E x p e r i e n c e

Dr. Gustavo Alfonso Rincon (Ph.D., M.Arch., M.F.A., B.Sc., B.A.

is a New Media Architectures artist, designer, research practioner, and scholar working at the intersection of architecture, computational arts, design engineering, installations, immersive worldmaking, instrument design, media, & Sciences.

Rincon's arts + design works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, while simultaneously acting as an educator/research practioner in the fields of art, design, entrepreneurship, media arts, and history/theory. His architectural works includes projects in which he served as an Architectural Designer, Computational Designer/Fabricator, and Design Director/Project Manager, for clients in the Americas, China, Europe, Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. Rincon's motivations is the creation of a new field of inquiry (Shaping Space as Information), integrating the Arts, Architecture, and the Sciences.

Talk: Digital Culture Speaker Series @ ASU School of Arts

New Media Architectures: A Vision of the Shaping of Space as Information for Uniting the Arts & Sciences

Education

PhD

Gustavo Alfonso Rincon (Ph.D., M.Arch., M.F.A, B.Sc., B.A.) received a Doctorate of Philosophy from the Media Arts & Technology Program (MAT) working for the AlloSphere Research Group in the California NanoSystems Institute at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Rincon is educated as a design architect | media arts researcher. Rincon also holds Masters Degrees in Architecture and Urban Design (Architecture and Urban Design) from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as well as a Masters in Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts School of Art (CalArts).He holds Bachelor's degrees of Science in Architecture from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and of Arts from the Art Department at University of Maryland, College Park (UMD).

Professional

Rincon worked as an Architectural Designer with architectural firms in Los Angeles, CA serving clients in the U.S., Europe, United Arab Emirates, and China. Simultaneously, he worked as an Industrial & Interactive Designer, creating events & theatrical set designs in which he combined media arts, computational design, and engineering into new multisensorial manufactured environments.

Rincon served as Director of the Foundation for Art Resources (F.A.R.) in Los Angeles for 4 years and created events collaborating with the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), Los Angeles Municipal Gallery (LAMAG) & Theatre, and Campus at Barnsdall Art Park, MAK Center for Art and Architecture (MAK) and Museum of Contemporary Arts, Los Angeles (MOCA).

Exhibitions

His collaborative projects with the AlloSphere Research Group were exhibited at various conferencesfor the ACM including the ACMMM 2017 Conference at the Computer History Museum in Palo Alto, California, SIGGRAPH 2020 Washington Convention Center in the D.C. (Virtual). Conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center in LA, CA - USA, SIGGRAPH 2023 Washington Convention Center in the D.C. (Virtual). Along with Conferences for ISEA including the ISEA 2017 Conference at Museo de Arte de Caldas in Manizales, Colombia, the ISEA 2019 Conference at the Asia Culture Center in Gwaungju, Republic of Korea. The premiere opening exhibition of the Quantum Composition Research Series at the The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation (MOXI), Santa Barbara, CA. Is part of the core team to develope the Sensorium for Pacific Standard Time (PST) at the xMPL, UCI opening August 2024. Finally, also exhibited collaborative works and demos with the translab and published with the Four Eyes Lab at UCSB.

P r a c t i c e

New Media Architectures

| Architecture, Art, Media Arts, & Science Research | Art & Design | Arts + Design Research: Architecture + Computation + Engineering + Fabrication + UI + UX + VR + XR |

SIGGRAPH 2020

MYRIOI

The AlloSphere Research Team

| Art/Architecture, Creative New Media Design, & Complex Systems + Organizational Research - An Advising, Planning, & Research firm offering strategic/systemic evaluation for business (for-profit & nonprofit) |

NMA critically explores a vision of the unification of information as space, focusing on the intersection of the arts, architecture and sciences. Everything is information. Space is information. Complex systems are information. Our world outside of our understanding is information. All movement around that links all of humanity together, commerce, the internet, and telecommunications is information. All of knowledge, and the imaginary potential of speculative futures is information.

Today, information is organized and shaped by algorithms, the abstract nature that forms our physical reality of mass and scale plus time. The algo-computational paradigm that controls our world uses information as data; has changed our societal evolutionary trajectory. This research practice is an exploration of shaping space and the existing underlying structure of movements of complex systems that create our world. NMA is investigating the hidden potentials of informational structures as opportunities in the creation of a new field of research for the creation of new equitable worlds.

R E S E A R C H

Dissertation

Title:

Shaping Space as Information: A Conceptual Framework for New Media Architectures

ISEA 2019

ETHERIAL

The AlloSphere Research Team

Abstract:

New Media Architectures (NMA) will be introduced as a new field of research. In a series of designs, exhibitions, and studies, a New Media Architectural methodology is presented as a conceptual framework that will draw upon the strengths of the disciplines of art, architecture, media arts, and the sciences to form a new hybrid discipline. From those fields, three subareas of research form the field of NMA: Algorithms, Worldmaking, and Instrument Design.

