Q: Fairly recently, I reluctantly joined Twitter, and I stayed for your plotter drawings, which I encountered thanks to an algorithm. Not only are the works elegant, intricate, and graceful, but it was exciting to see the familiar movement of the plotter pen, in the form of a gif or a video clip, something so physically material interspersed with the hyper-digital generative art on my feed. Could you tell me more about your work with plotters, and how it relates to or is distinct from your digital generative art practice?

A: The plotter work is completely different from my digital work. A few years ago, when I decided to quit my job and begin my journey in art, I spent a year entirely focused on exploring where I wanted to go. I had the clear vision that whatever I would do, it would be connected to and based on technology, but I needed to link to something physical. My work—my life—is always based on roots, connections, and relationships. After several months of theoretical explorations I decided to take action. I bought a pottery wheel without knowing what I was going to do with it, but I started to learn about clay and porcelain. I was so intrigued by how to bring my algorithms into something that is pure and simple as clay. Then I bought a plotter and I started to explore how to use it to paint on the irregular surface. And I just fell in love with it and I forgot my original mission! Both artisan activities allow me to escape from the normal perception of time. The experimentation became the work itself.

Q: Your website opens with a proposition: “I don’t think we should make technology more human, I believe that we have to push technology forward to understand us better.” This reminds me of Vera Molnar’s attitude toward computing technology; from the beginning, when she was met with criticism for using such a ‘cold’ machine to make art, she argued that using the computer could actually bring us closer to the human aspects of creativity. In what ways have systems, algorithms, and neural networks helped you understand yourself better, as an artist and/or as a human?

A: After many years working and dealing with data, at some point I realized I was more interested in the algorithms themselves than in the data. I had the chance to work with very talented people from whom I learned a lot about the science behind our technological processes today. Techniques like Deep Learning opened to me a new world of possibilities to map our world. Understanding how machines trace our behaviours and classify them into several dimensions (not just the three we are used to), understanding how we are establishing distances between ourselves and our context (which book the algorithm recommends to me, which song, which person). it’s something bigger than what we used to think. It’s about finding a new kind of distance, which is not physical distance but it is still a distance.

I mean, formalizing these connections between us and things we belong to, the people we love or potentially do, it feels like somehow, an unprecedented encyclopedia about ourselves. Even if we are far from having true intelligent machines, we are building the basis for that. I really don’t think all this work has to be focused on a mission to replicate human identity—there are enough people on Earth—but I think technology is how we unlock mysteries. We are limited in our perceptions, we can not even understand our own feelings sometimes. We tend to be more rational because we have learned this is the way we deal with complicated situations; but we are much more than a brain and our emotional side—our passions—guide us ultimately. This is why, my utopian dream, is that after a long history of human explorations and deviations, our ultimate goal is to process who we are and what makes us human. And if machines can help with that, it would be a welcome change.