L.E.V. Festival (Laboratorio de Electrónica Visual) celebrates its 18th year in Gijón from May 1 to 5. With the support of Gijón’s Town Council and the Principality of Asturias, the festival has come of age, turning the Asturian town into a point of reference to discover the most unorthodox side of electronic sound experimentation and contemporary audiovisual, scenic and digital creation. With five days of line-up, a day more than in previous years, this year’s festival will take place in several spaces around the town, making a special emphasis on audiovisual performances and music live shows, plus audiovisual and performative installations, and experiences around extended realities.

The line-up of live shows at Teatro de la Laboral, Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies, and Nave de LABoral is formed by Aïsha Devi, Martin Messier, Evian Christ, Myriam Bleau & Nien Tzu Weng, Noémi Büchi, RRUCCULLA, SYNSPECIES, Sin Maldita & Lei, Dengue Dengue Dengue, Cachito Turulo, Riccardo Giovinetto, Jacques, Puce Mary, LCY, Bromo, and Kessell&Kerqus. Among this year’s highlights are the shows in the stage boxes of the city’s two main theaters, as the performative AV installation by Romeo Castellucci at Teatro de la Laboral, The Third Reich, and the multichannel installation Distrust Everything by artist Lorem at Teatro Jovellanos. The festival will end on Sunday 5 May at Jardín Botánico Atlántico, with live shows by Scanner and Sophia Loizou which will be enjoyed through wireless headphones, courtesy of Fundación EDP. The line-up also includes an audiovisual installation about our relationship with light, at Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto, created by Guillaume Mamin.

The part of the programme around extended realities is now presented, in synergy with Arenas Movedizas, a project about experiments in audiovisual culture, by initiative of Gijón/Xixón Youth Department of Gijón’s Town Council and FIUM collective, in collaboration with RIT (Realities in Transition), and the strategic support of the General Direction of Innovation of Gijón’s Town Council. From 25 April to 19 May, Escuela de Comercio will host different activities, including two virtual reality experiences, an augmented reality experience and a workshop for young people to explore music creation in the Metaverse.

Virtual Reality experiences

From May 2 to 5 at Escuela de Comercio, with free access, we will be able to enjoy two surprising virtual reality experiences, as innovative in format as in narrative language.

Red Tail by Fish Wang

The virtual reality movie Red Tail, inspired in the homonymous comic by his Taiwanese director Fish Wang, winner of the Cristal Award 2023 for the best VR project at Annecy Festival. Produced by Zero One Film (Yi-Ching Chen), Funique VR Studio (Blank Hsieh), PTS Taiwan (Yi-Hua Wang) and Kaohsiung Film Archive (Chiao-Lin Hsieh), the story starts in a train station floating on a cloud. A mysterious red fishtail catches the attention of a child, who chases it to discover magical words, strange creatures and, finally, a knight who seems to know his secrets and sorrows better than him. This fascinating journey is a poetic metaphor about childhood memories and the pain related to growing up, and invites the audience to feel and accept it as something inherent to our vital experience, something that we need to turn into a better version of ourselves.

Uncanny Alley by Rick Treweek

The virtual reality experience Uncanny Alley by South African director Rick Treweek, winner at Raindance Festival, in the section Best Immersive World 2022. This work explores the current state of the Metaverse from a small corner of it, hosted in the VRChat universe, a virtual and social environment constantly expanding, boosted by a community which creates and shares virtual worlds, avatars and interactive experiences since 2015. From this platform, Uncanny Alley deals with different topics and concepts of the Metaverse based on the real world, drawing upon the communities which are building the foundations of the open Metaverse. During the experience, the user follows Gh0st, Glitch, and other Metazins. Gh0st has disappeared while he was working on systems to cross over worlds. We must follow the clues and revelations of this immersive universe until the fourth wall of the Metaverse falls down in a surprising way, in order to reveal a glimpse of the open Metaverse. 

Augmented Reality experience

From May 2 to 19, the festival will show the augmented reality experience Slow Walker, created by the Swedish artist, director, and writer Peder Bjurman, developed by DVA Creative Technology Studio and produced by FMR Produktion. It features a microscopic tardigrade, visible through the screen of a mobile device, which shows as a gigantic animal that takes the public space at Plaza de Parchís in Gijón, next to Escuela de Comercio.

Slow Walker by Peder Bjurman

A tardigrade is a highly resilient living organism, able to endure vacuum extreme temperatures, radiation and even the conditions in space. However, it is very sensitive to global warming. This fascinating, colossal, but also ephemeral creature, is shown in this experience as a mystic, symbolic being, floating between life and death, as a gigantic AR geolocalized sculpture which moves slowly around town, grazing and interacting with the audience when it gets close. The experience has a soundtrack created by Abul Mogard, and a voiceover which immerses the user into the experience.

Youth workshop

Metaverses and musical creation with PatchXR 

Besides, in L.E.V. Festival and Arenas Movedizas 2024, from April 25 to 27, there will be a workshop about Metaverses and musical creation with PatchXR, for teenagers between 14 and 16 years old, where they will discover the creative possibilities in virtual environments. Specifically, musical creation in virtual reality. The attendees will use PatchWorld, an unprecedented tool created by the international studio PatchXR, co-founded by Mélodie Mousset and Eduardo Fouilloux, which can be used to build totally immersive musical worlds for the metaverse. 

During three sessions of three hours, the attendees will learn the basics of this tool, as well as concepts related to electronic and contemporary music; in a useful and playful way, the endless possibilities of the tool will be explored: from creating new music instruments to synthesizing and sequencing electronic sounds, creating avatars or making loops with musical structures, recording them on video with a friendly and interactive interface.