Dates Last weekend of August Founded by Ilidio Chaves | Years active 2014-present Capacity 5000 | |
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Genre Electronic, Techno , Experimental Location(s) Montemor-o-Velho Castle, Portugal | ||
Festival Forte is an annual festival that takes place inside the Montemor-o-Velho Castle in Portugal, during the month of August, with the main focus on electronic music, visual and performing arts.
Contents
Overview
Festival Forte takes place at Montemor-o-Velho Castle, a National Heritage site, and a cultural landmark in Portugal. It has been listed by 6AM as one of The World’s Most Unique Festival Locations.
The first editions of Festival Forte, used Video Mapping techniques to enhance the physical characteristics (historical and architectural) of the castle being nominated by Resident Advisor as one of the Top 10 Festivals of August 2015
The stage design allows transparency to make the framing within the walls of the castle that receives large screens for the support of the visual spectacle.: The rest of the space is also used as an audiovisual installation, such is the case of the Church of Sta. Maria de Alcáçova. About the stage's visuals, Crack Magazine stated that the festival was "displaying consistently engaging, otherworldly visuals across its walls".
The festival is getting recognition from international press such as The Quietus, The Skinny ., Trax Magazine or Pitchfork Media which has listed Festival Forte 2016 on the Pitchfork Guide to Festivals
Educational Approach
In April 2015, in partnership with the Faculty of Fine Arts of The University of Porto, the festival promoted the lecture “Laser Technology in Building an Audiovisual Performance” presented by Robert Henke, composer, performer and researcher with work oriented in the field of technical innovation in contemporary electronic music. In the context of the Lumière II laser show, performed outdoors for the first time at Festival Forte, Henke presented the most contemporary issues of the relationship between musical composition, audiovisual installations and computer applications. He addressed the complexity of the conceptualization of an audiovisual performance show built with use of laser technology activated and synchronized by sound stimuli.
Glitch and Generative Art are also objects of study and extensively used in the festival's conceptualization.