Text by CLOT Magazine
L.E.V. (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) is the International Festival of Audiovisual Creation of Gijon that explores electronic sound creation and its relationship with visual arts. The festival honours by its acronym Lev Thermen, the Russian scientist inventor of the theremin and father of the present-day synthesisers.
Founded in 2007, L.E.V. converges the natural synergy between image and sound and the new artistic trends, emphasising live actions. Since 2019 the L.E.V. Festival has widened its field of action to Matadero Madrid, the big space for interdisciplinary creation and contemporary thinking, the perfect location to host this extension of Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual.
The fourth edition of L.E.V. Matadero in Madrid (Spain) will take place from September 22 to 25, and the people behind L.E.V. have just announced the full line-up. On September 22 and 23, Nave 16 will host live shows and audiovisual performance night sessions. Highlights include Daito Manabe, who will perform Dissonant Imaginary, a collaborative project created with Kamitani Lab; Schnitt, who will showcase the world premiere of their new show White Balance; German artist Uwe Schmidt, who, under the alias ATOM™, will premiere his latest work Neuer Mensch, a wild, relentless expression of metamorphosis programmed, designed and mastered by an algorithm; and visual artist Lucas Gutiérrez and composer Robert Lippok, who will transform SPIN into an audiovisual live show with a spatialised sound exclusive for L.E.V. Matadero.
On September 24, our highlights come from the live shows and audiovisual performances by Alva Noto, Marina Herlop, Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones and Iglooghost at Plaza Matadero. Alva Noto will showcase his new project UNIEQAV, a minimalist audiovisual show in which sound and light are reduced to their minimum expression; Marina Herlop will perform Pripyat, her first album entirely produced with a computer; producers Sinjin Hawke & Zora Jones will showcase their new audiovisual show using motion capture technology to control the music and turn themselves into avatars in real-time. And finally, Iglooghost will perform his last album, Lei Line Eon.
The festival, for the first time, will also take place at the Center of Immersive Experiences MAD (Madrid Artes Digitales) with an audiovisual installation by two-piece SYNSPECIES, a project by artists Elías Merino and Tadej Droljc. They will present Turmoil of Vehemence, a universe of unnatural, dreamlike fields inhabited by audiovisual objects of multiple scales that intertwine, mutate, adapt and fight for their existence.
L.E.V. Matadero runs from September 22 to 25, 2022. Get your tickets via L.E.V. Festival and Matadero Madrid.
