Unbox Festival 2019 Review

by Team Inditronic
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Incepted by Quicksand Studios in 2011 as an annual festival in India, Unbox is one of India’s premier multi disciplinary festivals at the crossroads of electronic art, music and various other disciplines U 1 Following a brief hiatus of a few years, Unbox Festival made it’s return in 2019. The festival was a celebration of interdisciplinary experiences shaping contemporary thought. With talks, workshops, performances, film screenings, installations, exhibitions and excursions spread across 3-days at the Bangalore International Centre, the festival enabled participants to deconstruct the past, deliberate on the present, and, most importantly, created a space for the future to take shape. U 3 u 2 The exhibits at UnBox transformed the space of the festival into a transient gallery with projects and ideas across multiple formats. More than 18 installations and exhibitions were presented that ranged from immersive entertainment with VR film pods to a participatory installation on creating a collective scent. Others included the outcomes of mixing environmental data collection with technology, a curated set of albums that created an archive of stories from India’s countryside, an interactive installation that made visual and acoustic connections between outer space and physical spaces that surround us, and the making of both real and virtual Narkasur effigies. Music came alive through the stories of a curious crow that lit up each time a musical note played, and a transient space within an auto rickshaw that urged all to make their own music. U0 u 303 u 01 The exhibits at UnBox transformed the space of the festival into a transient gallery with projects and ideas across multiple formats. More than 18 installations and exhibitions were presented that ranged from immersive entertainment with VR film pods to a participatory installation on creating a collective scent. Others included the outcomes of mixing environmental data collection with technology, a curated set of albums that created an archive of stories from India’s countryside, an interactive installation that made visual and acoustic connections between outer space and physical spaces that surround us, and the making of both real and virtual Narkasur effigies. Music came alive through the stories of a curious crow that lit up each time a musical note played, and a transient space within an auto rickshaw that urged all to make their own music. u 606 u 6

The evenings brought together an eclectic mix of sound and visual artists. One of the key standout performances was A transmedia narrative using improvised electronica and live visual programming, featured Seasonal Affected Beats, Aural Eye and Cursorama came together in Dreamswitch at the UnBox Open House on day one of the festival. The performance showcased how technology enabled Seasonal Affected Beats , a solo drummer,  perform an entire song that would usually need a couple of performers, just through his drum kit.

u 51 u 7 UnBox After Dark was a collaborative audio-visual showcase by UnBox residents and guests at Foxtrot, Koramangala. The night combined sounds from Bombay based electronic musicians SPRYK and Echofloat, with visual interpretations from Thiruda and Cursorama from the VJing collective Alt-Q, supported by Romanian collective Aural Eye Visions Studio. The last evening of the festival brought together an indie folk trio with Abhijeet Tambe accompanied by Michael Dias and Kaushik Kumar in The Unwind Collection, at The Humming Tree in Indira Nagar. This was followed by a modern, electronic set that brought together the sound experiments of Nikhil Narendra and Shreyas Dipali. In a space that is much to explored in the immensely burgeoning subculture of the mixed media arts scene in India,  UnBox has promoted new thought and partnerships at the intersection of design, art, culture and social innovation. It is at the forefront of promoting multidisciplinary arts in India, facilitating the intersection of sustainability, visual electronic art and music

UnBox is a growing community of creative, academic and developmental professionals seeking to collaborate beyond their immediate practice and looking to infuse future world experiences with imagination, sustainability and responsibility. For more information visit: http://unboxfestival.com/

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