Goodmesh

First Prize Winner Goodmesh Concours 2024: FEVER+Jerry Salas

Agus Fulka is an Argentinian/Spanish guitarist and composer, currently studying jazz guitar at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. In 2024, he founded a new band, FEVER, where he explores the intersection of professional improvisers and electronic music. Agus Fulka intended FEVER as a space in which to explore current social, technological, and cultural dynamics through music.

In collaboration with visual artist Jerry Salas, FEVER explores the cutting edge of AI-driven interactivity, using artificial intelligence to synchronize lighting and visuals in real time. AI-powered tools adjust lights, projections, and effects based on narrative prompts, creating an adaptive environment that evolves with the performance. This system uses machine learning to map the prompts onto an aesthetic framework, ensuring that every visual and lighting shift aligns with the emotional flow of the musical narrative.

In this raw and mystical performance acoustic instruments and electronics meet the visual experience in a ritualistic suite inspired by Argentinian and Spanish folklore, as well as jazz music and techno. This collaboration brings forth a reflective multimedia experience, where the audience is invited to reflect on its natural self and artificial self.

Second Prize Winner: Julia Sanjurjo & Agustín Issidoro - /search?q=love
Julia Sanjurjo is an Argentinian singer, composer, and arranger. She graduated in Composition from the National University of Arts in Argentina and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Composition/Arrangement at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, while also performing in the IRCAM Cursus in Paris.
Agustín Issidoro, a fellow Argentinian composer, is currently a Master’s student in Multimedia Composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg and, like Julia, is enrolled in IRCAM’s Cursus de Composition.
Their shared journey at IRCAM and mutual interest in multimedia and contemporary music come together in the performance /search?q=love. In this performance the audience follows a story of heartbreak and disillusionment as Julia discovers that her online love interest is, in fact, a chatbot designed to seduce and deceive.
In search?q=love, AI plays a multifaceted role, shaping both the content and form of the performance. Through AI-generated text, music, and visuals—including haikus, sonnets, and digital avatars—the piece critically examines how algorithms shape human emotions and perceptions in a world increasingly mediated by intelligent machines.

Finalist of Goodmesh Concours 2024 - Sara Brink-Nielsen Trio & Gus Wolf Wickerhoff - Beyond Perspective.

Sara Brink-Nielsen, a versatile harpist with a classical music degree from ArtEZ Zwolle and current studies in jazz harp at HKU Utrecht, joins forces with Dutch filmmaker and visual artist Gus Wolf Wickerhoff, whose work focuses on bridging the gap between marginalized communities and mainstream society. Together with jazz musicians Bram van de Glind on flügelhorn and Damian de Muijnck on drums they present a unique visual concert - Beyond Perspective.
This performance explores the influence of technology on human connection, addressing an urgent societal issue—polarization, especially as shaped by technology and social media.
Through an improvised interaction between the musicians and visuals, Beyond Perspective mirrors the complex relationship with technology and algorithmic tools: elements designed to foster connection, yet which can also evolve independently, shaping human responses and interactions.
The performance investigates this duality by emphasizing an improvisational response to AI-generated imagery. Beyond Perspective seeks to reveal both the divisions and beauty technology can create. By navigating the tensions between control and unpredictability, the artists invite the audience to experience this journey towards a new, shared vision of unity.