Portfolio Homepage

This is my portfolio of selected works made to support my applications. Here you can find examples of artworks, designs and activities that I have developed in different ways and roles; As an artist and designer, as a cultural manager, as a researcher.
I have developed different artworks in the broad fields of arts. From those interactive ones, to the simplest pen and paper ones.
I did include those pieces that don´t have a digital nature, but have a place in the construction of my present personality, thoughts and interests. Each one of these pieces have a value for me, all of them helped me to learn and to understand new things in their time.
Also, I don´t want to show just the most recent or digital artworks, mainly because I feel I am formed by different history layers, not just those digital related.

The portfolio has the following sections:
A- Digital
B- Cultural Management
C- Graphic Design
D- Drawings And Handmade Artworks
E- Papers
Please click on the images to see larger ones.

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A- Digital

1- “Clock”. Interactive. Processing. 2011.

Using processing I created a clock that every second triggers the change to a new composition, by loading graphics randomly from an external svg library.
You can see it here, just make click over the image to load (requires Java plugin). http://ricardov.cl/site08/projects/applet_clock01/

2- “Drawing Mirror”. Installation. Touchscreen, Processing, webcam. 2009.

Project based in the children´s natural gestures when they draw. They can see their faces and make drawings with his fingers over the touchscreen on an image captured with a videocamera. Like drawing in the mirrors after a bath. Many children came to play, and some of them bring their parents to paint over his faces on the screen. This project was made with the supporting funds of the Cultural Ministery of Chile and was showed at children´s lecture room at Library of Santiago.

3- “To build…”. Interactive. Application. Flash, MP3. 2009.

Interactive piece: I made for the chilean musician José Miguel Candela, as part of the homage project “Salvador Allende G. Electrocoustic Cicle”. He asked me to create a interactive piece to mix short fragments of music and speech, in a visual interface able to evoke the chilean mountains and landscapes. Download project here:http://www.candela.scd.cl/paraconstruir.html

4- “I love my DNA”. Wooden table, speakers, Screen, Processing. 2008.

The Project talked the relation between art, biology, knowledge, and the consciousness of the man as specie. The main goal is to give a perspective about what means to be a human being, from the material and biological basis, up to the cultural and social level. I started with an blood test of myself, and the data obtained was used to give parameters to a hand image in a screen. Also, this data was translated to an audio file in an speaker mounted on a table. The table was resting over 4 books representing four main areas of the human knowledge that help us to understand and build our reality: “The Bible”, “Atom, Man, Universe” (Hannes Alfven), “Free Culture” (Lawrence Lessig), “The Origin of Species…” (Charles Darwin).

5- “Visuals”. Live Performance. Flash. Since 2004.

During many years I have done projections of visual sets for different live concerts in Chile, mainly from the electroacoustic scene. One of the most interesting was the presentation I made in the Planetarium of the University of Santiago with other musicians.

6- “Sin-six”. Interactive. Website, Flash. 2007.

Online application that mixes images and sounds. The idea was to have a lot of elements, each graphic syntagma with its own syntagma of sound. Every time it is loaded by clicking, a new set of random compositions appears, producing almost infinite sonic and visual combinations. The sound pieces was made by the musician Alejandro Albornoz (Mankacen). Project here: url: http://ricardov.cl/projects/sinsix_web/

7- “EEG (ElecreoEncephaloGram)”. Web site. Javascript, html, Flash. 2001.

Experimental web site based in the sensations that occurs before, during and after an epileptic crisis, such as the “aura”, the words incoherence, and the whole change of the perception of the reality. After all, if the mind changes, everything changes. The project plays with many different related ideas, such as Alice in Wonderland and the tea party, the electricity of the epileptic crisis, the blue and yellow collor, etc. Available here; http://ricardov.cl/site08/projects/eee_site/

B- Cultural Management

8- “Cultural Communicational and Editorial Seminar”. Conferences, workshops. Sept – Nov 2010.

I created the contents and made the production of this seminar for the Spanish Cultural Centre in Santiago, and the result was really interesting for the attending people. The event was focused in the editorial and publishing process, viewed as a medium inserted in an environment of medias, not merely as a continent where we put the content. The medium is not defined just for his content. This point of view help us to see the technological and creative issues among other related aspect, in a more broad context, considering the media history, open licenses, biological considerations about the information, and the digital revolution. There was 10 sessions with a full auditorium.

9- “Online International Workshops”. Coordination and Production. 2010.

It was a series of workshops about Digital Art and New Media, developed in collaboration with artists from cities of Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario) and Santiago de Chile. Some issues were related to Data Visualization, physical interfaces and creative programming. Developed in the Cultural Center of Spain in Santiago, Chile.

10- “Social Software. Workshops”. 2007 – 2011.

During my work in Spanish Cultural Center, I developed a series of projects focused on the new technologies, communication and arts. One of those was “Social Software”, a series of workshops oriented toward delivering basic computer and internet skills for non-profesionals, such as housewifes or workers. This work opened a new vision of technologies, because some times we are inside a digital bubble without looking to the people remains outside. My role was organizing the workshops and teaching the people too. Through the years, we developed almost 20 workshops for different groups of people, those mainly with a little access to computers or internet.

