This is the report on the project Artelab: Laboratorios de Artes Electrónicas in which Colombian artist Juan Reyes attempts to create an inter-university space. The aim of the project, which was initially formulated in Bogotá, is to encourage the development of an incipient media arts community in Colombia. The project entails ongoing conversations between interested specialists. In its effort to develop the underlying idea, this document makes use of a schematic structure, with introduction, justification, a rich historical framework, a discussion of aims, desired outcomes, communication strategies, and budget. Reyes discusses the creation of an artistic-professional community to be built around a series of laboratories geared to the full development of media art in Colombia. He proposes the creation of a multidisciplinary space for the exchange of ideas that would bring together art, science, and technology, and their divergent forms of knowledge.

Artelab: Laboratorios de Artes Electrónicas is a practical proposal based on the Laboratorio de Nuevas Músicas (LabNuMus), a project formulated and implemented in 2004 by a number of universities in Bogotá, the Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo (IDCT), and some foreign embassies. Artelab is focused on the creation of an inter-university space that, at present (2009), has yet to enter into operation due to the limitations of the medium that are reflected in the lack of documentation on works, scant interest in studying this sort of art, and paucity of shows featuring work of this sort.

As this document shows, the work of artist Juan Reyes (b. 1962) has been geared to the development, construction, and consolidation of a space for media art in Colombia and for the writing of the history of that art. His foundation, mAgInvenT.ORG (http://www.maginvent.org/) was initially formulated as a space to support music and art, and their relationship to technology, engineering, and science. In working on this project, Reyes has provided the Colombian art scene with a map of the “state of the [media] arts,” that is, a vision of its current situation. His proposal, then, attempts to link art-related realms that are not necessary considered art per se.  

Reyes is not only one of the few sound artists and composers of electro-acoustic music active in Colombia (see doc. no. 1098721), but also a catalyst of processes, especially those involving media art in Colombia. He has participated in events like the Symposium for Research in the Arts held in Germany (Baden, August 1999) and, in Colombia, the Encuentro Interdisciplinario de Investigadores Musicales, ACOFARTES(Bogotá, 2007) and the Séptimo Festival de la Imagen organized by the Universidad de Caldas(Manizales, 2008). He has also taken part in artistic events such as “San-Sounds,” a Latin American computer music festival held at the University of Florida (Gainesville, 1999); the Festival Primavera (Havana, 2006); and the Festival Sudamérica Eletrônica nas Estrelas, organized by MISP - Museu da Imagem e do Som (Saõ Paulo, Brazil, 2008), among others.