ArtFutura is an annual festival of digital culture. It was first staged in Barcelona in 1990. Other sites have included Buenos Aires, Ibiza, London, and Montevideo.
ArtFutura is directed by Montxo Algora.
ArtFutura contains conferences, workshops, exhibitions, live shows and an audiovisual program which includes the latest novelties in digital creativity.
Much of the ArtFutura content is developed in Barcelona and Madrid although connections by means of video conferences are established with other cities in which the festival is held.
Among the cities in which ArtFutura is presented are included Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Granada, Lisbon, London, Madrid, México DF, Montevideo, Palma de Mallorca, Paris, Punta del Este, São Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Torino, Tenerife, Vigo and Vitoria-Gasteiz.
GaleriaFutura is the division of ArtFutura destined to the exhibitions of digital art.
One of its most important projects was the "Souls&Machines" ( Máquinas&Almas) exhibit that was presented at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain and curated by Montxo Algora and José Luis de Vicente.
It included the works of Paul Friedlander, Sachiko Kodama, Theo Jansen, Daniel Rozin, Chico McMurtrie, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Daniel Canogar, Evru, David Byrne, David Hanson, Vuk Ćosić, Pierre Huyghe, Harun Farocki, Muntadas, Ben Rubin, Mark Hansen, Antoni Abad and Natalie Jeremijenko.
For each edition of the festival, ArtFutura edits a printed catalog which includes a selection of articles on digital art and culture.
Joaquín Torres-García was a prominent Uruguayan-Spanish artist, theorist, and author, renowned for his international impact in the modern art world. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, his family moved to Catalonia, Spain, where his artistic journey began. His career spanned several countries including Spain, New York, Italy, France, and Uruguay. A founder of art schools and groups, he notably established the first European abstract-art group, Cercle et Carré, in Paris in 1929 which included Piet Mondrian and Kandinsky. Torres-García's legacy is deeply rooted in his development of Modern Classicism and Universal Constructivism.
Augusto de Campos is a Brazilian writer who was a founder of the Concrete poetry movement in Brazil. He is also a translator, music critic and visual artist.
Rebecca Allen is an American digital artist inspired by the aesthetics of motion, the study of perception and behavior and the potential of advanced technology. Her artwork takes the form of experimental video, large-scale performances, live simulations and virtual and augmented reality art installations. It addresses issues of gender, identity and what it means to be human as technology redefines our sense of reality.
Luis Camnitzer is a German-born Uruguayan artist, curator, art critic, and academic who was at the forefront of 1960s Conceptual Art. Camnitzer works primarily in sculpture, printmaking, and installation, exploring topics such as repression, institutional critique, and social justice.
Oscar Mariné Brandi is a designer, illustrator, expert typographer and professional artist. His work includes designs for filmmakers like Pedro Almodóvar, Alex de la Iglesia, and Julio Médem, musicians like Bruce Springsteen, The Psychedelic Furs or Brian Eno, the press and a variety of firms He is the founder of OMB Graphic Design studio in Madrid.
Daniel García Andújar is a self-taught, outsider visual media artist, activist, and art theorist from Spain. He lives and works in Barcelona. His work has been exhibited widely, including Manifesta 4, the Venice Biennale and documenta 14 Athens, Kassel. He has directed numerous workshops for artists and social collectives worldwide.
Blu is the pseudonym of an Italian artist who conceals his real identity. He was born in Senigallia. He lives in Bologna and has been active in street art since 1999.
José-Carlos Mariátegui is a scientist, writer, curator and scholar on culture, new media and technology. He explores the intersection of culture and technology, history of cybernetics, media archeology, digitization, video archives, and the impact of technology on memory institutions. Born in 1975, he is the son of Peruvian psychiatrist Javier Mariategui and the grandson of Jose Carlos Mariategui, the most influential Latin American Marxist thinker of the 20th century. He studied Mathematics and Biology at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Perú and did both Masters and Doctoral degrees in Information Systems and Innovation from the London School of Economics and Political Science – LSE (London). His PhD, dated 2013, was titled "Image, information and changing work practices: the case of the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative" under the supervision of Prof. Jannis Kallinikos. Has been involved in teaching and research activities, as well as published a variety of articles on art, science, technology, society and development. He founded Alta Tecnología Andina (ATA), non-profit organization dedicated to the development and research of artistic and scientific theories in Latin America. Founder of the International Festival of Video and Electronic Art in Lima (1998–2003). Founding Director of the José Carlos Mariátegui Museum, in Lima, Peru (1995-2005). He is currently an Adjunct Professor at LUISS (Rome), a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Media and Communications at the LSE, a Board Member of Future Everything (UK), a Member of the Board of Trustees (Kuratorium) of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe (Germany) and Editorial Board member for the Leonardo Book Series at MIT Press. He also chairs the Museo de Arte de Lima - MALI Education Committee.
Mona Kim is an American designer born in South Korea and educated in the United States. Kim is a multidisciplinary design consultant and a visual artist for cultural and commercial projects.
Sachiko Kodama is a Japanese artist. She is best known for her artwork using ferrofluid, a dark colloidal suspension of magnetic nano-particles dispersed in solution which remains strongly magnetic in its fluid. By controlling the fluid with a magnetic field, it is formed to create complex 3-dimensional shapes as a "liquid sculpture".
Leandro Katz is an Argentine-born writer, visual artist and filmmaker known primarily for his films and photographic installations. His works include long-term, multi-media projects that delve into Latin American history through a combination of scholarly research, anthropology, photography, moving images and printed texts.
Antoni Miralda is a Spanish multidisciplinary artist.
Antoni Abad i Roses is a Spanish artist. He began his career as a sculptor, and evolved over time towards video art and later in net.art and other forms of new media.
Paul Friedlander is a light artist who first trained as a physicist. Friedlander obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics and Mathematics at the University of Sussex and was tutored by Sir Anthony Leggett who later was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on superfluidity. In 1976 he graduated with a B.A. in Fine Art at Exeter College of Art, UK. Friedlander worked as a lighting and stage designer for theatrical productions and avant-garde music before devoting himself to kinetic art at the age of 36. He lives and works in London, United Kingdom (UK).
Fabián Panisello is an Argentinian-Spanish composer, conductor, and professor.
Ulises Carrión, considered as "perhaps Mexico’s most important conceptual artist", is widely known for his decisive role in defining and conceptualizing the artistic genre of artists' book through his manifesto The New Art of Making Books (1975). But his awareness and interest in new forms of art and innovative operations suggests that he was active in most of the artistic fields of his time. His activities include the creation of artworks, the development of theory, and the generation of multiple independent initiatives. Carrión's works include not only a great number of bookworks - as he named artists' books - and unique artworks, but also performances, film, video, and sound works. Carrión also did several editing, publishing, and curation projects, a couple of notable public projects, and various significant works and initiatives within the international community of mail artists during its most creative period. Equally essential for his artistic career is his engagement in several artists' run spaces. All his artistic activities are based on his detailed and rigorous theories.
Björk Digital is an "immersive" virtual reality exhibit by Icelandic musician Björk featuring 360-degree VR music videos from her eighth studio album, Vulnicura. The exhibit debuted at Carriageworks in Sydney, Australia as part of the Vivid Sydney festival on 4 June 2016 and has traveled across the globe to Tokyo, London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, and other cities around the globe. Originally announced as an 18 month tour, the exhibit is still running.
Carlos María "Rhod" Rothfuss was a Uruguayan-Argentine artist who specialized in painting and sculpture. He was considered a key theoretician for the development of the concrete art movement in Argentina in the 1940s and was a founding member of the international Latin American abstract art movement, Grupo Madí.
Ladislao Pablo Győri is an Argentine engineer, digital and visual artist, essayist and poet, most known as the creator of Virtual Poetry in 1995, which has been described as "of utmost significance in advancing literature as sculptural object in electronic space". He has been described as one of the rare "poet-practitioners dedicated to 3-D art".