Taiwan to host Synergy Festival in 2022, a homegrown digital art & electronic music festival
The announcement comes in tandem with a fundraising drive
"Synergy Festival invites you to discover the endless potential of Taiwan's electronic music scene," reads the first line of a press release surrounding the soon-to-debut event, which is heralded for being Taiwan's first large-scale celebration of the future through music, art, technology and gaming mechanics.
Perhaps long overdue, Synergy Festival looks to be for Taiwan what Sónar is to Spain or MUTEK is to Montreal: a convergence of electronic music and the digital sphere but also with a focus on gender equality and mutual respect while embracing cultural diversity.
"The Synergy Team believes in the strength of 1+1>2," say the organisers, a team of three made up of Yen-yi Li, a digital art curator, Sonia Calico, an electronic music producer, and Luke Wen, a creative marketing strategist. "Through the combination of electronic music, digital art, and gaming mechanics, we aim to create a fully immersive audio-visual experience for the audience. Attendees at the Synergy Festival are encouraged to set their prejudices aside, allow their imaginations to run wild, and enjoy the unlimited possibilities of the event."
The inaugural edition will be held on March 19-20, 2022 at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park and deliver a one-of-a-kind large-scale music festival experience to Taiwan with online and offline integration. The central Taipei venue will be transformed into a multi-stage large-scale warehouse party where singer-songwriters, electronic music producers and visual artists will collaborate on a reinterpreted version of their works to create a brand-new audio-visual live experience for attendees of the festival.
Music aside, the Synergy Virtual Art Gallery will explore the technology breakthroughs that artists experienced during the pandemic, at a time which saw cyberspace art thrive. It will be held alongside an immersive exhibition full of futuristic and modern digital art, as well as interactive installation art that will debut on-site at Synergy Festival.
It would be impossible to ignore gaming when merging the virtual and physical worlds. The festival plans to offer an enthralling digital gaming experience as an accompaniment to music that's been conceptualised with its own unique storyline. The experience will utilise Discord as well as a token mechanism, in which users can collaborate with friends to solve riddles online, participate in the adventure and collect digital tokens to exchange for goods, drinks and other prizes at the IRL event.
The first edition of the festival will feature a cast of local talent but the organizers hope to grow the event into a regional and international affair in 2023 and onwards. Across 2022, the Synergy Team plan to regularly offer online seminars, offline parties and exhibitions that communicate their core values: openness, curiosity, respect, and tolerance.
To fulfil Synergy's vision requires the support of many. "Synergy Festival is a long-term initiative in which creativity blossoms and new ideas emerge, and participants will carry this newfound energy with them as they continue to bloom."
"Everyone has their own unique way of thinking, opinions, and experiences, and it is these differences that allow humans to be so creative and live such diverse lives. Please join Synergy Festival with an open mind and a warm heart, and meet people with frequencies similar to yours!"
As such, the organisers are encouraging their community to support the project via a freshly-launched fundraising drive. Find it here.
Synergy Festival will take place on March 19-20 at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei.
