Oscar Carmona is a composer, pianist, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersection of contemporary classical music, experimental electronics, and postdigital aesthetics. With a Master of Arts in Composition and training at IRCAM (Paris), he has developed a career spanning music theater, live electronics, solo piano, and audiovisual performance. His creative practice integrates algorithmic structures, artificial intelligence, and interactive systems, examining how technology reshapes human perception and experience.
Carmona’s compositions have been performed internationally in Spain, France, the Netherlands, Argentina, Slovenia, Chile, Japan, Croatia, the USA, Switzerland, Brazil, and Lithuania by ensembles such as Orchestre National de Lorraine, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Irvine Arditti, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, and Vertixe Sonora Ensemble.
His work often engages with themes of automation, digital alienation, and the blurred boundaries between the real and the virtual. Recent pieces such as Insomnia (2023), Artificial (2022), and Mechanical Obsessions (2020) are built from algorithmic processes, programming loops, and mechanical repetition, reflecting on the dehumanizing yet immersive nature of digital culture. In Artificial, musicians become “automatons,” executing highly complex mechanical structures that push the limits of human performance, merging live instrumental execution with AI-inspired electronic systems. In Mechanical Obsessions, a fixed tempo of 120 bpm runs from start to finish, drawing inspiration from techno and rave culture to explore the paradox of mechanical repetition inducing a trance-like human response.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Carmona integrates literature and non-linear narratives into his work, inspired by authors such as Javier Tomeo, Roberto Bolaño, Julio Cortázar, and César Aira. His music theater works (Insomnia, Microteatro Psicopático, Automata) incorporate his own texts, blending postdramatic structures, fragmented storytelling, and algorithmic dramaturgy. His interest in theater and technology is deeply influenced by the work of Heiner Goebbels and the aesthetics of digital posthumanism.
As a pianist and composer, his artistic vision moves fluidly across multiple aesthetics, from introspective and atmospheric solo piano works (Invisible, Still Together) to a personal musical language nourished by Latin American traditions, particularly in its rhythmic structures (Nocturno, Sueños, Viejos Atardeceres). His influences extend into cinematic, orchestral, and avant-garde composition, drawing inspiration from Witold Lutosławski, Martin Matalón, Don Davis, Wojciech Kilar and Toru Takemitsu, as well as the deeply textural harmonic approach of Bernardo Sassetti. This broad artistic spectrum allows him to navigate between contemporary concert music, immersive sound design, electronic hybrids, and music for dance and visual media, always seeking new ways to expand his musical language.
Carmona has been supported by Ibermúsicas (Residency Grant, 2022) and was nominated for the Pulsar Music Award (Chile) for Mechanical Obsessions. His work continues to evolve at the intersection of acoustic performance, live electronics, and digital media, investigating how sound, algorithms, and technology shape contemporary artistic expression.