Text by CLOT Magazine
L.E.V., the Spanish platform of production, promotion and experimentation related to electronic sound creations and audiovisual, is running the 16th edition of its festival in Gijon between April 28 and May 1, 2022. With the support of Gijón’s Town Council and the Principality of Asturias, L.E.V. will see for another year an ambitious lineup up unfold in the Spanish northerner capital.
Live shows and audiovisual performances will include artists like Squarepusher and collaborative projects The End of the World by Lubomyr Melnyk, SPIME.IM and Julia Kent, plus two surprising art installations.
These two installations include a new project, Espills (Mirrors), by Playmodes Studio, an audiovisual, real-time generative installation created with laser beams, laser scanners and robotic mirrors. This dynamic light sculpture is inspired by the different stages of formation and subsequent erosion of crystalline structures.
Along with the interactive installation Liminal by Canadian artist LP Rondeau which seeks to materialize the frontier between present and past through a set of light projections, using a photographic process known as slit-scan, a giant ring with a 2.75 diameter captures the image of the visitors that go through it, projects it and extends it in time and space, generating an experience as playful as contemplative.
Myriam Bleau will present her audiovisual performance Unsculpt. Inspired by Donna Haraway’s writings and the methodology of speculative architecture, Bleau explores urban and natural scenes through synthetic landscapes generated with artificial intelligence, which surface as fragments of dreams and faded postcards of an imagined future.
Push 1 stop, a project by another Canadian artist Cadie Desbiens-Desmeules, and Intercity-Express, by Japanese Tetsuji Ohno, will showcase their collaborative work Influenced, which reflects on the use of social media and the rise of artificial intelligence in contemporary democracies, through a journey to a virtual world flooded with futuristic sounds of abstract noise and melodic beeps.
Multimedia art collective SPIME.IM will play live their latest work, ZERO, an extrapolation of their sharp-edged debut EXALAND, a journey that will take us from machine funk and glitch sounds to punchy ambient, through hyper-saturated synths and fluorescent hardcore vibes.
Following the same spirit as the sessions at Jardín Botánico from previous festivals this year the programme includes Maxwell Sterling, who already debuted in the country last November for MIRA festival in Barcelona. Other names of the festival include Klara Lewis & Nik Colk Void + Pedro Maia, Martin Messier and Jason Sharp, which will round up another weekend of the finest experimentation LEV has their audience used to.
