In calli Ixcahuicopa (Nahuatl for “House open to time”) is a macromatic video opera created for the 50th anniversary of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. It premiered on Friday 11 October 2024 at the Centro Cultural Mexiquense Bicentenario, before an audience from all five UAM campuses.
Video opera grew out of contemporary and experimental opera: a hybrid genre that combines opera with video and other multimedia technologies. In this piece the singer is replaced by the voices of the community —students and teachers— and, metaphorically, by the spaces of the university: its sculptures, gardens and corridors become protagonists of the narrative.
It is macromatic because it takes elements on a large scale and turns them into sound and visual data. The work processes real-time data from the Azcapotzalco, Cuajimalpa, Iztapalapa, Lerma and Xochimilco campuses: ambient noise recorded in ambisonics on the campuses, lectures by teachers, and information from the university's transparency portal. Microphones and cameras captured the acoustic and visual emissions, turning physical space into an active part of the operatic narrative. The video includes speeches by Néstor García Canclini and by staff member Hermelinda Alcántara Guadarrama, along with texts written for the piece by the poet Gabriela Villa.
The work is organised as an overture and five acts —Geometries, Spaces, Numbers and data, Ideas and Future— linked by sound bridges of 3D ambient recordings. The video is projected in anamorphic format on the cyclorama and the sound surrounds the audience.
Artistic direction: Hugo Solís García.
Live performance: Fernando Vigueras Sánchez, guitar; Hegel Pedroza Villalobos, processed electric guitar; Hugo Solís García, keyboards and electronics; Gabriela Villa Galindo, texts and voice.
Production: Josué Martínez Alcántara, artistic production; Ana Sofía Vázquez Morales, executive production; Martín Aarón Alonso Velázquez, logistics; Hasem Anzurez Baeza, procedural video of 3D models. Hugo Solís García: concept, research, data handling, programming, procedural video, ambisonic audio, drone footage, interviews and 3D modelling.
Supported by the Department of Arts and Humanities of UAM Lerma and by the CONAHCYT programme “Ciencia de frontera, paradigmas y controversias de la ciencia 320551”.
