Encuentro entre la tradición y la experimentación. Leda Valladares y el diseño sonoro para una nación del futuro

Abstract

 In 1960 under the motto “Argentina in the world and in space” the country was preparing to celebrate 150 years of the May Revolution during the presidency of Arturo Frondizi. The Government, together with the modernizing elites, decided to hold a large exhibition in the city of Buenos Aires (following the model of the great Universal Exhibitions of the second half of the 19th century) with the aim of the “celebration of modern life” in the refounding the country. In a pavilion specially designed for the exhibition, under the auspices of the Shell oil company, the audiovisual poem “El camino” commissioned from Leda Valladares was presented. It was the most relevant sound event of the celebration and it was probably the first multimedia show for the general public that was made on the continent.Valladares designed a sound expression for the thriving and technologically advanced nation that was intended to be projected at that time. It is interesting that, despite having summoned this artist and researcher of Argentine folklore, the sound expression chosen to represent a symbolic event such as the re-founding of the homeland -in the context of modernization- is far from any traditional musical representation. On the contrary, the material is composed of technologically mediated sounds, the product of a shift from the traditional concepts of what was understood as music. Sound, emancipated from musical structures, was one of the elements that helped process the dizzying changes and transformations of modernization: art, science, industry and technology were convened in various projects with the purpose of founding a new cultural matrix.