Date: Sunday-May-5-2019
Hour: 2-to-4:30 PM
Location: Princeton Public Library
City: Princeton, New Jersey
Admission: FREE
Curators: Martin Calvino & Aaron Montoya-Moraga
TechnoArte Latino is a multimedia art event featuring latin artists currently living in United States who use cutting edge digital technologies as central part in their creative practices. The event will host talks and performances by renowned artists from the greater NYC area; and will take place at the Princeton Public Library, Princeton, New Jersey. The event is in partnership with the Princeton Public Library with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and co-sponsored by the Art Museum of Princeton University.
Participating artists_
Figure 1: Participating artists Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya, Cristobal Valenzuela, Aarón Montoya-Moraga, Sejo Vega Cebrian and Martin Calvino.
Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya
Francesca is a designer and educator from Peru currently living in NYC. She is passionate about storytelling and social justice, believing in the power of data driven stories and how technology communicate compelling narratives about social-cultural realities to empower society. Her goal is to create narratives and products that connect digital and physical spaces. She graduated from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University; and previously worked as audiovisual and content producer. You can learn more about her at http://www.franrodriguezsawaya.com
Francesca talked about the 'materialization of human narratives' and the 'translation of data into tangible forms'. She explained how fusion of textiles with technology in her art pieces provided an avenue to convey narratives from native people in Peru and from Peruvian immigrants to United States. She also described how ancient Inca's knot code system fueled her inspiration in producing encrypted textile pieces that communicated messages.
Figure 2. Francesca during her talk at TechnoArte
Cristobal Valenzuela Cristobal is a technologist, artist and software developer from Chile and currently living in NYC who is interested in the intersection between artificial intelligence and creative tools. He is the director of Runway, researcher at New York University ITP, and co-founder of Latent Studio, a creative studio specializing in machine learning and artificial intelligence. He also contributes to OSS and helps maintain ml5.js. His work has been sponsored by Google and the Processing Foundation and his projects has been exhibited in Latin America and the US, including the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, ARS Electronica, GAM, Fundación Telefonica, Lollapalooza, NYC Media Lab, New Latin Wave, Inter-American Development Bank, Stanford University and New York University. You can learn more about him at https://cvalenzuelab.com
Cristobal talked about his entrepreneurial project RUNWAY where he is building next-gen creative tools using artificial intelligence; as well as other machine learning related artworks such as body-pose estimation, text generation and image creation using Generative Adversarial Networks. He also described his role in the ml5 project currently ongoing at New York University.
Figure 3. Cristobal during his talk at TechnoArte
Sejo Vega Cebrian Sejo is a digital artisan from Mexico City and NYC; currently creating choreographic computers as part of chsnec; co-founder and member of the eccs.world collective of interdisciplinary arts (& crafts) where they develop free cultural works using and/or building free (libre) software. You can learn more at https://chsnec.eccs.world
Sejo performed his piece titled 'ttcbac': a computation machine that is part pieces of wood, part human, and part set of rules. His hybrid living being was slowly performing a section of a possibly infinite algorithmic procedure; and at the same time, it spoke words related to its importance as a useless system in an era of speed, productivity, extraction and exploitation.
Figure 4. Sejo during his performance at TechnoArte
Aarón Montoya-Moraga Aarón is a multimedia artist, programmer and educator living between NYC and Santiago, Chile. He has co-founded 'Coded Escuela', a media arts school based in Santiago where he teaches creative programming. Aarón is a contributor to the 'Processing Foundation' & the open source project 'p5.js', releasing one of its books in Spanish language. He also contributes to the open source project 'Kinectron' and is a curator at the 'New Latin Wave Festival'. Aarón also founded and runs the Record Label 'Bandurria' and co-organize 'Frequency Sweeps', a sporadic experimental audiovisual performance festival. You can learn more about him at http://montoyamoraga.io
Aarón talked about his art practice, teaching practice, creation of open source code libraries for creative expression, and his upcoming project as future Master student at MIT Media Lab.
Figure 5. Aarón during his talk at TechnoArte
Martin Calvino
Martin is a multimedia artist from Uruguay currently living in New Jersey. He is currently artist-in-residence at the 'Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab' at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University. He was a Senior Research Assistant at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong; and previously attended the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He holds degrees in Plant Molecular Genetics from Rutgers University (PhD) and Tsukuba University (MS), and in Molecular Biology from the University of the Republic of Uruguay (BS). He conducted studies and works under the sponsorship of prestigious fellowships such as Fulbright (USA) and Monbukagakusho (Japan), and in 2012 received the Eileen Brennan Graduate Research Award from the department of Plant Biology & Pathology at Rutgers in recognition for his scientific output. Martin’s interest and work focuses on the integration of Art & Science, New Media Art and Tango, and artistic applications of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. His work has been featured in CLOT Magazine, Interalia Magazine, and ART UNCOVERED radio podcast; whereas his texts have been published by NOEMA Magazine and Leonardo Journal (upcoming). Martin's audiovisual work has been screened at MOTiF Film Festival and Proyecto Rotatoria. He recently released an album of electroTango sound compositions (under 'Bandurria Records') that was featured in Nación Eléctrica. Prior to 'TechnoArte Latino', Martin's curatorial project included new media art & Uruguayan culture event at the Consulate General of Uruguay in New York City. You can learn more about him at https://www.martincalvino.co
Martin talked about 'Geometric and Genomic AbstractionISM' a new artistic discipline using genome data for computational art creation, and the re-interpretation of Tango culture through the lens of multimedia arts.
Figure 6. Martin during his talk at TechnoArte
Concluding Remarks_
The event provided with an opportunity to share with the audience at Princeton the work of latin artists that use technology as a central piece in their creative process. Rather than abstracting technology to its purely 'technical' dimension, these artists integrated it to pursue artistic inquiries that are cultural and socially relevant in today's world.
Photo Credits_
Thanks to Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya for providing the images