Al Otro Lado, an open rehearsal at LABoral Centro de Arte

Audience wearing silencioSonoro wireless headphones during the Al Otro Lado open rehearsal at LABoral Centro de Arte

LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón · LABoral_Impulsa residency · 29 March 2025

The project

Al Otro Lado is a piece combining poetry, live music and generative imagery, developed by Fernando Caicoya (kqproductora) during his residency at LABoral Centro de Arte, within the LABoral_Impulsa programme, between May 2024 and January 2025.

silencioSonoro handled the sound system: capture, mixing and distribution through wireless headphones.

The space

Setting up the sound system in the hall at LABoral Centro de Arte, with a digital mixer and wireless headphones

An open concrete hall, high-ceilinged, with no acoustic treatment and no absorbent surfaces. Long reverberation time.

In December 2024 we spent a preparatory working day in the hall itself, with the full system rigged, to assess how it behaved.

Sound check with guitar in the empty hall at LABoral to assess the reverberation of the space

The challenges

Reverberation. The hall returns a high level of reflected energy, which enters the microphones and reduces the definition of the signal. It affects the attack of the guitar and the intelligibility of the voice.

Carlos Pizarro playing classical guitar with headphones during the preparatory session at LABoral

Openness. Headphone listening tends to concentrate the sound image in the centre. With three live sources, they had to be separated and the mix given width.

The two aims pull in opposite directions: reducing the presence of the room without leaving the result dry and closed in. Resolving that balance was the main work of the December session.

Listening

Live guitar heard through wireless headphones by the audience at Al Otro Lado

Each person received a set of headphones on arrival. Guitar, voices and soundtrack came entirely through that channel, with no loudspeaker reinforcement in the room.

Volume control is individual. The mix is the same for everyone; what each person decides is the level they hear it at. In a conventional reinforcement system that level is imposed and identical for the whole room.

Poetry reading heard through wireless headphones by the audience at LABoral Centro de Arte

Imagery

Generative imagery projected on the wall during Al Otro Lado, with live guitar

The piece incorporates generative imagery projected in large format onto the wall of the hall, synchronised with the music and the text.

Performers of Al Otro Lado in front of the large-format projection, audience listening through headphones

Installation

No mains connection, no power cabling across the space and no fixings to the building. Rigged and struck within the day.

It is the same self-sufficient technology we use in caves or botanical gardens, where no infrastructure is available. Here it allowed us to work inside an art centre without intervening in it.

Discussion

Closing discussion of the Al Otro Lado open rehearsal, performers and audience still wearing headphones

The session was conceived as an open rehearsal. At the end, the performers sat down with the audience, still wearing their headphones, to explain the working process.

Credits

Project: Fernando Caicoya · kqproductora
Guitar: Carlos Pizarro
Voice and stage presence: Agnes Ornia Luna and Yeray Morís Vega
Generative imagery: Leugim Durán Salazar and Juan Cañada
Sound and wireless headphones: silencioSonoro