Metarave

Client: Lucas Ortiz

Year: 2023

“The artist, Lucas Ortiz, presents a series of photographs where he explores the moral boundaries of artificial intelligence.

To understand Metarave's music, one must transport themselves to the experience of going to the bathroom at a party. The blurred sound of the bass through the walls and both the audience and people conversing on the other side of the door are the conceptual ingredients to align the music with Lucas Ortiz's artistic proposal.

The Banned Prompts exhibition, part of the Metarave universe, took place inside the bathroom of Espacio Loseta in Madrid; covering all the walls and ceiling with thousands of photographs generated by artificial intelligence. As part of the experience, the lights were turned off, and the photos were visible thanks to the flash of a strobe light that intermittently illuminated the room.

The proposed 1 hour and 6-minute piece is a mix of composed and pre-existing sounds. With a focus on dark party vibes, featuring heavy bass drums; there are moments when sounds are created from scratch, with the intention of simulating a brief respite, mimicking the memory dissociation of an intense party where the music is already in the background, and reality is completely distorted. After these moments, the music returns strongly, ending the trance and regaining energy to continue at the rave.

The audio system was concealed in the bathroom, programmed at a volume that made it believable that the music was coming from outside. The sought-after secondary effect was that upon exiting the bathroom, there would be the belief that the music would regain its volume and its frequency spectrum, blocked by the walls; but upon leaving the bathroom, there was no music; reinforcing the concept of "a party that never existed."