Ctrl + Poesía

Centro Cultural Recoleta, 2018

Ctrl + Poesía was a personal project I made in collaboration with Gobierno de la Ciudad. It was a project mixing the work of 6 young poets and authors, who we filmed narrating their prose in virtual reality. We then produced an event were the authors each read one of their poems out loud while the audience walked around in Oculus glasses gaping through the poet’s personal universe. It was an experiment bridging the limits between technology, art and literature, which I have always been fascinated about.

I decorated the place with neon lights and tulle in the ceiling. Each author had a specific color to be set at the time of reading, creating a different ambience for their universe. The poets rehearsed for months with a pianist who created a melody specific to each. We also released a fanzine of every poem read that day, together with other authors and illustrators from the local community.

What I Learned

Centro Cultural Recoleta did not have the infrastructure to stream videos to everyone simultaneously, so we had to create a make-shift website for everyone to access them at the same time without breaking the illusion. It was also very difficult to get people, specially older folk, to understand how to use them.

It was the first time I managed and produced an event with a scope and a team that big - 6 poets, a professional photographer, a VR videographer, a band, graphic designer and print technicians for the fanzine, and the Centro Cultural Recoleta’s technical team. It was quite challenging and my first attempt at a really big production managing a budget.