MARCELO SORIA-RODRÍGUEZ
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez is an artist and strategist. He is interested in the whole range of possibilities that a given system can cover and interact with. The role of technological advances in this regard concerning society has been the focus of his work on innovation and strategy in a handful of companies, from small startups to large financial multinationals. He has released critically acclaimed generative art collections at FxHash.xyz and Art Blocks Curated series 6. He co-founded a global data practice at BBVA, a global financial firm, where he led the data strategy activities. He co-founded Databeers, an informal data literacy movement present in 10 countries, and has been an advisor, mentor, and investor in several technological startups. He studied Telecommunications Engineering and Signal Processing. He writes occasionally on his website, iillucid.com, about art, strategy, and random thoughts around these topics.
“The marriage of advanced technology and human activities and habits raises questions that can only be explored in the fields of philosophy and the arts. The appearance of new artificial beings that are interwoven in our societies forces us to rethink many aspects of our human lives so far. What we take for granted begs to be inspected under the light of the potentiality of “artificial intelligence”, or just other types of beings that have a different nature to not just humans, but to all of the animal kingdom, we know. Humans act largely based on emotions, yet these beings have none so far, or intent, or free will. But they are non-deterministic, and coupled with the scale of digital, internet, and new decentralized models, they effectively push the boundaries of human scale further, while forcing us to reevaluate many concepts around our species and its exclusive characteristics. What makes us human, how do we relate to each other, to ourselves, to these new entities, to the world? This opens up many ways of exploration. I am mostly interested in emotional responses, as these are key to our behavior: what would a machine emotion be like? Can they someday understand ours? Can we understand theirs? Can we understand our own or those of other women and men? My work serves me as a tool to think around several topics related to these questions. Emotions, learning, perception.”
identity space through light and three layers: a digital/analog study, 2024
Exhibited at Art Salon Budapest “Interthinking” in 2024 Oct.
This artwork establishes a dialogue with the legacy of László Moholy-Nagy, focusing on his exploration of light and space modulators, themes closely aligned with the artist's own practice. Inspired by Moholy-Nagy’s Photogram Mondgesicht (1926), the piece reflects on the deformation and modulation of mathematical space to create head-like figures. The work consists of a box with three vertically moving trays, each containing a different layer of the artwork. The main layer features a head figure enclosed in a space with strategically cut holes, allowing light to enter in a specific way. Another layer recreates the light rays entering the space, and the final layer simulates shadows cast by a similar configuration of holes. This multi-layered design invites the viewer to engage with the piece by moving around and exploring its hidden elements, evoking a personal interaction with light, space, and perception.
rêves de papier et l'identité des mèmes
Exhibited at Art Salon “Node to Node” in 2023 Oct.
This is a work that explores the notion of memes, in the sense of the term coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, expanding further from the realm of humans into any cognoscible manifestation. It explores a novel way of bringing artworks into the physical medium by repurposing techniques devised for the restoration of cultural heritage into a process to give birth to new artworks.
Richard Dawkings proposed the meme as a cultural gene, as a form existence for ideas and cultural tokens. Much in the same way that the selfish gene, also proposed by Dawkins, is an agent with its own will and uses us to perpetuate itself, memes are ideas that will use any vessel available to perpetuate themselves. Is the art we produce just a collection of memes taking hostages? Is the artist a puppet in the hands of ideas that exist in a different plane? In this sense, it is absolutely certain that AIs will exhibit what we call "creativity", if such creativity is an expression of ideas that are not unique to humans, but rather have a completely different and independent nature. In this way, this work explores the birth of paper artworks that serve as yet another vessel for ideas to express themselves. If humans have dreams, if machine will have dreams, why not paper? Why can paper not have dreams, it is the dream of a meme?
To this end, it expands on an algorithm that I created for an exhibition about ecologies, "ecologías C". In that work, I explored the notion of self-identity, of the image that we cast as an expression of how we want to be recognized, which is an act of self-discovery. Humans have a tendency to give much importance to their appearance because it shapes the environment where their interactions with others will take place. Any system is shaped by its set of rules, assets, mechanics, and the decisions we make give access progressively to a set of possibilities which is bound by our context _and_ said decisions. I wanted to reflect on how will AIs present themselves: will they also develop an affection for displaying themselves in any given manner? And taking this reflection into this work: are our assumptions on how we should look like influenced by those Dawkian memes? If our cultural beliefs are a collection of memes finding their way through time, it certainly seems possible. If that is the case, those machine identities could potentially be shaped by the _same_ memes. Machines and any other system complex enough to express the intent of the meme at hand. A human that creates an algorithm to obtain an output that is then summoned in the shape of a paper that represents the artwork is just another scenario for an idea to find space for its expression.
