Alvaro Castro

(Córdoba, 1983)

Artist, researcher and software engineer. Trained in programming languages and the study of space, Castro's work focuses on the broad field of architecture and the generation of visual solutions for urban environments and non-linear systems. In his work he explores the intersection of traditional abstract painting and digital reality, using advanced software tools that permeate the physical and digital worlds. His artistic activity has focused on the programming of visual systems, artificial intelligence and emerging systems. In this way, it creates combinations of Paintings and Digital Entities made of Neural Networks, Cellular Automata, Self-Modifying Code and Evolutionary Computations. His methodology has led him on numerous occasions to position himself in fields far from art. He has worked with the NextLimit Technologies R&D team and has carried out independent research, sometimes in close contact with research teams and entities such as the National Institute of Bioinformatics, the Madrid medialab and architectural firms. His work has been shown in: 2010 Fundación Vida 12.0 Telefónica, Special Mention, 2009 Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany), 2008 LABoral Center for Art and Industrial Creation (Gijón), 2006 Ars Electronica Festival, Electrolobby (Linz, Austria), Interactive? Medialab Madrid, Centro Conde Duque (Madrid, Spain), among others. He has participated in Medialab Madrid as a technical assistant. He has also presented Vacuum Virtual Machine (2008), graphic software that explores the self-organization of complex systems by visualizing them as a three-dimensional network in constant change. The graph appears in the form of a delicate open lattice of lines connecting regularly spaced nodes; lines are fixed or released from their anchors to reconfigure themselves into another form. The lattice structure rotates, so the viewer has the sensation of looking into its inner workings. This ever-redrawing graph is the external expression of a virtual machine, which works incessantly to develop code to alter its self-expression.