New Locations Around Town /Audiovisual Installations Circuit
In its search for the evolution of new audiovisual languages, L.E.V. presents 5 of the most remarkable current names from this scene to create a circuit around town where different audiovisual installations will take place.
Olivier Ratsi “Onion Skin” (Fr)
Maotik “Aeryon” (Ca) (World Premiere)
Daniel Iregui “Control No Control” (Ca)
Martin Messier “Boîte Noire” (Ca)
Carlos Coronas “Lampyridae” (Sp)
MAOTIK presents AERYON · LABoral Centro de Arte.
The Montreal-based artist Maotik will premiere at L.E.V. Festival his new project Aeryon, created after a month’s residency at LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial within the framework of Red ENCAC (the European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation), a network formed by festivals and cultural institutions with such an international scope as CTM Festival, ARS Electronica, Resonate, Mapping Festival, Elektra, Le Lie Unique, LABoral, and L.E.V. Festival, to name only a few.
During the last few years we have been witnessing the emergence of “flying objects” in our sky. Creative technologists and artists use this technology to capture landscape images and also film sequences. Therefore companies and institutions use it as a surveillance monitor to track individuals. Military drones are increasingly used by armies around the world, and it is said that in a near future they will replace the police patrols for urban security. It is the threat of big brother hovering or even a world where machines have taken over. Is this will lead to irreversible future uses?
AERYON is an artistic interpretation of a surveillance drone vision where the story line evolves according to its starting location. At this early stage we can imagine a setup of two screens where one screen shows the navigation on a real map and the other one transform the cartography into a poetic visual interpretation. Using a color map of a custom-mage cartography, the generative visual system will react according to the pixel map and will transform the information into a point cloud. Geometry instances will be used to recreate the natural patterns that we can sometimes contemplate from a drone. All patterns such a mountains, ocean, forest or cities will have a specific visuals aspect. Other information such as the size of the cities, the number of inhabitants, wind force or weather forecast, just to name a few of them could be added in order to give more parameters to the visual composition. GPS information will also be used to retrieve sound information from a specific location (radio frequencies) and add this information to the “Drone” generative surround sound composition that will also evolve according to the navigation of the performer.
The conflicting forces of virtuality and reality invite the audience to live a contemplative experience where the visual composition change according the virtual drone location, providing an ever-changing experience. Designed as an AV performance and also an installation, AERYON is an advanced navigation visual system that analyze a multiple source of data to recreate the beauty of an aerial landscape view. The story line of the piece evolves gradually to create a multimedia environment that offers various degrees of immersion and modify the perception of the physical space. The installation is an “Open form” that offers various combination option to the interpreter, the idea is to create a system with a random creation process, in a range of settings defined by the activity of the real time data analysis. In this sense, every state, time of the installation is unique and inimitable. Surround sound translate the visual into a sonic experience that will dive the public at the center of this electronic landscape.
This activity is included in L.E.V. Festival‘s line-up and also in ENCAC (the European Network for Contemporary Audiovisual Creation), a multiannual project led by LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in a strategic alliance with L.E.V. Festival, and co-funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe Programme.
DANIEL IREGUI presents CONTROL NO CONTROL · Patio Corintio, Laboral City of Culture.
CONTROL NO CONTROL is an interactive LED sculpture that invites the audience to use their hands and body to act on its sound and graphics.
The full cycle of audio-graphical compositions goes through five states, each exploring a geometric pattern, its properties, its audio representation and how it reacts to bodily gestures.
By placing this sculpture in a public space with minimal instructions on how it works, the audience is left to explore by themselves how to get control of the visuals and the sound presented. Everything that touches its surface has an influence, but some movements trigger more complex transformations and this becomes clear as the participant engages with the piece.
Is the audience in control? Do they follow a path that was designed from the beginning? The idea of shaping a behavior and the notion of control is the motivation for creating this work.
OLIVIER RATSI (Antivj) presents ONION SKIN · The Colegiate of San Juan Bautista. Revillagigedo Palace
ONION SKIN is a immersive installation by Olivier Ratsi, an artist on the ANTIVJ visual label. The first stage in the Echolyse project, which will give birth to several variations around the same concept, Onion Skin is made up of a physical dimension – a module of two walls, positioned at right angles – augmented by a projection and a 5.1 sound broadcast.
