Sonar 2008 - Saturday by Day

DO NOT USE THIS CARD UP FOR CUTTING UP COKE reads a credit-card shaped flyer in the Sonar Complex. Drugs are dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner at Sonar. There are drug-testing booths set up to test the safety of various pills and MDMA where experts analyse pills behind a booth and return with a frank breakdown of all its ingredients.

Artistically, Sonar does the same – deconstructing the digital electronic art world to reveal all its components - there are debates about YouTube, cinematic dissections and digital art explorations.

And today’s the day to explore them. In the dark bowels of the Sonar Complex is Sonar’s Future Past Cinema – a comprehensive exhibition about the development of film. The flavours of the exhibition are Marnix De Nijs’ Beijing Accelerator, Stage Fright by Nova Jiang and Boxed Ego by Alvaro Cassinelli.

Cassinelli’s Boxed Ego peep show invites viewers to peer inside a tiny box to see a dwarfed, tri dimensional version of his/herself – making the viewer feel like Luke Skywalker when he discovers R2D2’s tiny projected hologram of Princess Leah. But here we are looking at a miniscule version of ourselves peering at ourselves - a simulacrum of vanity.

Stage Fright is an interactive work whereby people sit on an on an ordinary swing in front of a video screen. As they move, the images on the screen are co-coordinated with the actual angles, perspective and position of the person on the real swing – only the film is of another place. It’s disorientating, ambitious and hands on – interactive contemporary art in its purest form.

But the highlight of the Future Past Cinema is Marnix De Nijs’ Beijing Accelerator – a NASA-like contraption whereby you sit on a roundabout-like pivot in front of a massive plasma screen and whiz round at a ridiculous speed (if you want to). On the screen are two images of Beijing – one is a sped-up version of the other. The viewer has to match up the images using a joystick to control how fast and which direction they go in. In reality, matching up the images is impossible, most people just nail the joystick to go as fast as possible – it’s bloody good fun.

Future Past Cinema is a slick, highbrow playground. Whether the artists intended this childish response is another question but then, modern art’s all about interpretation - right?

Back outside in the Spanish sun it’s time for Sheffield’s Kid Acne – the punk/hip hop MC man who raps about anything from having two mobile phones ‘like a drug dealer’ to South Yorkshire. With a predominantly international crowd you wonder how Accers’ regional rap will go down. But it works. Grimy hip-hop sample licks ignite a groove in the audience and, as if the irony were intended - a gentle hot breeze runs through the crowd like Beyonce’s wind machine.

Kid A’s set fun, edgy and ferocious – ripping up rhymes with his fellow MCs with gritty ‘Oi Oi Oi’s’ and energetic leaps across stage. Despite the fact the audience is predominantly comprised of glamorous Spaniards – right now they are Sheffield born and bred, dancing to Kid Accers’ Dillinger homage South Yorks, chanting to the chorus ‘the South Yorks, the South South Yorks.’

But the pièce de résistance of Saturday’s Sonar Day is The Black Dog - pillars of British electronica and masters of space-laden grooves and pioneering off-kilter beats. Sonar Hall is packed with an older, more discerning crowd. This isn’t a riotous set; it’s a classy, aesthetic experience of digital and sonic experiments. The pair – raised up on an altar stage like religious idols seldom look up from their lap tops. With one headphone glued to the ear and one listening out, Richard manipulates a series of crisp, spacious bleeps and beats along with textured, ripped samples adding sonic texture. The Black Dog resists the well-trodden tendency to control the crowd viscerally with fast beats and increased pitch. Rather with The Black Dog, the atmosphere is fuelled intellectually, with well-curated sounds and sonic innovation. In response, at the end of the set, the crowd refuses to leave – the stood-up equivalent of a standing ovation. And you can’t ask for more than that.