salsa stories
SALSA STORIES Introduces Sound of Light
August 26 to October 16, 2022
New York City’s favorite itinerant salsa street event, SALSA STORIES collaborates with new media artists to create light installations and augmented reality experiences.
SALSA STORIES is celebrating its second season and Hispanic Heritage Month with the premiere of Sound of Light, featuring light projections programmed to respond to dancers’ movements, as well as an augmented reality exhibition that draws from archival images mostly from Center for Puerto Rican Studies, allowing participants to see historic photos of event locations in situ. SALSA STORIES founder and cultural producer Bianka Widakay commissioned artists to create new media works.
“For me, SALSA STORIES is more than just salsa dance block parties but a documentary project that activates the sites where salsa was born,” says Widakay. “I wanted to do something that would accentuate the environment, highlighting the buildings and importance of our chosen locations as incubators of the beautiful music and dance form what we know as salsa.”
The large-scale interactive light installations use gaming technology to turn dancers’ real-time movements into watery figures that are projected onto surrounding buildings, including PS52 in the South Bronx where many salsa legends attended school, and the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center on the Lower East Side, an important hotbed for Puerto Rican and Latinx culture. The water motif represents the ocean and vessels that brought music across the ocean, from West Africa and Spain to the Caribbean and Americas and eventually to New York. The AR portion of Sound of Light features the work of designer Melissa Ulto, who has created video art and immersive installations. Viewers access the AR exhibit by downloading the free app Membit, or borrowing devices onsite.
Sound of Light is made possible with support from NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), which introduced Open Streets during the pandemic as strategies to activate streets and support artists. SALSA STORIES launched its public events in 2021, benefitting from the City’s invitation to individual artists, businesses, and community partners to bring culture and recreation to neighborhoods.
The documentary film component continues to collect personal stories, with an online platform that allows people to submit video and audio remembrances of their own salsa experiences, painting a colorful picture of the evolution of salsa.
Learn more at https://www.salsastoriestv.com/