Festival Forte takes place at Montemor-o-Velho Castle, a National Heritage site, and a cultural landmark in Portugal. It has been listed by as one of The World’s Most Unique Festival Locations. The first editions of Festival Forte, used Video Mapping techniques to enhance the physical characteristics of the castle being nominated by Resident Advisor as one of the Top 10 Festivals of August 2015 The stage design allows transparency to make the framing within the walls of the castle that receives large screens for the support of the visual spectacle.: The rest of the space is also used as an audiovisual installation, such is the case of the Church of Sta. Maria de Alcáçova. About the stage's visuals, stated that the festival was "displaying consistently engaging, otherworldly visuals across its walls". The festival is getting recognition from international press such as The Quietus, ., or Pitchfork Media which has listed Festival Forte 2016 on the Pitchfork Guide to Festivals Festival Forte 2019 has been announced on its official website and will take please from August 22 to 25, 2019.
Educational Approach
In April 2015, in partnership with the Faculty of Fine Arts of The University of Porto, the festival promoted the lecture “Laser Technology in Building an Audiovisual Performance” presented by Robert Henke, composer, performer and researcher with work oriented in the field of technical innovation in contemporary electronic music. In the context of the Lumière II laser show, performed outdoors for the first time at Festival Forte, Henke presented the most contemporary issues of the relationship between musical composition, audiovisual installations and computer applications. He addressed the complexity of the conceptualization of an audiovisual performance show built with use of laser technology activated and synchronized by sound stimuli. Glitch and Generative Art are also objects of study and extensively used in the festival's conceptualization. In April 2017 Festival Forte, together with the Department of Design and Multimedia of the University of Coimbra, organized a lecture about Generative Art with Jaygo Bloom, teacher at the Winchester School of Art. In 2018, Malo Lacroix from the art collective presented his views at the same University, regarding the visual breakthrough planned for that year's edition of the festival.