11- “To Copy or to Share Conferences”. 2006 – 2010

During my wok in CCE, I developed a series of cultural activities related to the intellectual property challenges in the digital environment. The goals were to talk about the problem from different approaches, from legal to the creative ones, to the industrial and consumer ones. There was conferences, workshops, and discussion panels with artist, lawyers, government personalities, among others.

C- Graphic Design

12- “CondorBart”. Graphics. 2007.

I took the image of Condorito, a chilean comic character, and it was mixed with the image of another famous tv character. The result was an image that reflect the cultural remix we are involved today. The idea was to talk about the hybrid cultures and the process of constant remix of memes, which are the basis of the cultural production.

13- “CD Enlaces”. CD Sleeve. 2005.

I made this graphics design for the CD book of this Latinamerican electronic music compilation, project created by a collaboration between many artist from Chile, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia.

14- “OFFF”. Animation. 2004.

This is an animation where I used some of the graphics I made for different projects. I tried to make a purely visual animation without visual effects, just using motions and rotations. Music: Boards of Canada.

15- “Politics in Education”. Digital Collage. 2004.

It consisted in the creation of three collages to be printed in Lambda system. The images were inspired in the imaginary about the educational ideologies and methods based on european books arrived in the first years of the XX century to Sudamerica. Those books had a great impact in the chilean educational methods, until today. This project was a collaboration with the chilean visual artistMario Soro.

16- “PLACE Project”. Graphics, collage. 2004.

The goal was to create 20 pages of graphic collage that represent the place where the artist is living, without using any digital tool, just using “analog” tools and materials, such as papers, pencils, objects, among others. I also made a t-shirt design for the exhibition. It was a project created by the design studio Vasava from Barcelona, Spain.Place Project. Book edited by Actar.

17- “Only for One”. Drawings on paper, printed book. 1998.

This is an experimental edition, consist in a mini drawing book inside an envelope. The idea was to publish a series of fast drawings I made during the lunch time. To make a relation between the idea of fast food with the fast drawing, I designed an envelope such as those for personal soup, and inside it the drawing book. It also has some instructions about how to enjoy the drawings.

D- Drawings And Handmade Artworks

18- “·^/¬|?¬[–”. Abstract comic. Paper, ink. 2009.

I usually make comics to share some deep ideas I have, trying to avoid the realistic representation. I try to experiment with abstract imaginary to explore issues like about the atom, the brain, the biology, among other issues sometimes more related to the science than the arts.

19- “Cola de Mono”. Drawings on paper, collage. 2006.

Cola de mono is the name of a traditional liquor in Chile, and it was used to name a comic magazine created for an exhibition of experimental comic in Chile. To make the Illustrations, I used cut images from old magazines, glued on paper, and then making drawings around them, and watch the result, with no previous idea about what to do.

20- “Collages”. Paper, scissors, glue. 1996 – 2011.

This kind of work is a favorite ones for me , very similar to make drawings. With the collages, I do not have plans to say something, is based purely in automatism to find the better composition possible with the material available at the moment, in a very unconscious and uncontrollable process. I worry just about the configuration and relationship of the elements, using paper, postit, cooper wires, office elements, pasted over some base material.

21- “Head and Brains”. Drawings on paper. 1996 – 2011.

This drawings are inspired in the mind, the head, the form of the brain, and thinking. It is a personal approach to the problem of the consciousness, the way we perceive the world and the relation between thinking and brain, soul and body, life and matter. My personal experience with epileptic crisis when I was a child left a deep mark on the way that I perceive the world. Leaving hands finding the shape by itself, drawing is like an physical anchor to the world, to avoid me be lost in the digital universe.

E- Texts.

22- “Buscando Señal…”. Córdoba, Argentina. 2009.

Buscando Señal – Lecturas sobre nuevos hábitos de consumo cultural” (Searching for a sign –
Lectures on new cultural consume habits”) is a book that compile text of different authors from social sciences and arts. Edited by Spanish Cultural Centre Cordoba (Argentina, 2009). For this book, I collaborated with the text “Tecnología, panorama y paradigmas: Cambios en la producción cultural en la era digital” (“Technology, panorama and paradigms: changes in the cultural production in the digital time”). This text talks about how the cultural produccion has changed due the recents technological advances, specially those related with digital tools.

23- “Flash Backup”. Córdoba, Argentina. 2009.

I was invited to collaborate in this book related to the media art production in Latinamerica. The book was produced by Modular collective from Cordoba, Argentina.

24- “TROYANO: Installing”. Book. 2007.

Troyano was a digital art collective I belonged. It was formed by Ignacio Nieto, Italo Tello and me. During 3 years we developed workshops, conferences and exhibitions in Chile, focused to talk about the state of the digital arts and its impact in the society. In that period of time we collaborated with different artist from many countries (EE UU, Holland, Canada, France, Spain, Argentina, etc.). We finished our collective work with the book “Installing”. The book was launched in a tour in the following cities: New York, Pennstate, Los Angeles, San Diego, Mexico DF, Bogota, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires.