Patricio González Vivo is an artist with an experimental tinkering-based practice inspired by the mechanics and aesthetics of mapping instruments, including star maps, compasses, telescopes, and satellites. His work is generative and interactive; he often creates symbolic elements to invite people into an experience of presence, play, and imagination. As an art therapist, he witnessed trauma healed through play with symbolic substitutes. His art uses symbols to open the possibility of what-if, to free us from the gravity of the factual and allow us to re-imagine.

Patricio is currently the Principal Graphic Engineer at Runway, helping to invent the next generation of creativity tools. His work has been shown at GROW, FILE, CODE+, Espacio Fundación Telefónica, and FASE. He's spoken at eyeo, Resonate, MIT Media Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University, and taught at Parsons, ITP, SFPC, and at the Instituto Universitario Nacional de Arte in Argentina. His Book of Shaders is a foundational text, and his open-source tools and libraries are widely used for art making.

Patricio González Vivo was born in Buenos Aires. He was licensed as a clinical psychologist at Universidad del Salvador, and received a degree in Expressive Art Therapy from PCETI-Argentina Institute. He was a practicing therapist until 2012, and he earned an MFA in Design & Technology at Parsons in 2014. He’s currently based in North Carolina and Buenos Aires, on unceded Eno & Lumbee, and Günün a küna land.

Session
The Stars Are Free: Time Portals and Holistic Technology

We’ll talk about ancient and traditional practices of time and divination, and imagine a possible future that requires a return to holistic technologies, and globally connected local communities. We’ll show projects of folks who are preparing for that possible future by building atomic modular technology and practicing reuse technology as emerging technology. We’ll cover some lessons learned making our own atomic modular tools, like glsl viewer, and the alchemy of making our own digital art with recycled e-waste. Our inspirations include: birds, clouds, Octavia Butler, Rasheedah Philllips and Black Quantum Futurism, Ursula Franklin, Hundred Rabbits artist collective, the Solar Protocol project, and Precious Plastic’s localized global recycling network. Oh! and we’ll have stickers :)