In a fast-paced year as this, between a dense cultural agenda and an unceasing stream of ideas, we at L.E.V. (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) want to pause for a moment to look back with mindfulness and gratitude to everyone who has been part of this project. Our project keeps growing like a living organism, exploring the digital ecosystem and diving into speculative narratives. to imagine more sustainable futures for our planet. As the year draws to a close, we celebrate the opportunity to look back together on everything we have shared. We want to express our deepest gratitude to the L.E.V. community for your constant companionship and support.
We started the year at Mieres Pozu Santa Bárbara with SPECULUM, a shocking installation by Dutch collective SMACK (Ton Meijdam, Thom Snels, and Béla Zsigmond). This contemporary take on Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights was curated by L.E.V. alongside Onkaos and the Mieres Town Council.
By bringing this iconic triptych into the digital age, the project explored urgent themes like surveillance, mass consumption, and our hyperconnected world. Through three panels—Eden, Paradise, and Hell—alongside a series of archetypal characters displayed on side screens, the work explores the excesses and contradictions of the digital age through an aesthetic that is as colorful as it is unsettling. The exhibition ran through the summer, and it was great to so many of you could see it.
Shortly after, between May 1st and 4th, we held the 19th L.E.V. Festival in Gijón. Thanks to the support of the City Council and the Principality of Asturias, local and international artists took over the city with a program of concerts, AV performances, and immersive installations that created and unforgettable sonic experiences.
Teatro de la Laboral hosted some of the festival’s most anticipated performances. Highlights included the renowned Japanese composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda with Ultratronics, showcasing his talent to combine sound and light with mathematical precision; the Spanish premiere of SPOMYN by Katarina Gryvul with Alex Guevara; and the queer opera ¡Gasp! by Colin Self, created in collaboration with students from the ESAD (Asturias College of Dramatic Arts). Pinch & Lorem also treated us with A Red Rabbit, alongside Amelie Duchow and her work Logos Mater, an ever-evolving composition based on vocal contributions gathered from across the globe. The duo Yessi Perse presented Fairytales of Eternal Economic Growth, a multimedia critique of Big Tech’s power. The program in this venue was completed by Ash Fure’s Animal, a piece that blurs the boundaries between music, architecture, and performance to create visceral sonic experiences.
Saturday night’s activities were centered at Nave de LABoral, featuring sensory light and sound performances by Amnesia Scanner, a high-powered set from BABii presenting Daredevil 2000, and works by Iglooghost, MunSing, and Cortical. An unforgettable lineup for for all attendees.
The midday lineup took place at the Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies, with shows by Lila Tirando a Violeta, the rave energy of Kabeaushé, and local artist Jailed Jaime. The festival concluded at Jardín Botánico with morning live performances by Dylan Henner and Mizu, who connected us with nature through enveloping soundscapes.
We also reaffirmed our commitment to digital art and Extended Realities, featuring installations such as Immersion by Robbie Cooper and Echoes of the Land by Taiwanese artist Ivan Liu. Furthermore, at the Escuela de Comercio—in collaboration with the Arenas Movedizas project—we shared VR and AR experiences that invited reflection on empathy, creativity, and environmental impact. Highlights included Venice Biennale award-winning works such as Oto’s Planet and Impulse: Playing with Reality.
In the public space, Guillaumit’s Blocksmog transformed Gijón’s Plaza del Parchís into a hub for games, engagement, and ecological awareness for all ages. The festival also hosted the Ritmo y Rima workshop led by Jailed Jaime in collaboration with the Youth Office, exploring the hip-hop creative process from its initial conception to live performance.
After the summer, we launched the 7th year of L.E.V. Matadero (Sept 18–21), reaffirming our commitment to artists investigating the intersection of technology, music, and performance, while offering critical perspectives on contemporary social unrest.
At Nave 10, the festival opened with Second Self by Myriam Bleau and Nien Tzu Weng, followed by the presentation of MP3 Live #1 by the MP3 collective (Arnau Pérez, Pau Vegas, and Fernando Careaga). We had the chance to enjoy the work 321 Rule by Team Rolfes in collaboration with Lil Mariko, as well as a performance by Carmen Jaci and Matthew Schoen. Saturday’s program featured Ars Natura by Annabelle Playe, Hugo Arcier, and Rima Ben Brahim, alongside Grey Line by the Italian collective SPIME.IM. To bring the festival to a close on Sunday, we were treated by Lorenzo Senni with Canone Infinito Xtended and Matthew Biederman & Alain Thibault with Incertitude.