Onion Skin is a graphical work about the re-composition of time and space through a game of perspectives, both of the exhibition space itself and that of the projection canvas. Built around a progressive structure, made up of 4 parts lasting 14 minutes in total, the piece plays on the principle of repetition and scale to create a physical and hypnotic experience that opens doors onto the hidden and untouchable.
The whole experience of the installation is based on a very specific point of view. A precise position from which a new dimension is revealed to the audience by anamorphosis. The simple geometric elements (“peelings”) that seemed to be flat at first suddenly start delimiting a new space. The illusion of a new dimension within the installation slowly appears as the onion skins seem to be leaving their physical surface behind.
A 5.1 surround sound set-up accentuates the physical dimension of the installation, strengthening and playing with the impression of volume and space.
[Credits: Onion Skin, an installation by Olivier Ratsi / concept & design: Olivier Ratsi / music: Thomas Vaquié / label: Antivj / producer: Nicolas Boritch / Photo credits: Olivier Ratsi]
MARTIN MESSIER presents BOÎTE NOIRE · Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto.
With BOÎTE NOIRE (Black box), Martin Messier puts a beam of light, projected into a large transparent prism, into sounds and movements. Trying to define the edges of this elusive element, he materializes the extension of its shapes and decomposes its frequencies.
In a dark room, the spectator sees and ears the development of the white specter: its contradictions and distensions, its curves and lines, its appearances and disappearances. It is as if the box, filled with ghostly signals, was containing pieces of past events and with his installation, Messier invites the public to put history back together.
CARLOS CORONAS presents LAMPYRIDAE · San Lorenzo Chapel
Lampyridae is spatial installation project constructed with big, complex polygonal structures that simulate organisms, and colored light (mostly fluorescent) tubes standing over them. Their luminous intensity is changed by some electronic systems to make them appear living organisms.
These mostly wooden structures establish a composition where architecture is rearranged as a sort of reunion in a common space; a symbiotic meeting of organisms that have migrated here from different locations to conform a macro-organism, or even a whole ecosystem never seen before. This provides multiple points of view and illuminated situations that alter our sensory perception of space, becoming the main foundation of the project.
It is impossible to keep a fragmentary vision when the skeletons, the nerve-like cables and, above all, the lights’ oscillations in intensity and color blend together to create a changing whole projected on the air, the walls, and the eyes of the visitor.
These changes are not perceived as something accessory but truly substantial; they are not mere electric processes added to the foundation, but rhythms of a living organism, regular variations of a metabolism. We cannot understand them, but they strongly evoke the steady breathing of some hibernating, sleeping beings, or maybe the signals of an undecipherable conversation among cephalopods or luminescent insects as lampyridae, which have inspired Carlos Coronas’ work.
L.E.V. 2017 | LABORATORIO DE ELECTRÓNICA VISUAL
XI Festival Internacional de Creación Audiovisual de Gijón
Factory Floor Live A/V (DFA Records, Uk)
Byetone & Markus Heckmann present “Pilot” special live A/V (raster-noton, De/Ca) (world premiere)
Samuel Kerridge FLA Live A/V (Downwards, Uk)
Red Bull Music Academy presents Hauschka “What if” Live A/V (De)
Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas present “Lexachast” (De)
John Beltran Live (Delsin, USA) (world premiere)
Lorenzo Senni (Warp, It)
Synkro (Apollo Recordings, Uk)
Logos Live (Keysound Recordings, Uk) (world premiere)
Nicolas Bernier presents “frequencies (synthetic variations)” (Ca)
Martin Messier presents “Field” (Ca)
Kara Lis Coverdale & MFO (Sacred Phrases, Ca/ De)
Container (Diagonal, USA)
Julia Kent (Leaf, Ca)
Kiki Hitomi (Jahtari, Jp)
IVVVO (Halcyon Veil, Pt)
Novi_sad & Ryoichi Kurokawa present “Sirens” (Sub Rosa, Gr/Jp)
Skygaze “Weightless Landscapes” A/V (Love Our Records, Es) (world premiere)
Alex Augier presents _nybble_ (Fr)
Oscar Sol (Electronic Performers, Es)
Installations
Olivier Ratsi “Onion Skin” (Fr)
Maotik “Aeryon” (Ca) (World Premiere)
Daniel Iregui “Control No Control” (Ca)
Martin Messier “Boîte Noire” (Ca)
Carlos Coronas “Lampyridae” (Es)
