The Festival of Visual Electronics and Extended Realities presents its complete programme with 15 proposals that address contemporary electronic and digital creation between 18 and 22 September, in different spaces at Matadero Madrid.
Matadero Madrid arranges a new year of the festival to provide an all-round, contemporary and experimental view of electronic sound creations, audiovisual and scenic creations, digital art, and extended realities
This year’s line-up is formed by a series of diverse projects: live shows, performances and audiovisual installations, exhibitions, interactive virtual and augmented reality experiences, and showcases and meetings with artists
Some of the big names in the line-up are creators as the renowned playwright Romeo Castellucci, who will showcase the performative installation The Third Reich, with Scott Gibbons, supported by Matadero’s Nave 10
Nave 10 will also host three sound and audiovisual live sessions noted for their mise-en-scene, by artists such as Keeley Forsyth, Mortiz Simon Geist, NAH, Axontorr, plus44Kaligula, and Horma & Azael Ferrer
The line-up of extended realities will include three long interactive experiences of virtual reality at Central de Diseño, created by key international names such as Hsin-Chien Huang & Jean Michel Jarre, Kevin Mack and Darren Emerson, plus the augmented reality experience Slow Walker by Peder Bjurman at Plaza Matadero
Four free-access installations will show us the different sides of current audiovisual and digital creation, through projects featuring light, sound, video games, and social critique as main concepts, created by Encor Studio, Alice Bucknell, Robbie Cooper, and INITI
The line-up is completed by a Taiwanese digital art exhibition at Nave 0, a hackaton around VR Sculpting run by prestigious creator Rick Treweek (MetaRick), and project showcases by some of the artists in this year’s line-up
Tickets available here
Throughout the years, L.E.V. Matadero has established itself as one of the one most essential events in the city to discover the current state of digital and electronic creativity, through a extensive line-up of musical and staging projects, audiovisual installations and extended reality experiences such as virtual and augmented reality. Focusing on experimentation, the festival will reunite renowned national and international creators with emerging artists to showcase the creative possibilities of the latest developments in technological tools, and to reflect on their impact in contemporary culture and society. This year’s festival stands out by providing an all-round-view of this artistic field, through a wide series of diverse projects which will be shown at different spaces at Matadero Madrid throughout five days.
LIVE SHOWS AND AUDIOVISUAL PERFORMANCES IN NAVE 10
Once again, the music live shows line-up will be one of the key pillars in the festival. The shows will take place at Matadero Madrid’s Nave 10.
The opening act in L.E.V. Matadero 2024 will be the installative performance The Third Reich, created by one of the most relevant names in contemporary scenic arts: Romeo Castellucci. Famous all over the world for his plays based on the entirety of arts, and oriented towards an integral perception, the Italian playwright collaborates with musician Scott Gibbons to bring us a furious scenic and audiovisual piece, critical with the stiffness and the impositions of today’s language, inviting the audience to modify their perception and power of judgmental up to unsuspected levels. Nave 10 will host two daily performances on Wednesday 17 and Thursday 18 September.
On the following days, Nave 10 will host three double sessions of live shows and audiovisual performances noted for their scenic power. On Friday, September 19, the most spectral, experimental dark pop will intertwine with the physicality of movement and voice with plus44Kaligula, artistic alias of English composer and performer Cally Statham, a project staged by Emmanuel Biard. Another artist, the percussionist, sound manipulator and visual artist NAH will showcase his audiovisual show Totally Recalled, a frantic mind adventure of samples and unclassifiable, percussive rhythms.
On Saturday, September 20, Keeley Forsyth will fill the stage with the raw emotion of her singular voice and her astonishing physical delivery, playing live her new album The Hollow. Afterwards, AXONTORR, a collaborative project of Oliver Torr and Axonbody, supported by Madrid’s Czech Center, will show the audience the combined approach of both artists in a live show of audiovisual experiences and melodic and deconstructed compositions, played with instruments created by the musicians.
The last session of live shows in L.E.V. Matadero will take place on Sunday, September 22 at midday, with two world premieres featuring the most experimental techno: Matadero by Horma (a new electronic project by Andalusian artist based in Madrid Le Parody), and multimedia artist Azael Ferrer, developed with the support of Matadero Madrid’s Artistic Residencies Center; and Recycling Techno by Moritz Simon Geist, where the German engineer and producer uses discarded mechanical and electronic pieces to generate repetitive sound structures and sound patterns, with the aim of raising awareness about the environmental impact of these kinds of waste.
VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY EXPERIENCES AT THE CENTRAL DESIGN CENTRE AND PLAZA MATADERO
This year, L.E.V. Matadero supports long, interactive pieces of virtual reality, which will allow the audience to immerse in new virtual worlds and to endlessly experiment the new artistic possibilities of this digital media. Vortex section will be formed by three 50-minute pieces which will be shown at Central de Diseño.