Starting from the notion that every material object/structure embodies the information that enables its use, the computational platform facilitates exploring generative information constructs as ever-changing dynamic structures, comparable to the self-organizing systems found in nature. Everything is information. Space is information. Complex Systems are information. Our world outside of our understanding is information; all movement around information links all of humanity together, commerce, the internet, and telecommunications. The use of self-organizing systems as a research challenge is a true reflection of how our world functions through our contemporary understanding of the sciences.

The problems that are engaged within the computational platform as a tool, the formal computational mathematical languages and structures are not used as a new spatial sensory paradigm for discovery. One question: at the dawn of a new era of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum computing, how will we shift the paradigm from the current limitations in domain specificity of the software, accommodating this new field of NMA? Additionally, how will we accommodate the spatial environment encompassing multi-dimensionality of dynamically varying data as information in the various sensory modalities (sight, sound, and the other senses). Each of the arts research areas has its own unique problems to solve, but focusing on how each one produces patterns and space in time reveals opportunities to explore and make new discoveries benefiting humanity as a whole.

A study of forms, patterns, and spaces has been undertaken for creating generative media artworks designed for amplifying the reciprocal relationship between an environment that shapes its content and content that shapes its environment. As part of my practice in the media arts, I used the domain knowledge of architecture to tackle problems of art, engineering, and science to reveal form and shape.

The primary focus of this research is the generation of unique forms of architecture using agent-based behaviors controlled by self-organizing systems. These unique forms of architecture determine, and are, in turn, determined by, the shape of virtual worlds/environments. This dissertation draws from the concept of complex systems to investigate relationships between the systems’ parts and their whole and how the systems’ parts give rise to its collective behavior. This notion of complex systems theory will be applied to the making of this new field. While the computational platform that controls our world uses information as data and has changed our societal progress, currently, the algorithm is the tool that generates the content and the model and makes the world and the information that resides within it. Complexity becomes an essential key for shaping space as information.

Another important focus of this research is the investigation of software platforms that provide the fundamental instruments that produce the content, and that help make and shape the virtual worlds/environments.

Revealing these manmade and natural systems requires a new conceptual framework for an emergent research field, an evolution of a series of investigations that combines artistic and lab investigations creating experimental works and prototypes. The challenges of each artistic immersive work or scientific visualization problem build on each other to probe questions of composition, narrative, and computational system logic. My independent experiments leveraging projects from the Four Eyes Lab and TransLab will be highlighted. The work with Dr. Kuchera-Morin and the AlloSphere Research Team will be cited as part of my contributions are:

1. Creation of a new conceptual framework for the Media Arts: New Media Architectures

2. Advancing a research practice based on New Media Architectures

3. Creation of a historical foundational timeline tracing New Media Architectures

A C A D E M I C S

New Media Architectures (AR/VR/XR), Computation Arts, Theory, & Speculative Design

Rincon's academic and professional experiences are wide-ranging in Art, Architecture and Media Arts, I find that they all converge into Media as “Information”. Currently, I am focused on fundamental research into media analysis through the medium of instrument and tool creation (Hardware & Software) and cultural production. A researh practice facilitating scientific experiences inspiring an evoled formulation as an artist, academic, and professional.

...

At UCSB Rincon simultaneously worked as a teaching assistant for both the Media Arts & Technology Program (MAT) and the Technology Management Program (TMP) for the College of Engineering. He also worked for the Computer Science Department (CS), the UC Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA), and MAT on special program projects.

W O R K S

Conceptual Art, Computation, Curatorial, & Design

I investigate aesthetics as institutional critique traversing Agent Based Modeling Algorithms, Art, Architecture & Design, Complexity, Computer Music, Media Arts, Science, & Mathematics. My overall body of work also comprises of exhibitions, experimental graphics, events, fabrication research, instrument design engineering works, media installations, performance and technology research.

End of the Year Show

White Noise

I believe in community empowerment and unity through participation in content creation (Art, Events & Lectures). I have prioritized a practice to facilitate learning outcomes enabling project implementation and knowledge creation.

R I N C O N

As a first generation, bilingual Colombian American, born in Queens, New York, I was inspired to pursue educatational challenges in top public and private Universities in the United States. I have travelled internationally and lived in six cities on the east and west coasts of the United States as well as lived in Bogota, Colombia in South America.

I was enriched by pioneering professors in Art, Design and Media Arts. I support a culturally diverse community through my art, design, and community practice. My work in the areas of architectural design, teaching, and professional curatorial practices, have also aided in my abilities in building a diverse community with inclusive processes in participation.

My role is to inspire young minds of all ages, challenge authority, and facilitate innovation leading to new research visions for worldchanging.