I was also intrigued by the idea of a digital artwork that becomes physical not by means of printing or painting or plotting, all of them acts of overlaying some kind of ink / paint onto a blank canvas, but rather by being the medium itself. In the summer of 2022 I made an experiment at Minium Restaura, the art restoration lab of Cruz Ramos Martínez, a professional restorer of cultural heritage. We went with my daughters to take part in an impromptu workshop on paper making. As we went on, an idea came to me: can we create paper in such a way that the artwork is part of the paper itself, not printed? We did a quick experiment then, and left the idea to collect time until September 2023. Then, using the aforementioned algorithm, expanding its space of possibilities by allowing more noise into its composition rules, I generated several works to choose two pieces to create on paper.
The pieces are created using paper restoration techniques employed in the restoration of old manuscripts, old artworks on paper, etc. It does not imply any technique of transferring the artwork on to the paper, but rather it mainly consists of creating a paper from scratch that will become the artwork itself, using colored natural fibers (mostly linen in this case, as it provides with better fibre-fibre bonding and stability). The leaf casting method is employed, where a tub with water is used, a template is placed on a permeable surface (a reemay), and then fibers are poured, coloured with the tint that the shapes in that template are going to acquire. The rest of the surface is covered in non-permeable material (some type of plastic, mylar or others), and a suctioning pump is activated. The water will drain through the places that the template dictates, and the fibers will accumulate on the permeable surface (the reemay). Then, another template is applied and the process is repeated with other coloured fibers, until desired. The paper is then extracted with the reemay and placed sandwidched with drying paper and some weight. The paper fibers bond together, so the final result is one continuous paper, not a layer with inks, oils, acrylic or any other material layered on top. The artwork does then become the paper itself, not something imprinted or transferred onto the medium, but rather the medium itself. In this sense, it is more akin to sculpting than to printing (hence the name "leaf casting").
The technique of leaf casting was invented in the late 1950s, when Esther Alkalay and Yulia Petrovna Nyuksha began experimenting with the concept of filling missing areas in paper with fibers suspended in a liquid medium. By 1961, equipment for this purpose had been developed and was in use in laboratories located in Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. In the later years, various kinds of machines were in use in restoration laboratories worldwide, and their use is declining due to the high cost per restored work, with institutions leaning towards digitalization of old documents.
The creation process involved using a spatula to avoid disaster when peeling off the template from the casting bed: paper fibers accumulate and some remain over the template, not just in the given window, and when pulling the template off they will pull in turn from the just born piece of paper. The spatula used was one built from a little spring from a truck, created at a forgery located in the restoration works of the Alhambra in Granada, Spain. A spatula that was used to restore parts of that national monument, a world heritage site, was used to help give birth to these two artworks.
The fact that this technique is falling in disuse makes it even more interesting. Mixing digital generative techniques with artisanal paper making with techniques of cultural restoration that are slowly fading away is a way to question the established assumptions that reign sovereign in our society. As we cease to spend resources on preserving the cultural heritage and choose to store a digital representation of the artifact, are we letting certain memes disappear? If the medium is the message, are we not altering the message? Is bringing digital generative into artisanal paper making a way of understanding that the idea can take many shapes? Is the world we live in just one of the many possibilities that could have been, had we chosen something different? Which leads to the more useful question, what are the choices we have now and what is the space of possibilities that they open up next? How do those spaces compare to each other? Which is the reality we want to live in? Which memories do we want to create for their future preservation? Is our identity what we really are or, if it's just the byproduct of our choices, is it really so important that we can go to war for it?
PAL W/ Iskra Velitchkova
Exhibited at Art SG in 2023. Jan.
PAL is about connections, their origins, roots, the consequences of how we deal with them, and their inescapable imperfections. Is there beauty in the imperfections? Like in relationships, where there is a constant tension between that ideal –clean, pure and pristine– vision of our starting point, in the co- creation between humans and machines the same thing happens. Where do emotions emerge from when we code art? What’s the role of mechanisms, screens and other instruments we use to visualize the work? PAL is a collaboration between Marcelo Soria-Rodriguez and Iskra Velitchkova where both are exploring, for the first time together, all these questions by a very simple premise: a circle in the middle, that represents the ideal union, approached by each in a unique and vulnerable way, with two generative systems that play with the notion of circle and try to approach the central, perfect union in different manners. PAL is a curation of 100 individual artworks based on a unique generative system. Once selected, the artists recorded them onto a VHS tape. During a 4 days live performance at Kate Vass Gallery during Art Singapore 2023, the artists played the tape continuously at the booth.