Award-winning Taiwanese artist Hsin-Chien Huang will be accompanied by legendary electronic musician and composer Jean Michel Jarre to showcase The Eye and I, a collaborative piece to explore the notion of social surveillance, its influence and presence throughout history using a critical point of view, from the panopticon pavilion of a prison. Namuanki, by the Oscar-winner and pioneer in digital art and VR, Kevin Mack, will take the user to a searchable aquatic oasis made of labyrinthine geological structures, strange forms of living and subterranean caves, a transcendental experience of awe, mystery and imagination, in the format of a guided visit for groups. Finally, the interactive, virtual documentary In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats by Darren Emerson will take the visitor to a first-person time travel back to the epicenter of the turbulent, late-eighties rave culture in the UK.
This year, Ciudad Aumentada section will bring a experience of augmented reality to L.E.V. Matadero which explores the new narratives emerging in this field of artistic creation. After being shown at L.E.V. Festival in Gijón, the Slow Walker project by Peder Bjurman will arrive at Plaza Matadero to tell the story of a tardigrade, a micro-organism highly resistant to environmental hazards, which turns into a gigantic, mystical being which can be viewed through the screen of our smartphone, flying over the open space in the center of contemporary creations, with a voiceover and a soundtrack created by Abul Mogard.
CIRCUIT OF AUDIOVISUAL INSTALLATIONS IN PLAZA MATADERO, MADRID ARTES DIGITALES, CINETECA AND NAVE UNA
Another highlight in this year’s L.E.V. Matadero will be a series of four, free-access audiovisual installations in different spaces of Matadero Madrid. At Plaza Matadero we will discover the audiovisual installation Alcove LTD by Swiss art studio Encor, which uses a 6-meter recycled container as a canvas to create a moving light box capturing the reflections of the audience, among films of liquid crystal.
MAD (Madrid Artes Digitales) space will host the project The Alluvials by American artist and writer Alice Bucknell (pronoun: they). An immersive film set in the city of Los Angeles which combines ecological theory, speculative fiction and posthuman game design to explore the politics of drought and water shortage.
At Cineteca’s Plató, exclusively for this festival, British artist Robbie Cooper will showcase an extended version of his Immersion video installation, which shows people from all ages immersed in digital media, focusing on the intense facial and bodily expressions we usually make when playing video games.
Finally, Nave 1 will host Save the Planet by project INITI Playground, a big format audiovisual installation, interactive and playful, which will transform the Nave in a multiplayer space for all ages, using mapping and movement detection technology.
TAIWANESE DIGITAL ART EXHIBITION AT NAVE 0
Throughout the twentieth century, the basic unit in digital image, the pixel, has gained prominence as a reference in an aesthetic derived from technological limitation. Supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture and the Economic and Taipei’s Trade Office in Spain, L.E.V. Matadero opens the exhibition PIXEL GODS. Taiwán digital at Nave 0, a selection of works by Taiwanese artists who reformulate the pixel concept from the culture of adoration and reverence our postdigital societies shows towards digital image, resolution and definition in pictures and videos, as well as its implications in contemporary creation.
In the piece Gods of Water, artist Kuang-Yi Ku explores human transformations, our desires and emotions, in the context of technological advance and climate crisis, inviting the audience to reflect on their current relationship with the environment through speculative, future scenarios. With the video installation How To Improve Photo Quality by AI | Noise Reduction, Super-resolution Tutorial, art collective Simple Noodle Art shows us the story of a specific pixel, Blue Pixel, which represented planet Earth of that famous A pale blue dot picture, taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 probe from a distance of 6.000 millions of kilometers, which vanishes when the AI digital image improvement system applies its algorithms and takes it for visual noise. The exhibition is completed with the video game Words Game by Team9 creative studio; an interactive piece whose visual elements are composed by giant pixels representing traditional Chinese characters.
HACKATHON XR, MEETINGS AND PRESENTATIONS WITH MEDIALAB MATADERO AND REALITIES IN TRANSITION
In order to dig deeper in cutting-edge tools which allow creators to build virtual words, and to do it in a practical way, L.E.V. Matadero will include the hackaton Avatar VR Sculpting managed by Rick Treweek, also known as MetaRick. Supported by the European project Realities in Transition and Medialab Matadero, the creator of the awarded immersive universe Uncanny Alley will guide various sessions from September 19 to 22, in a hybrid format from the Metaverse, explaining different VR Sculpting techniques to build avatars. To complete the sixth year of the festival line-up, there will be a series of panels and project showcases by some of the artists taking part in the festival, such as Hsin-Chien Huang and MetaRick , among others.
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
L.E.V. Matadero 2024
Festival de Electrónica Visual y Realidades Extendidas
September 18 – 22
Matadero Madrid
#LEVMatadero @levfestival @mataderomadrid
www.levfestival.com / www.mataderomadrid.org
Organized by: Matadero Madrid
Curated by: L.E.V. Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual
Partners: Nave 10, Medialab Matadero, Cineteca Madrid
Featuring: Central de Diseño, MAD Madrid Artes Digitales
Supported by: Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture, Economic and Taipei’s Trade Office in Spain, Madrid’s Czech Center, RIT (Realities in Transition)
Supported by the Ministry of Culture’s public aids to promote the video game and podcast fields, plus other forms of digital creation, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, and financed by the European Union – NextGenerationEU
Associated media: Radio 3, OCI Magazine, Clot Magazine
Visual identity: SHOEG
Music: AXONTORR (Mastered by Ryan Schwabe)
