Wak'ataki

Wak'ataki is an interdisciplinary research and creative project developed by artists and musicians Piero Tisoc and Marcelo Mellado.

Through immersive sound experiences, audiovisual performance, digital technologies, and fieldwork in heritage sites, the project explores new forms of relationship between pre-Hispanic architecture, cultural memory, and contemporary artistic practices.

The name Wak'ataki refers to a situated inquiry into Andean territory and emerges from a shared interest in understanding how certain ancestral spaces continue to contain forms of knowledge, sensitivity, and collective experience that can be activated through art.

The research begins with a central question: how can the spatial, architectural, symbolic, and acoustic characteristics of pre-Hispanic sites inform new forms of contemporary sound and audiovisual creation?

In the context of the city of Cusco, the former capital of the Tawantinsuyu, numerous heritage sites have progressively been incorporated into tourism, commercial, and institutional dynamics that have transformed the ways in which local communities relate to them.

Wak'ataki proposes a reflection on these places, understanding artistic practice as a tool for generating experiences of reconnection with our ancestry and new sensitive readings of cultural heritage.

The project does not seek to reconstruct or literally represent ancestral practices. Instead, it explores contemporary forms of interpretation that allow for dialogues between inherited knowledge, current technologies, and collective experiences of perception.

The research develops through the respective fields of practice of its members. Piero Tisoc investigates the relationships between sound, rituality, and Andean worldviews, while Marcelo Mellado explores the relationship between digital technologies, generative audiovisual systems, and listening experiences.

Wak'ataki employs hybrid methodologies combining spatial observation, audiovisual recording, field listening, architectural analysis, sound composition, musical improvisation, creative coding, and digital visualization.

The technological media employed include architectural projection, real-time generative visuals, audiovisual synthesis, lighting, 3D modeling, and 3D scanning.

The first experience developed within the framework of the project took place on the grounds of Qorikancha, as part of a ceremonial concert conceptualized by Piero Tisoc and carried out with the support of the Economic Incentives for Culture program of the Ministry of Culture of Peru.

For this intervention, Wak'ataki developed a visual proposal based on the reinterpretation of geometric patterns found in tocapus and the Andean chakana.

These compositions were hierarchically distributed across the site's terraces, establishing a dialogue between the architecture of the site, the sonic experience, and the visual intervention.

• Sound resonators in the chamber of Inkilltambo
• Mapping on the stone circle at Sacsayhuamán
• 3D scanning and Data Art at Huaca Pachatusan