo Ruíz explain, “We wanted architecture to play the leading role in this project, an architecture full of rhythms and material nudity, with a very brutal formal component, with no superfluous elements, that causes us to fantasize in our interior world. We sought to create an analogy between the mathematical composition of the architecture and techno music: with its marked rhythms and the same formal power.”

An analogy between the mathematical composition of the architecture and techno music: with its marked rhythms and the same formal power.

Furthermore, the project incorporates a techno music song inspired by the architectural landscapes photographed, created by the artists Domen and Sou Allen, disc-jockeys of the mythical Barraca club. Sounds of building work, welding, hammer blows and an overwhelming bass rhythm at 130 BPMs, ideal to listen to late at night. The videoclip of the song has been developed by the visual artist Sergi Palau, who worked from the project photographs.

In short, a whole collection of materials that could serve as a prelude to more extensive research or take the project towards new horizons, formed with the aim of having fun, learning and enhancing local heritage. This is a project that submerges the spectator in the discourse of the territory through disciplines apparently unrelated but with substantial connecting factors.

This project was born with the aim of having fun, learning and enhancing local heritage.

Because, as we can read in the foreword of the book, “This relationship between music and architecture is not new. In the foundational theoretic works of the Modern Movement, the references to the compositional rhythms of Le Corbusier are perfectly extrapolatable to the patterns that govern the composition of computer-generated techno music.”

The exhibition will be open from 4 March to 9 April at Las Naves.