Carlos Sandoval

Carlos Sandoval Mendoza (born 1956, Mexico City) is a Mexican/German multidiscipline artist mostly recognized for his work joining technology and a Gestalt approach to the art of music composition, multi channel video, time-lapsed performance, AI-assisted art and Ink-Pen Drawing.

Michael Zwenzner describes him as a "Socio-critical magician of the extended-multimedia instrumental theater."

On more recent Sandoval's work, Davood wrote: "[...] Each piece, whether sound or video art, music composition or intricate drawings, reflects an artist who is as much a global citizen as he is a silent observer of the internal human odyssey".

Sandoval was born in an archetypal barrio in downtown Mexico City.

Since his childhood, he was exposed to harrowing social and cultural conditions which were later reflected in his work.

Having abandoned his music studies at Escuela Nacional de Música UNAM 1976-79, Sandoval went on to study composition, analysis and theory, privately, with Julio Estrada (1985–90).

He also assisted and took part in private sessions with several other composers.

In Europe he learned Piano tuning and building at the Bösendorfer Klavier Fabrik in Vienna (1980–82).

This stint radically changed his outlook on sound in general.

Later on, as a photographer and videographer he studied with Sirgo (Mexico), Fabri (Austria), and Fathi (Germany).

Sandoval is internationally active.

"Ginantria", for cello solo, 1990, is the best example of this period.

A number of out-of-catalogue pieces also belong to this stage:

He also worked as an assistant to Conlon Nancarrow (1991–94).

Sandoval identifies himself with diverse Edmund Husserl's phenomenological concepts like Lifeworld ("In whatever way we may be conscious of the world as universal horizon, as coherent universe of existing objects, we, each "I-the-man" and all of us together, belong to the world as living with one another in the world; and the world is our world, valid for our consciousness as existing precisely through this 'living together.'), "Empathy and Subjectivity" (the subjectivity of others, as well as our intersubjective engagement with them), Evidence ("the successful presentation of something whose truth becomes manifest in the evidencing itself"), Intuition ("...having a cup of coffee in front of you, for instance, seeing it, feeling it, or even imagining it: these are all "filled intentions", and the object is then intuited") and Intentionality of consciousness ("the power of minds to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs" ).

All these concepts are linked in Sandoval's work with an ethical use of technology, (or Technoethics: using technology not just without renouncing humanism but stressing and empowering Humanism).

He has been invited to take part in numerous events and contemporary music festivals around Western countries.

He is also the author of multiple articles and speculative essays about music.

During (and after) the COVID-19 pandemic, he is focused mainly on ink-pen drawing.

His early work can be identified with Julio Estrada's Techniques and the Xenakian school and includes the use of Cartesian graphics representing sonic trajectories and its evolutions, multi parametrics (utilizing several simultaneous performance and compositional resources in a single line or stave) as well as internal sonic imagination analysis.

In 1991 Sandoval met Conlon Nancarrow and began work as his assistant (1991–94).

The influence of Nancarrow's music was strong at this time while some remains of Xenakian style were also present.

Sandoval's musical thinking began to lose channelization.

From 1999 until 2018, he was a fellow of the SNCA which is one of the highest recognitions awarded to Mexican artists by the Mexican Government.

Sandoval's music from this period is described well by the list of 16 postmodern music characteristics defined by Kramer (Kramer 2002, 16–17).

Between 2002 and 2003, just prior to relocating to Germany, Sandoval published two of his "manifestos": "Imaginación, análisis y posmodernismo" and "De la fenomenología al ejercicio estético, o una apología del cinismo".

Still in Catalogue from the "Fellini Circus Series":

Still in catalogue transition pieces:

Carlos Sandoval moved to Berlin, Germany in September 2003.

His first German project was "Mextoys", 2003–04, 80:00", commissioned by the Festival Eigenarten and the Culture Ministry in Hamburg and premiered at the city's prestigious Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. This piece constituted a breakthrough in Sandoval's work: it was his first true "phenomenological" work, his first full multimedia piece, and his first work joining video and music into a single conceptual and constructive layer. This point marked Sandoval's departure from traditional score writing and deterministic thinking, towards developing either an experience-oriented connection to music and a Piagetian approach to animism towards music and life in general. Jean Piaget's theories of language as an object and the cognitive inability to distinguish the external world from one's psyche, still have a strong influence on Sandoval's work.

While living in Berlin, Sandoval met a number of computer-science specialists and began developing work incorporating the use of sensors.

In 2009 he became a German citizen and now holds a dual Mexican-German passport/nationality.

This lack of "school", "channelized impulse" or "Style" ("Style is just a super thin ham slice between your "freedom" and your own limitations" (Sandoval, 2009) ) remained a characteristic of his work and can be easily identified with a radical postmodern approach.

Besides this, it took Sandoval almost four years to assimilate and synthesize the influence of both Estrada and Nancarrow, apparently the polar opposites of one another but in fact both belonging to a Cartesian, rational, object-oriented way of thinking.

His third "manifesto", published in Germany in 2009 interjects cultural, artistic and political values to the pure act of sonification via the use of technology.

His work incorporating living trees, accelerometers and hands equipped with tactile sensors is based on random-picking software, and adds a mystical quality to the otherwise objective process of transduction of physical phenomena.

Indoor Pieces

Outdoor pieces/performances

The first two pieces are collaborative-works (with Mariana Castillo Deball) that show "[...] the shifting of the artistic focus from objects and installations, to the work with subjects and their creative participation, opening the same creative door for both, the artists and the performers."

Pandemic Period