A Big Bang Lab production for Canary Wharf Film Festival 2009. Project featured on ITV London news.
ʻListen: A Soundtrack of Shared Memoriesʼ was developed to provide a learning exchange between communities, laying down a foundation for engagement and heritage participation. Playing on the themes of picture, sound, and memories, the group has worked together to record [...]
How culture and media can play a role to reduce poverty and increase social cohesion in cities?
In 2009 the founder and director of Big Bang Lab, Sergio López Figueroa, received an award from the British Council, part of the Cultural Leadership Programme. He worked in Delhi with Prayas an NGO supporting underprivileged children in Delhi. Other [...]
CSR as Cultural Social Responsibility. Delhi City Symphony
Film screening + networking event
The Hub King’s Cross 18th February 7 pm
Booking http://globalcitysymphony.eventbrite.com
• Why is culture outside of CSR or under represented by social enterprises?
• Are cultural enterprises committed to social change?
• What is the common language of CSR, Cultural and Social Enterprises?
Come and join us for an open discussion and watch the [...]
Sergio Lopez has been invited as keynote speaker by Notre Dame University to contribute to the CityStreet conference in Lebanon on Friday 20th November. Sergio will be introducing the model of City Symphony and cultural social responsibility in the context of the city including the screening of the documentary Building Fragments produced by Big [...]
“It’s up to us to advocate the role of culture by simply doing”, interview with Sergio López Figueroa
Lab for culture is a platform for cultural cooperation between Europe and the rest of the world representing 50 countries and 6 languages, working with artists, arts and culture organisations and cultural professionals.
Big Bang Lab’s [...]
Big Bang Lab as a member of the Citizens’Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting (CCPSB) supports the consultation report in relation to A Response to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the Consultation: ‘Sustainable independent and impartial news; in the Nations, locally and in the regions’.
Response of the Citizens’ Coalition for Public Service [...]
The outcome of this project is a new silent digital film (8 mins) as part of a collaborative interdisciplinary creative learning project, created and delivered by Sergio López Figueroa for Brent Holocaust Memorial Day
Special screening featuring a live programme of new music scores created by Sergio López Figueroa to a range of classic avant-garde and experimental silent films commissioned by Tate modern / Dalí exhibition.
“Yes, live music set to film can be a joy”. The Guardian
The scores for nine strings, piano, percussion, soprano and clockwork toys examine new [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
UN CHIEN ANDALOU Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, France 1929
(from Tate modern programme) Dalí and Buñuel wrote Un Chien Andalou in a matter of weeks in early 1929. It was shot in Paris and ready for viewing by June that year. [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
EL HOTEL ELECTRICO Segundo de Chomón, Spain/France 1904
(from Tate modern programme)
A couple -performed by the director and his wife Julienne Mathieu- arrive as customers to a hotel where everything works automatically. One of the best known films by Segundo de [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
TUSALAVA Len Lye, UK 1929
(from Tate modern programme) This unique tribal dance animation by New Zealand-born film pioneer Len Lye was influenced by Australian aboriginal art and uses more than 4,400 drawings. The first of Lye’s films to be made during [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
L’ETOILE DE MER Man Ray, France 1928
(from Tate modern programme) A classic surreal film staring Man Ray’s wife Kiki. L’Étoile de mer is based on Robert Desnos’s poem ‘la place de l’étoile’. Desnos and Man Ray shared a view that the [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
A PHANTASY Norman McLaren, Canada 1952
(from Tate modern programme) This is a very special film featuring hand-drawing landscapes inspired by surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí, Yves Tanguy and René Magritte. It is the only non- silent film in this programme [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
THE STRENGTH AND AGILITY OF INSECTS F. Percy Smith, UK 1911
(from Tate modern´s programme) This early film by national history film pioneer F. Percy Smith observes real insects juggling and playing with objects in a bizarre manner. A major success at [...]
A contemporary silent animation winner of the best music award at SCIFE 07, short film festival (Spain)
Director: Jonay Ortiz de Urbina
Original music: Sergio López Figueroa
Sound recording and mastering: Tenth Egg, Nick Barron
“Homeland” tells the adventures of two characters who look for a place to settle. It is a tale of belonging and fitting in of [...]
Creative Partnerships cross curriculum project combining music and maths
Big Bang Lab and the curriculum Who says maths has to be boring? Year 7 and Year 8 students had an opportunity to explore the relationship between graphic notation, geometry, music composition and moving images using a balloon orchestra! We use photography and flash animation during the [...]
Live Performance at Tate modern -Dalí exhibition- July 2007, as part of Clonic Mutations programme.
UN CHIEN ANDALOU Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, France 1929
(from Tate modern programme) Dalí and Buñuel wrote Un Chien Andalou in a matter of weeks in early 1929. It was shot in Paris and ready for viewing by June that year. Violent, funny, illogical and dynamic, it proved to be one of the most extraordinary films ever made. Disavowing all traditional ideas of narrative, the film courts the irrational to capture an unsettling vision of desire.
Buñuel originally chose recorded music by Wagner and popular tangos to accompany the screenings of the film. Clonic Mutations, Sergio López Figueroa’s new score, seeks to further articulate de non-narrative structure of the film and to dive into the internal world of the characters. The couple featured in the film are treated much like animated characters, and the music includes a tango to underscore the chase scene leading to the famous climax of the film.
A surprise moment is deliberately created when the music and the film seem to be going in different directions, until gradually the flow of the nonsense starts to make sense. The score starts from a single short cell, developing and yet mutating continuously as the characters do. López Figueroa looked back at historical music references from the late 1920`s through expresionism. The final result is an eclectic mix of post-romanticism and Latin jazz elements integrated in a score full of black humour and decadent romanticism.
AWARDS
Harlock award to Clonic Mutations, score for Un Chien Andalou at Rimusicazioni Film Festival, Bolzano (Italy).
PERFORMANCES
2000 Premiere at Ribermusica Festival. Barcelona, Garoe ensemble
2003 Les 3 chiens, Mercat de les Flors. Barcelona, Barcelona 216
2007 Clonic Mutations, Dalí at Tate modern exhibition. London, Clarion ensemble
2008 Berlinale - Buñuel retrospective, Volksbühne. Berlin. Barcelona 216
2008 Invitation au Voyage, ICA. London (Tate live recording)