Due to the recent statement of Fallas festivity as UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the UV School of Engineering presents the ‘intangible falla’ at Cultural Centre La Nau. This is the first intangible falla in history.
This monument counts with the institutional support of Universitat de València (Cultural Centre La Nau, Language Policy Service and Chair for Scientific Dissemination); Central Board Fallera, Valencia City Council (Councillorship for Youth and Festivals), Valencian Institute of Tourism Technologies, EMT Valencia and the Guild of Falleros Artists. Furthermore, it also has the financial support of Arròs Dacsa, Destilerias Tenis, Datomedia, NEV Coaching, Grupo CAPS, TopRun.es and Taberna Alkázar.
The intangible falla will be built earlier, although this usually occurs in early March. The assembly of the first intangible falla will begin 6 February during the open presentation ceremony.
Explanation of the falla
The ‘Intangible Falla’ is accessible from mobile devices as well as any computer connected to Internet. In order to access you only need to enter its web (www.fallaimmaterial.com) or its accounts on Twitter or Facebook (@fallaimmaterial).
The public can interact with those profiles and tag whatever they want to share with the project using the hashtag #fallaimmaterial. For those who do not use social media, an application form to send messages anonymously can be found on the website.
The ‘Intangible Falla’ has no defined thematic. The people taking part can express themselves freely and talk about different things like for example what do they like, how do they feel, what are they doing, which emojis define better what they feel, etc.
This information is used to build 4 falla monuments: ‘The Great Falla’, ‘The Children’s Falla’, ‘The Ephemeral Falla’ and ‘The Falla in Valencian’. There will be built different versions of these monuments automatically through the day in order to include new contributions from people and so the evolution of the monuments can be noticed.
‘The Great Falla’ shows those words and hashtags that have been used more frequently from the beginning of the whole project. ‘The Ephemeral Falla’ reflects last minute trending topics. ‘The Children’s Falla’ sums Les Falles up using emojis. ‘The Falla in Valencian’ shows how are we living Les Falles in Valencian.
The monuments’ shapes as well as the pardoned ‘ninots’ rely on the participation. ‘The Intangible Falla’ learns from us and builds itself up. Once you have interacted with it there is no way back ─ you are already part of the first ‘Intangible Falla’ in history.
What the project proposes is that people share those monuments of ‘The Intangible Falla’ they liked the most and download them. This act is considered as a virtual ‘plantà’ that is located in the map and allows to find all those places where ‘The Intangible Falla’ had been.
On 19 March, the falla monuments from ‘The Intangible Falla’ will take its definitive shape and will also be available to download or print in a paper sheet from any home printer. The project suggests this falla’s materialization to be burned in a free, responsible way by the participants. As it couldn’t be any other way, a virtual fire will also transform all those shared effort into ashes and it can be openly seen on the website as well as the other accounts on ‘The Intangible Falla’ social media.
Holiday Programme
Apart from their virtual presence on the Internet and social media, The Intangible Falla will count with a physical presence as well as different dynamisation activities.
La Nau Cultural Centre La Nau of the Universitat de València along with Museu Faller will start between the 6 February and the 19 March a video projection that will make it possible to see those monuments in large format and interact with them. Furthermore, EMT Valencia will spread the project through the Bussi channel and signage on their buses.
An entertainment team will be in the ‘mascletàs’ and other different locations to carry out dynamisation actions, give presents and invite people to take part in a competition that will allow two people to see a ‘mascletà’ from the Town Council of Valencia.
A combination of collaborative fallas will also carry out activities in their neighbourhoods and committees like for example word and emoji introduction marathons for children, burn of thematic ephemeral fallas, etc.
Committee
‘The Intangible Falla’ shows the way engineering is applied on society and is inspired by the Burjassot-Paterna Campus’ School of the Universitat de València (ETSE-UV).
‘The Intangible Falla’ is built under data analysis’ automatic algorithms and uses web and mobile technologies. The knowledge of these disciplines is transferred from the Master’ Degree on Data Science and the Master’s Degree in Services and Web Applications Engineering of the ETSE-UV.
The development team of ‘The Intangible Falla’ is formed by: Francisco Grimaldo and Emilio Soria (direction). Eusebio Marqués, Juanjo Garcés and Emilia López (data analysis). Daniel García (programming) and Alejandro Casasús (design).
