Affective space reenactment of the early form of 1952 Invisible Auto Sacramental sound installation by José Val del Omar

The paper analyzes two modern reenactments—created by media artists Niño de Elche and Javier Viver—of the 1952 multichannel sound installation Invisible Auto Sacramental: The Diaphonic Message of Granada by Spanish pioneer of media art José Val del Omar (1904–1982). The article describes his idea of this work and reveals his principle of diaphonic sound, that has affected the expressive possibilities of the installation. Val del Omar’s texts allow to determine the aim of diaphony as a technology— to activate the audience’s individual and collective memory through the collision of dissonant acoustic streams. The way the younger artists visually accompanied the space of this sound work in their reenactments has changed the audience’s perception of it and actualized certain effects of the diaphonic sound impact, including tactile ones. The creators of the reenactments not only reconceptualized the way in which mythological thinking and social utopianism of the Francoist period is reflected in Val del Omar’s artwork. They also revealed the complex contradictions tangible in his oeuvre: the diaphonic sound created according to the technology proposed by Val del Omar can be interpreted, depending on the visual accompaniment, both as blocking rational thinking and as a disguised counter-discourse defending the value of critical thinking under the Francoist suppression of public life. This allows to draw parallels between the installation by Val del Omar and modern visual art, with its capabilities in social criticism.