Vertigo - The confluence of art and sound
When we came across the VERTIGO festival we were immediately intrigued. Not just by the impressive set list, but by what they had set out to achieve.
The first of its kind, Vertigo is an experimental festival inviting us to examine the intersection of sound and visual expression through an immersive experience.
Starting with two satellite events late last year hosted at Gorgeous George and One park as well as a new media art workshop hosted at Filmscape, leading up to a conference covering a wide range of topics on Friday the 24th of January and then the festival day on Saturday the 25th of January, the team behind VERTIGO is setting out to break new ground in the Cape Town music scene.
We managed to get a on a call with the team behind the new venture to find out more about the mission behind the event series.
Could you tell us more about what the event you’re set out to curate is all about?
So what we’re trying to achieve is more than just a party. We want to actually form ties between the new media art exhibitions within the music space. We’re only working with local artists and musicians - there will be electronic live acts as well as DJ’s and quite a broad mixture of genres in terms of sound.
We’re putting art into a context that it’s not usually in while also putting electronic music into a new context.
We’ve taken over this warehouse in Paarden Eiland and we have four spaces within the warehouse which will be activating. So there will be three dance floors which will be focused on the music as well as one massive gallery exhibition space. That will consist of five solo exhibits, and there will also be a remote exhibit with three different artists. That’s the gallery section of the event.
On the main floor on the upstairs by the mezzanine will also have the ten metre LED display behind the DJ run by the Alucent Collective. They’ll be using visuals that we sourced from local artists and also a few Berlin based artists that we’ve been working with who are pushing the new media space, mostly in terms of 3D art and AI generated visuals.
That’s kind of the summary of it. Of course there will be the food and wine element to it. We have Jazz Pony and One Park running all the wine selections and they’ll also be curating some of the food. We’re trying to bring everything together and make it a fully immersive experience.
We kick off at 2pm. Between 2pm and 5pm, that time will be dedicated to the exhibition space. We will have three live performers and bands playing. Gonubie will be doing an ambient live set plus Buli from Joburg doing his live set with the more trippy kinds of sounds. There’s Dead Symbols which is a three piece electronic band and that’s kind of an abstract, experimental, spoken word kind of Jazz influenced electronica. Anti-music music.
Could you tell us what you mean by ‘new media’?
So you obviously get different types of mediums for creating art. It could be oils, it could be sculptures or anything. But new media is something that uses more technology to create a more immersive interaction.
New media could be anything that takes on technology. Whether it may be lights, projections, or screens where you can put out your art as an artist.
Most of the exhibitions we have will be on screens. We will have some traditional art and installations as well, but it’ll all go hand in hand with the digital presentations. Each solo artist will have their space which is a 5x5 box and they’ll project on the backwall and then have elements and installation pieces within their space.
Some of the solo exhibits will also have a sound element where there will be bluetooth headphones to put on and kind of interact with the artists in some way. We also have one other immersive piece which is more of a visual experience. A newer take on a photo booth.
One of the exhibitions by Nicholai Thomas who was originally a photographer but is now trying to take photo booth style photographs into creating instant imagery using ASCII coding. It’s a generative system that he’s created that people will be able to interact with.
Where did the inspiration for starting a festival like this come from?
Our team have been running events in Cape Town for the last ten years - mostly club night focused stuff, especially at Modular since they opened. We’ve also done stuff outside of the club, which has always been successful, but we’ve patiently waited for the opportunity to do something on a larger scale and to really execute it at a level that hasn’t been done in South Africa.
It was just kind of the next natural step to really bring in our expertise and interest to build something which is hopefully sustainable for the city while also trying to really grow local artists and musicians within the city. Especially stuff that kind of sits on the fringe. There’s commercial stuff that maybe doesn’t get enough focus on the day to day press and we’re just trying to elevate it as much as possible.
We’ve always been involved in pushing young, new, and local talent and this is a way that we think we can do it justice as well as building something sustainable to continue to work with these artists in the long term. We’re collaborating with Investic Art Week later in the year and then we have a few other smaller activation before the festival. We got two, one at Gorgeous George and one at One Park which showcases the audio visual innovations. There isn’t much in the new digital art medium space that’s being seen by the public. We’re just trying to back that a bit more and elevate those parts of our scene.
Whether you want to check out the conference on the Friday, or come through to experience the festival on the Saturday, VERTIGO is sure to leave its mark on the scene this year, and that is worth bearing witness to.
We have no idea what to expect, but we are excited to immerse ourselves in the offerings of some of the city’s most gifted creatives.
Check out www.vertigofestival.co.za to find out more.
