The 17th edition of L.E.V Festival: The Laboratory of Visual Electronics is backVisual

L.E.V. Festival celebrates its 17th edition in Gijón from 27 to 30 April. As usual, audiovisual performances and live music will be the main protagonists, and will be accompanied by audiovisual art installations and activities around extended realities.

Robert Henke will headline this year’s line-up presenting his project CBM 8032 AV, developed with vintage computers, on Friday 28 April at the Teatro de la Laboral. With this audiovisual performance, the German digital artist explores the beauty of simple graphics and sounds, using five Commodore CBM 8032 computers. This work addresses the ambivalence between a contemporary aesthetic and the use of obsolete and limited technology from 40 years ago. Everything that makes up the project could have been done, on a technical level, in 1980, but the artistic ideas that drive it could not have been born without the current cultural context.

Also at the Teatro de la Laboral, on Saturday 29th, Hélène Vogelsinger will present her modular synthesizer project Metaphysical Alteration, in which she explores different places to connect with her energies, creating unique and poetic moments. The French composer, producer and sound designer’s personal brand is based on a mix of minimalistic, repetitive music, lyrical vocals and deep, soaring layers.

On Saturday night, the festival will once again offer an extensive programme in LABoral Centro de Arte’s Nave with a long list of live performances, including the acclaimed producer Throwing Snow, aka Ross Tones. At the L.E.V. Festival, he will present his fourth album Dragons AV, a work that is positioned between science and ancestral wisdom, between prehistoric rituals and the complexity of the contemporary world. The album’s ten tracks combine powerful electronic rhythms with the physicality of a myriad of acoustic instruments, and are accompanied by a neural network of visual elements developed with artist and technologist Matt Woodham.

Saturday will also feature daytime concerts at the Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies. Among the proposals that this space will host is that of Ikonika, one of the most respected names in the UK bass diaspora. With more than ten years of work and known especially for her numerous releases with Hyperdub Records and her affiliation with this label, Ikonika is an artist in constant evolution. On her latest EP Bubble Up, with a strong presence of the Amapian sound, she makes clear her diversity of interests and musical influences, generating a show in which she combines her own voice with live edits of her songs.

On Sunday 30 April, as a novelty for 2023, L.E.V. will bring back the morning programme at the Atlantic Botanical Garden in Gijón, with an alternative format that will surprise the audience, and will offer that same afternoon a final closing show of the 17th edition at the Jovellanos Theatre.

In addition, during the four days of the festival, audiovisual installations and proposals around extended realities, such as virtual reality or augmented reality, can be discovered in different locations of the city, in collaboration with the project of experiments around audiovisual culture Arenas Movedizas and with the support of the European project RIT (Realities in Transition), the Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, LABoral Centro de Arte and the European project EMAP (European Media Art Platform).