ERNESTO SALAZAR RODRÍGUEZ
NEW MEDIA ARTIST, RESEARCHER
QUITO, 1983
MFA in Combined Artistic Languages, Universidad Nacional de las Artes, 2018. Buenos Aires, Argentina
Degree in Visual Arts, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, 2007 – 2011. Quito, Ecuador
Graphic Design, Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial, 2000 – 2002. Quito, Ecuador
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My work delves into how individuals are formed and how their identities become visible within new communication technologies, which act as a constant and ubiquitous flow. I am especially interested in how minorities inhabit virtual spaces, which I perceive as sovereign territories in perpetual transformation. I think of (and feel myself within) them as places of encounter, affection, and affirmation.
In my artistic research, I have explored the coding and digitization of my body as a way of narrating my own tensions—my wavering. I am drawn to Augmented Reality both as metaphor and as practice: an extension of the corporeal into the technological, a bridge that connects body, time, identity, and space. I am also interested in the relentless expansion of data on the internet, which I call “dataformation”: a process in which I imagine the conditions are set for an artificial intelligence to invent its own version of the world, manipulating language and reorganizing meaning from within the network.
My interests unfold between speculative fiction and reflections on the appropriation of technology. From there, I turn to three-dimensional modeling, 3D printing, augmented and virtual reality, digitally generated video, programming, device interventions, and multimedia installations.
Today, my search opens toward another sensitivity: that of a body and an identity rethought through microbiota, biology, mechanisms, artificial intelligence, illness, and mutualism with the vegetal. These questions have also led me to approach matter through the tangible, finding in borosilicate glass, ceramics, and wood new ways of thinking.