“Terraforma is the manifest of our belief that new dimensions can now be terraformed”. The lastest edition of the Milanese electronic music festival, set in the gardens of a historical Versailles-like villa, confirmed once again that a high-quality, cross-discipline and experimental process is possible. Conceptual architectural structures – like the ones by Matteo Petrucci and Studio Zarcola (for the first editions) – can perfectly stage electronic performers like Bambounou or Paquita Gordon. Nathalie Du Pasquier’s graphics matched Laurie Anderson’s show and the overall mix of trees, the labyrinth by Fosbury Archtiecture and antique sphinx statues contributed to a multisensory experience where Stefano Mancuso’s lecture occurred naturally.

Reassuringly, music remains the absolute protagonist of the manifestation, with a line-up that never disappoints. “We want to breed a new concept of listening, to encompass everything that music expresses and reveals” is written in the Terraforma manifesto, a place where “music and its listening take man back to his natural frequencies where sense of rhythm is once again bound with the environment.” Terraforming, in fact, expresses the process of modifying the atmosphere of a planet in order to make it livable, as it happens on Earth.

If this primary mission was successfully reached, the sustainable aspect of the event was less experimental than expected, still at a consumerist level that asks for more radicalism. Can the festival-goer’s attitude be overturned by removing ‘green’ disposables, hard plastic reuse-cups and by providing composters for organic waste? The answer will surely arrive at next year’s edition.