Searching for an apt visual metaphor for multiculturalism to form the cover of an exhibition catalogue in 2011, the author scanned a Canon lens using a flatbed scanner and found that the whole visible color spectrum was included in the resulting image. This serendipitous discovery led to an ongoing research project on the unique refractions of all manner of lenses.

Virtual reality systems are an ideal platform for exploring spatial effects because of their ability to combine stereo imaging techniques and interactive real-time graphics. They allow the creation of artworks that, on the one hand, exhibit a dynamic organization of the environment’s spatial depth and, on the other, create an interaction with the stereoscopic optic flow. In this article, the author discusses the advantages of horizontal stereoscopic displays and describes how she has used the Responsive Workbench to display the evolution of a flat land into a three-dimensional world in her artwork Endocytosis . She uses endocytosis—a fundamental cellular trafficking process that moves material into the intracellular space—as a metaphor for this evolutionary process.

As humans, we express what we think and feel by facial movements, often without even realizing it. In the (e)motion installation, the goal was to create awareness of even the subtlest movements of the face, and to facilitate interaction purely based on facial expressions. Facial movements were tracked by custom software and translated into motion vectors, which were in turn visualized and coupled with sounds. Participants could interact within the installation by responding to each other’s facial movements. (e)motion was inspired by embodied cognition and scientific studies on emotion and action. The installation was the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration between art, movement science and cognitive neuroscience.

Al GRANO: Framing Worlds is a composite gallery installation with individually installable artifacts that can be shown in various combinations. Three cognitive “chunks” explore different electronic technologies to address historical, cultural, scientific and geopolitical positions related to maize, a contested grain considered both food and cultural symbol in Mexico and a source of macro profits for multinational agribusiness.

This article stems from a broader research project that explored the aesthetics of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Here the author focuses on firsthand experience of undergoing an MRI as an experimental subject within two different laboratory projects. The self-produced video created after the two examinations, 265 Looping Snapshots , muses on the role played by MRI sound and images, the notion of surveillance and the experience of undergoing a scan. The video attempts to resist the reading of MRI as a “vision machine” for surveillance purposes. Far from being a mere representation of an inner condition unavailable to the senses, MRI images slowly become more abstract—a pulsating, rhythmical light from which other forms can emerge.

With a cultural and material “cannibalistic” approach, the authors aim to revise certain technological discourses by introducing TZ’IJK , a “mestizo” robotic artwork developed in the Peruvian Amazon. Far from the utopian visions of Hollywood sci-fi movies populated by highly intelligent, anthropomorphic and responsive machines, TZ’IJK employs a combination of high and low technologies that embody Latin America’s anthropophagic, postcolonial and hybrid nature. Mestizo Robotics proposes an alternative approach to the development of embodied artificial life forms, from both theoretical and technological viewpoints.

Building on anthropologist Mary Douglas’s writing on the ritual function of dirt, this article presents a strategy in digital performance art that engages with electronic waste (e-waste). It is suggested that planned obsolescence in electronics is of a particular nature that facilitates the representation of consumer technologies within the logic of a “symbolic order of technological progress,” where digital devices act as mere signifiers for abstract notions of connectivity, well-being and innovation. Conceptualizing discarded electronic devices as abject technology that is positioned outside this symbolic structure, a performance practice is proposed where abject body parts and abject technologies are connected to challenge this techno-ideology.

ABSTRACT The author presents three of his artworks that engage with issues surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) research. The artworks provide a means for discussing issues that are predominantly ontological rather than technical; while the author used a variety of computational methods in the development of the artworks, he did not make use of any AI techniques and tools. The discussion is carried on in a speculative manner that draws from concept art, academic research and sci-fi culture.