Diana Castro aka Pana Li is a Mexican designer, multidisciplinary artist, DJ and producer living in Brooklyn NY and Mexico City. Pana Li designs visuals and audio experiences for healing under her brand Ser Paraíso. She’s part of the Music Experience Design Lab at NYU, where she teaches visual and sound design and has an expansive technologically enabled music education practice.
I met her when she was doing a performance as part of the group Magico Real
Magico Real asks-and answers on their website
“How does ritual relate with the idea of a sacred place, a cultural frame, a holy territory, the search for identity and the relationship with homeland?
By performing a ritual in public, the objective of Mágico Real is to regain a connection with nature and community in the context of shamanism. This experience offers the opportunity to connect and deepen one’s understanding through science and spirituality .
A ritual, like art, is a cultural expression. This performance is a 21st century ritual. It builds a collective identity that enables participants to work on individual spirituality and a sense of community, and as a form of occupational therapy with direct effects in the collective consciousness.”
The artists have a pretty rad manifesto on their website:
ARTISTS’ MANIFESTO
We want to evoke nature spirits and cast spells.
Spells, for us, are understood as an expression of our own sacred power to create light.
We believe light refers to the connection we share with others.
We want to share the consciousness of understanding that every human being is able to share light at will.
We believe in protection spells, like wishes of safety from a mother to her children.
We want to invoke different deities as metaphors of group identification to a higher state of being, to see ourselves as part of a community and to share knowledge we have embraced from our ancestral cultures and old religions.
We use technology to create symbols, natural elements and sacred places. We want to encourage meditation, connection and shared spirituality.
To remember how we all come from light, our true nature.
Javier Molina & Diana Castro
At this techno-shamanistic performance Pana Li was playing her Moon Soft Synth, one of relatively few soft-circuit synths with a magical bend to it that are out there.
Moon Soft Synth
“Moon Soft Synth is part of a series of Magic Objects designed for Mágico Real , a -work in progress- immersive experience that explores shamanism, ritual and identity through performance art, new media and technology. In collaboration with Javier Molina .
The object is a soft circuit synthesizer handmade with fabric, yarn, mirrors and pompoms. The soft circuit is made with Arduino LilyPad, conductive thread and knobs; it uses granular synthesis techniques to generate sound. The code is based on the Arduino synthesizer.”
These days Pana Li makes more accessible objects for everyday magic on her platform Ser Paraíso. Where you can order all sorts of printed matter to help you conjure up the right mood. Although some items do still focus on harmonizing vibrations like the Tune In Sound Meditation Kit
Besides creating visual identities for other magically associated artists Pana Li has created one for her own DJ project as well. The project focuses on collecting tracks for healing and they have helped me have many a pandemic solo dance party in my living room.
In Pana Li’s practice, a pathway can be traced from experimental, raw, noisy magic-tech to highly-accessible everyday magical consumables to keep near the person and around the home. I certainly do feel that the latest bespoke desk organizer kit is like a spell I am casting on my life. Maybe if I get the right shape to hold my zebra mildliners, which are in just the right colors, I’ll see the future clearly and set my intentions down in my bullet journal so precisely, I will finally have enough free time to find peace of mind. Well that is a reflection on my own productivity angst as a writer and independent creator, but inspiration cards, table-top meditation sets and great DJ mixes are indeed the glue that hold my day together.
I asked Pana Li a few questions about her practice and the importance everyday magic has in her life.
Sofy: Tell me about what novel electronic techniques or new software configurations you have made to create your unique sound.
Pana Lì: I have been using a new board from Playtronica to connect plants and papers, and use these to control my set on Ableton Live, through midi. So not really raw sounds at the moment, but still a lot of fun to play with conductive surfaces. I haven’t properly documented anything about it, but hopefully will soon 🙂
Sofy: Tell me how your performances tie into causes and ideas that are important to you personally, esp if they have to do with the above causes.
Pana Lì: I sadly, haven’t been performing lately, but I am really enjoying creating new instruments with unconventional materials and shapes. Creating new instruments is something I teach in my class: Designing Technologies & Experiences for Music Making, Learning, and Engagement. I believe that by detaching the act of making music from traditional (hard to learn) instruments, the barriers of entry to musicianship can be lowered.
Sofy: Tell me about everyday magic, what does that mean to you? How do you fold that into your musical output, and what message do you want to share with it, with the world.
Pana Lì: By everyday magic I mean the power we individually have to be mindful of our own thoughts, and therefore emotional states and behaviors. Although, with my work through Ser Paraíso (my brand of positivity tools for meditation/self-care practices) in the last couple of years, I have changed the concept of magic objects, to more of a self-development related perspective. That said, I do want to keep creating objects that allow people to make new sounds while encouraging deep listening as a guide for a meditative practice. Mindful listening and awareness encouraged by the sonic feedback, can give the “user” the ability to enter and exit a meditative state in short periods of time. By inducing these mental states, and by setting intentions, the emotional regulation skills can definitely be increased, and therefore also improving the general well-being.
Pana Lì is an artist and designer working with technology, music, and self-transformation. She studied Digital Media at NYU and has been working independently since 2011. When she is not designing for music, she runs her design label Ser Paraíso. Diana is also an Adjunct Professor in the Music Education department at NYU, where she teaches Designing Experiences for Music.
Sofy (@the_s0urce) is a site-specific media artist and educator working with sound, video, interactivity, projections, code, paper, and salvaged material. Her work focuses on techno-occult rituals, street performance, and participatory art. Sofy’s performances enact and reframe hegemonies, she works with materials that exemplify our deep entanglement with petro-culture and technology’s affect on consciousness. She has worked on projects at Eyebeam, 3LD, the Netherlands Institute voor Media Kunst, Steim, ARS Electronica, Games for Learning Institute, The Guggenheim (NYC), The National Mall and has taught at GAFFTA, MoMA, NYU, Srishti, and the Rubin Museum. She is a PhD Candidate in Audio-Visual Composition at NYU GSAS currently on her Fulbright year at TheISRO in Bangalore