No hay respuestas, sólo hay decisiones
Exhibited at Phygital show in 2022. April
“Everything takes place in time, which shapes and binds all the activity we know and can imagine. Time has its own dimensions. Time is a multi-resolution affair, at least from the point of the observer. Besides what general relativity remarks about time, there are other observer-related effects. Time is meaningful to us because we are aware of it. Because our cognitive experience, our own perception of things, takes place in time and makes a meaning out of time itself. This perception of time is also relative. When we are young humans we have a much different relationship to time than when we grow old. When we are enjoying the moment vs. when we are afraid or suffering. When we are bored, when we are expecting something to happen. The way we perceive time influences all those things that take place within time. Hence, how we perceive time is how perceive everything.”
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, Entretiempos #696
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, Polycircle Composition, Unnumbered IV
Iskra Velitchkova and Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, PAL #3
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, polycircle color study, #objkt4objkt edition
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, ecologías - A #1796
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, el inefable momento #901
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, ecologías - B #782
Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, ecologías - A #1803
identity space through light and three layers: a digital/analog study, 2024
Handmade paperwork via leafcasting (cotton and linen fibers, natural dyes) with handmade container (pinewood, white paint)
Size: 90 x 93,6 x 26,6 cm
Unique
Description:
When invited to create an artwork that would establish a dialogue with the work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, it quickly becomes clear that one can only talk to a small portion of his legacy. I have always been interested in his light and space modulators, concepts that are close to my practice as well. I employ mathematically defined spaces and deform them, also numerically, to arrive at possible spaces that reflect on perception, how each person's own view of the world is different and necessarily affected by their own personal experience and nature. At the same time, I came across one particular photogram that caught my eye (Photogram Mondgesicht, 1926). I had been experimenting with the deformation / modulation of mathematical space to create head-like figures from just a sphere, and this photogram reminded me of many particular shapes that came of my experiments.
I decided to create an artwork that would show one of the images that reminded me of this photogram, exposing the image in a specific setting that would allow the exhibitor or owner to play with the artwork, modulating its aspect: I built a box with three vertically moving trays, each of them containing one layer of artwork. The main image is the head figure enclosed in a olume that has certain holes cut so that light enters in a particular way. (a light modulation in virtual space). Another layer is a recreation of the light rays that enter that volume. Another, final layer is a computer simulation of the shadows cast by the same type of holes, in a larger space with more holes. This creates a layer that partially conceals the image behind, forcing the viewer to get close to the artwork and move around to see behind completely.
My digital artworks are typically interactive, and I wanted to leave that possibility here as well. The viewer can choose to lift the layers or displace them to the point where they want. The reason for the interactivity lies in my generative work. In generative systems, the combination of parameters happens randomly, but a certain combination is not, so to speak, set in stone. Taking a random combination of parameters, controlled by the rules set by the artist, is only a starting point. I typically allow the user (in a digital work context) to change some parameter, play around with some controls, effectively adding more random (from the standpoint of the artist) input to the artwork. I wanted to expose certain degree of possibility as well in this physical artwork. The trays and the guides that contain them are left in their bare wood state, only slightly covered in irregular and thin paint, to portray what's fixed (the box with 3 openings for the trays) and what's changing (the trays). One could potentially choose to remove all the trays and leave the box. What is the artwork?
Also, the artwork layers are made with a technique called leaf-casting, where I create the layers by hand, employing differently coloured paper pulp and casting (almost sculpting) a paper to mimic the artwork that I created digitally using my algorithmic, generative techniques. This is a concept I have explored earlier, where the artwork is not transferred to paper, such as a print or a silkscreen, but rather the artwork is the paper itself, much like a sculpture. This plays with the notion of the origin of the ideas and thoughts that make up our identities: do we come up with them, or do they preexist?
In this sense, the artwork is not the digital image I create, but rather it is an idea that exists in a non-tangible plane, that takes shape in a digital image, a handmade paper, etc. The artwork will consist of 3 layers of handmade paper in this technique, attached to the trays using thread.