Audiovisual explorations and experiences around extended realities complete the line up of L.E.V. Matadero's fifth year

· From September 21 to 24, Matadero Madrid organizes a new year of the festival, with the most innovative experimental projects in the fields of electronic sound creation, audiovisual creation, digital art and extended realities, both Spanish and international
· This line up of live shows and audiovisual performances includes 16 acts, with some true flagships and visionaries of the current scene: 4Oval, Katarina Gryvul & Alex Guevara, Joakim, CORIN, Konx-om-Pax, LustSickPuppy, CoH & Abul Mogard, NSDOS, Venus Ex Machina & Xtrux, Lorem, Halina Rice, Zan Lyons, Beatrix Weapons ft Ruido.Frio, Riccardo Giovinetto, Rocío Guzmán and Verbose
· Live shows will take place on September Thursday 21, Friday 22 and Saturday 23 at Central de Diseño (DIMAD), and Friday 22 and Saturday 23 at Auditorio de Casa del Lector
· At Nave 0, VORTEX, a section devoted to virtual reality experiences, will showcase an assorted selection of immersive pieces, created by renowned artists from all over the world, exploring video games, the evolution of artificial intelligence, or social critique 
· Plaza Matadero will host one of the most one of the most essential works of this year: a performative installation by Belgian artist Lawrence Malstaf, where several players hang suspended vertically inside two big plastic sheets
· The line-up is completed by the Augmented City section, with a piece created by Lauren Moffatt, the interactive, real-time video installation ID0, created by Taiwanese collective Naxs.corp., at Centro de Experiencias Inmersivas MAD, and the audiovisual installation Visual Bird Sounds by Australian artist Andy Thomas
· Entradas a la venta en www.levfestival.com y www.mataderomadrid.org

Matadero Madrid, center of contemporary creations belonging to Madrid City Council’s Department of Culture, presents L.E.V. Matadero‘s fifth year. The Festival of Visual Electronics and Extended Realities, organized by Matadero Madrid and curated by Datatron platform, will take place from September 21 to 24 2023, a collaboration with Cineteca Madrid and Naves del Español (Matadero), featuring Casa del Lector, Central de Diseño and MAD Madrid Artes Digitales.

In 2023, the festival comes back to Madrid to bring us the newest experiences in the field of audiovisual experimentation. The event will take place in several spaces of Matadero throughout four days, and the attendees will be able to enjoy incredible sonic, visual and digital worlds created with cutting-edge technological tools by some of the most creative national and international minds of this artistic field.

Besides the 16 live shows, the extended reality experiences will be featuring L.E.V Matadero once more in the sections VORTEX, formed by virtual reality and VR Cinema experiences, and Ciudad Aumentada, with urban experiences of augmented reality. Three installations —a performative one, an interactive one, and an audiovisual one— complete the line-up for this fifth year of the festival in Madrid.

This year, the festival’s line-up of live shows and audiovisual performances will take place at Central de Diseño and Auditorio de Casa del Lector, where renowned experimental creators and new values of this field will showcase their groundbreaking and essential works.  

The lineup of live shows offers a broad range of concepts and formats: undisputed visionaries of electronic music such as Oval; true explorers of new technologies, who generate their own creative devices, such as NSDOS, Kom-om-Pax, Verbose, or Zan Lyons; collaborations of artists who blend their works to reach new dimensions, such as Kataryna Gryvul & Alex Guevara, CoH meets Abul Mogard, or Venus Ex Machina & Xtrux; female creators who combine tradition, folklore or classical music with current sounds, such as CORIN or Rocío Guzmán; unpredictable, powerful live shows by LustSickPuppy, Halina Rice, or Beatrix Weapons; projects with a strong presence of artificial intelligence in their creative process, by Lorem or Riccardo Giovinetto; and audiovisual explorations with a protest element, like the ones by Joakim, addressing current affairs such as the preservation of the environment.

VORTEX: Virtual Reality  and VR Cinema experiences at Nave 0
This year at Matadero Nave 0, in a collaboration with European project Realities in Transition, the VORTEX section includes virtual reality experiences such as From the Main Square by Pedro Harres (Brazil), a cohesive, critical portrait of social fragmentation, which obtained the Grand Jury Prize at the section Venice Immersive, in the prestigious Venice International Film Festival 2022, or Quatum Bar by Christina “Xaos Princess”, which invites us to have a real, immersive conversation with an artificial intelligence, so that the artist can explore the use of conversational robots in social VR environments, and the ethical issues concerning the current development of such technologies.

The piece Nine Dragons by contemporary artist Yang Yongliang (Shanghai), will take the audience to a mythological, immersive flight through the eyes of a Chinese dragon. Templo de la carne / Tragedia Zoophilica, by artist Juan Le Parc, is a dramatized animal tragedy, staged as a slow, macabre and mechanical choreography, where visitors explore an ancient temple built with meat from delicatessen and butcher shops. With Nerd_Funk, Iranian creators Ali Eslami and Mamali Shafahi will show us a digital identity which exists in Instagram, following the trail of contemporary digital culture. A VR installation to go inside and reflect on the new reality born out of social media.

The multiawarded work I Saw the Future by experimental filmmaker François Vautier immerses the audience in a 3D space with echoes from the futurist predictions by visionary and humanistic master Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the script for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey: and the revolutionary mixed reality multiplayer video game Eggscape, created by Herman Heller and Jorge Tereso, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the section Venice Immersive, in the prestigious Venice International Film Festival 2022. Users play some charismatic and funny egg-shaped characters, which narrow escape from a relentless invasion of alien robots, in a virtual environment layered on top of the real physical surroundings.

Besides, the main screen at Nave 0 will show two pieces by Robert Seidel, Hysteresis and Touha, both based on experiments with artificial intelligence by the essential German digital artist and with sounds by Oval.

Performative installation Shrink 01995 at Plaza Matadero: Lawrence Malstaf
One of the most outstanding works at this year’s festival will be the performative installation Shrink 01995 by Lawrence Malstaf (Belgium), which can be visited at Plaza Matadero, with free admission and in different passes.

The installation represents the strange nature of the world we inhabit today, through the participation of a series of performers suspended vertically in the air, inside two large transparent plastic sheets. The piece is equipped with a device that sucks the air and allows the performers to hold on and slowly change position, until they gradually freeze between micro-folds.

Ciudad Aumentada. Augmented City reality urban experiences
This year, the Ciudad Aumentada section will feature the piece Compost AR (Flowers for Suzanne Clair) by Spain-based Australian artist Lauren Moffatt, using video game techniques combined with conventional painting techniques to digitally reconstruct flowers and plants, and to explore forms of environmental recovery and deceleration. A strange, digital, undetermined live entity to experiment on the screen of our mobile device at different points of the outdoor space at Matadero.

Audiovisual explorations at Madrid Artes Digitales and Plató of Cineteca
At Centro de Experiencias Inmersivas MAD. Madrid Artes Digitales, with the support of the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, the project by Taiwanese collective Naxs.corp., ID0, will explore the decentralized structure of post-Internet society. Blurring the limits between video, film and games, this installation will allow 50 people to enjoy the virtual space of this piece simultaneously, and to interact among them from their mobile devices.

Besides, at Plató of Cineteca, L.E.V. Matadero will showcase the work Visual Bird Sounds by Andy Thomas, where the artist has compiled sound recordings and photographs of birds and other travelling animals to study their remote, natural habitats, animating them in an extraordinarily creative way, using generative motion graphics algorithms. Behind this work we find a strong criticism of the impact of technology and the progress of society on the planet’s natural ecosystems.

TICKETS AVAILABLE
WWW.LEVFESTIVAL.COM Y WWW.MATADEROMADRID.ORG 

MORE INFO
comunicacion@mataderomadrid.org y prensa@levfestival.org

DOWNLOAD GRAPHIC MATERIAL HERE

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L.E.V. Matadero
Visual Electronics and Extended Realities Festival
From September 21 to 24, 2023
Matadero Madrid

Organized by: Matadero Madrid
Curated by: Datatron / L.E.V.
In collaboration with: Cineteca Madrid, Naves del Español en Matadero,
Casa del Lector, Central de Diseño, MAD Madrid Artes Digitales.
With the support of: Ministerio de Cultura de Taiwán, Oficina Económica y Cultural de Taipéi en España, RIT (Realities in Transition) 
Media partners: Radio 3, OCI Magazine, Clot Magazine
Visual identity: Lucas Gutierrez 

PROGRAMMING
Concerts and live AV performances:
Oval _DE / Thrill Jockey
Katarina Gryvul & Alex Guevara Live AV _UA / PE·DE
Joakim Second Nature _FR / Tigersushi
CORIN presents Lux Aeterna Live AV _AU / UIQ
Konx-om-Pax presents System Works AV _UK / Display Copy, Planet Mu
LustSickPuppy _USA
CoH meets Abul Mogard _IT / RS·SW / Houndstooth
NSDOS _FR
Venus Ex Machina & Xtrux Live AV _UK / TW / AD 93
Lorem Tesh AV _IT
Halina Rice New Worlds _UK / Injazero
Zan Lyons Interactive Visual Audio _UK·DE
Beatrix Weapons ft. Ruido.Frio ASCENT _ES
Riccardo Giovinetto F E M I N A _IT
Rocío Guzmán Sonada _ES 
Verbose Cýra Live AV _ES

Performance installation:
Lawrence Malstaf SHRINK 01995 _BE

VORTEX. Virtual reality and VR Cinema experiences:
Pedro Harres From the main square _BR/DE
Christina "XaosPrincess" Kinne Quantum Bar  _DE
Yang Yongliang. N i n e D r a g o n s | 九 龙 图  _CN
Juan Le Parc Templo de la carne / Tragedia Zoophilica _AR
Ali Eslami & Mamali Shafahi Nerd_Funk (Chapter 1&2) _IR
François Vautier I saw the Future _FR
Herman Heller & Jorge Tereso Eggscape _AR
Robert Seidel Hysteresis + Touha  _DE

Ciudad Aumentada. Urban augmented reality experiences:
Lauren Moffatt Compost AR (Flowers for Suzanne Clair) _AU/ES

Interactive installation:
NAXS Corp.  ID0 _TW

Audiovisual installation:
Andy Thomas Visual Bird Sounds _AU