One of the highlights of this edition was the activation of a Silent Sound Session by L.E.V. On this occasion, we invited Murcof to present his works The Etna Sessions and Twin Color at Matadero Plaza.
The immersive world of Vortex brought together virtual, mixed, and interactive reality experiences. These included Noire by the Novaya studio (based on Tania de Montaigne‘s text against racial segregation); Impulse: Playing with Reality by May Abdalla and Barry Gene Murphy; the world premiere of Adelin Schweitzer’s performance The Sutherland Test; and ****2025/… by Carles Castaño Oliveiros, and a journey into Rick Treweek’s metaverse, Uncanny Alley.
In Nave Una, the installation Fortune Teller by French artist Julie Stephen Chheng invited visitors to discover spirits associated with natural elements hidden throughout the space. Accessible via a free app, these spirits revealed desires, fears, and worldviews, creating a poetic encounter that bridged nature, technology, and thought.
The exhibition circuit included Theo Triantafyllidis’s Drift Lattice in the Sala Plató at Cineteca, and LP Rondeau’s Liminal in Nave Una. L.E.V. Matadero reinforces its support for contemporary digital arts with its latest lineup.
On October 4th, in the conext of the latest Oviedo’s Noche Blanca, the festival showcased Pleonexie, a performative installation by Maxime Houot (produced by Collectif Coin). The piece explores the notion of pleonexia—mankind’s relentless drive to possess—offering a meditation on excess within consumer culture. In a setting reminiscent of a deserted wasteland, eight cranes perform a mechanical ballet, casting light beams and organic forms that envelop the audience. Through this, Pleonexie examined the clash between the human and the natural, prompting us to reflect on the friction between both worlds.
On October, Mieres’ Pozu Santa Bárbara reopened its doors with FRAMERATE: Pulse of the Earth, an immersive installation by the London-based studio ScanLAB Projects. Organized by the Mieres Town Council and curated by L.E.V., the work was created using time-lapse 3D LiDAR data. It depicts a planet in constant transformation, offering a striking audiovisual experience that invites reflection on the relationship between human action, nature, and the passage of time. Using multiple screens and digital landscapes generated with scientific precision, the installation immerses the audience in processes of change imperceptible to the human eye.
As you must know, L.E.V.’s presence has embraced various formats within the digital ecosystem. Our interest in speculative narratives—designed to imagine policies that are more sustainable for the planet and for contemporary subjectivities—drives an exploration into the potential soundscapes of the future. These concerns engage in a dialogue with the LAB 4 Futuros Raros program at Medialab Matadero, with whom we collaborate in the search for “strange” technological stories and new ways of thinking about the future. Over the course of two sessions, this partnership came to life through the performances of Shoeg, Merche Blasco, and Nacho de la Vega. Together, they composed a “sonic essay” to investigate the sounds yet to come.
To wrap up the year, we took part in the Conference for the Promotion of Cultural Industries on December 11th. During the day, the Ministry of Culture showcased seven projects from different regions and sectors, all backed by the Center for the Coordination of Cultural Industries.
With the new year we will start several European projects, and we will share them with you. These include Realities in Transition 2 – Unwritten Worlds, a network active since 2022 (featuring L.E.V.) that focuses on boosting the role of European artists in extended realities (XR) and using these technologies as creative hubs; Sound Steps – The Situated Audio Creation European Model, a cooperation project that promotes the creation of immersive and geolocalized sound experiences with social, environmental, and artistic impact, fostering new relationships between citizenship, memory, heritage, and territory; and Solar Futures – Imagining Regenerative Worlds through Art, Science & Technology, an initiative for residencies, production, and residency in a peer-learning program. It empowers artists to envision better ecological and social futures, drawing inspiration from solarpunk and the sustainable coexistence of technology, nature, and community.
Throughout this year, every initiative, collaboration, and encounter has allowed us to continue expanding the imaginary that shapes L.E.V., consolidating an ecosystem where digital art, sonic experimentation, and speculative narratives engage in a dialogue with your commitment and interests. It has been a year of challenges and discoveries, fueled by a powerful collective energy that drives us to keep investigating, creating, and sharing.
Thank you for joining us, for your active listening, and for sustaining this living space of creation and thought with us. We start the new year with joy and the conviction that what lies ahead will continue to open unexpected paths. Join us for our first date at L.E.V. Gijón: April 30 – May 3, 2026!
Happy 2026 from the entire L.E.V. team!
©Photos: Piru de la Puente, Estudio Perplejo, Ivan Martínez y Julián Rus.
©Vídeo: MIND THE FILM
