One week ago the Expanding09 Festival took place in Barcelona, Spain.Organized by the Netaudio.Es team, the theme of the Festival was “New approaches to the music panorama” and got together in the same room netlabel heads, journalists, developers and listeners. Project presentations, discussions and (of course) a closing party turned this Expanding09 into a great success in my opinion. The best of it all is that there are already projects running because of Expanding09 and this was the main objective.
Expanding09 Highlights
Edu Commeles: Walking Compositions
This is an amazing site specific project.The project aims to generate a sound based experience between the listener and the environment where the walk is done. Moreover this project aims to explore the concept of soundscape composition and its posibilities of distribution and displaying. I strongly advise everyone to read the full MSc dissertation about this project that you can download here [PDF Link]. Also a visit to the website to explore the whole project is a must. This is one of those projects that tell us that the future is already here.
Daniel Rojas and Carles Gutiérrez: “Sociograma interactivo” (Interactive Sociogram)
Daniel and Carlos came to Expanding09 with this project of social tracking to ask for ideas: “We have developed this, how would YOU use it?“ After explaining the project, the questions and possible applications were discussed with the audience and I would expect some of the ideas discussed to be taken further. I have proposed that this system could be used as a loop triggering control, where the “DJ” would connect people (literally) to launch sound clips. Users could choose what element of a certain composition they wanted to be (bass, drum, synth, etc.). The potential for it to be a game also crossed my mind.
Salvador ‘Sr. Aye” and Adolfo “Decolora”: MIGA Create and Learn
Miga started as a netlabel and is now a cultural association that is very active. They are also a role model of commitment and the living example of what a netlabel can become. Adolfo “Declora” explained in detail how their organization works, what are they plans and how they see the scene, as a whole, in Spain. The following discussion that ensued (specially about how to monetize a netlabel that seems to be a recurrent discussion these days) made me decide, on the spot, that PublicSpaces Lab should try and do something with Miga: we only have to learn from them and the following discussion I had with Salvador and Adolfo only confirmed what I thought: There are synergies that we can put to work and, guess what, we already did. More about this on the PublicSpaces Lab website really soon.
Conclusions
There is much to be done: Like someone said during, the discussion period, the scene in Spain is made of small scenes that don’t talk to each other. Bridges are hard to build, and it has to start by those responsible but, the potential exists. One of the ideas that was praised was to to setup a wiki for the scene where netlabel’s could post projects that needed a certain resource to see if anyone could help. This is, in my opinion, something easy to setup and should be done a.s.a.p so that the momentum is not lost. Also more work on the promotion of the event would have helped to bring more audience to it. I am not going to make a rant about this since it happens in lots of events but, please: if you are attending something where the whole purpose is to network please bring your business cards.
Overall this edition of Expanding09 brought important issues to the discussion table, issues that are very important to the evolution of the netlabel scene in Spain. The projects that were presented show the creative and technological maturity of those present and to loose the opportunity to develop and help those projects reach the next stage would be, in my opinion, a waste.
Finally I would like to thank the whole Netaudio.es team, specially David Domingo for putting this together and for inviting me to participate.
Strategist, Sound Designer, Electronic Music Producer, New Media Artist, Activist, Blogger, A&R of the 
