Unsettled Artifacts: Technological Speculations from Latin America: Introduction

For the past 35 years, the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery has presented technological and scientific artifacts produced by artists from around the world and has witnessed the evolution of technological development and the transformation of cultural production that it has influenced. Since the early 1980s, SIGGRAPH has been one of the few venues to consistently exhibit speculative artifacts for critical inquiry brought about computer technology. So, one could argue that a historical analysis of the Art Gallery can indeed expose the anticipatory nature of art in helping us to imagine new worlds. The motivation for the 2017 Art Gallery was, in fact, not only to examine the current state of art, science, and technology, but also to return a sense of "agency" to these technological artifacts and to help us recognize that we all make the choices that create the future. Therefore, convinced of the power of the poetics of technological speculation, and with the intention of mapping the ground on which we can imagine alternative futures, the Art Gallery traveled south in order to exhibit works of art produced outside the traditional centers of industrial and technological development, by artists living and working in Latin America.