“The effort to give a certain materiality to something apparently ethereal like sound is a constant in my artistic work”

In his projects, he investigates, from a sound perspective, issues related to media archaeology, speculative design, spatial imaginaries, and geological materials. Within his production strategies, he combines media such as analog electronics and the reappropriation of low-tech technologies, to create sound machines and installations, which he combines with performance and on-site projects.

Barco has held exhibitions, residencies, and workshops in different art centers, museums, and festivals dedicated to the circulation of electronic arts in Latin America and Europe, such as the Reina Sofía Museum, MediaLab Prado, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM), Sonoscopia, AADK, Mexican Center for Music and Sound Arts (CMMAS), among others. He has also been linked to the curatorship of projects and the creation of workshops around sound art. In 2020, just before the isolation due to the pandemic, he carried out 'Materiales Premonitorios', his first solo exhibition at La Balsa Arte gallery.

In the creation of machines made from DIY and recycling obsolete technologies, Barco finds a prolific language to give sound and movement to what is not heard and seems static. For example, with his hydrophone and contact microphone called 'Magma', the artist records the electromagnetic vibrations of different landscapes, wind, water, stones and minerals. From these sounds, he generates sound compositions that he effectively couples to moving machines that in turn sound, vibrate, rotate, and draw.

In this line, he has been building a series of Harmonographs:  mechanical machines that use a pendulum, and in this case, sound, to control the movement of the pen on the drawing surface. These drawings attempt to reveal the forms or graphic patterns inside his soundscapes. Barco's installations evoke a fictional atmosphere, where the combination of different sounds, lights, shadows, electrical circuits, antennas, machines, and rocks seem to reveal an apocalyptic future.