Alvaro Rodríguez Badel

Statement

Álvaro Rodríguez Badel is a media artist from Bogotá – Colombia, a country he has been discovering and has influenced his work due to its biodiversity and magic. He creates all his works underlined by the idea of representing nature through digital mediums and exploring how logical or computing processes understand the world around us. How do computers or logical systems perceive or represent nature? Having a mostly self-taught understanding of computer software, photogrammetry, 3D printing, or any other contemporary digital imagery technique, Rodríguez Badel ends up playing around with and exploring new ways of representing the world, always trying to land in new unexplored universes. That is how gigantic 3D Scans of mountains or waterfalls end up being printed with such quality and precision that you face yourself against a new way of perceiving nature through the eyes of technology.

GlogauAIR Project

“The forest that sustains life” is a project that proposes a look at the Amazon through a series of 3D scans made with photogrammetry, which interpret and translate the landscape, generating a dialogue between the binary and the organic: it exposes a contemporary interpretation of nature. These measurements with light show the most detailed shapes of the trees, trace the geography of the rivers and are lost in the colors of the flora. Photogrammetry, a technique that has recently been used in the video game industry, is a process by means of which through a series of photographs you get a coordinate system of points in three dimensions that represent the position, dimensions and color of a physical object. This occurs after photographing the subject from different angles and as a result, a digital 3D model is obtained. It’s in this process where the works take on their greatest meaning, since the organic, natural forms face a process of mathematical abstraction in which math formulas draw nature. In other words, the data from the scans will be processed to generate a series of two-dimensional and video works that will lead the public to perceive the ecosystem in a new way.

The project will focus on portraying the diversity of three key actors in the forest. On the one hand, there are the trees who are in charge of trapping the water and regulating the temperature through their capture of carbon dioxide. Secondly, the importance of the flowers of these trees for their reproduction, which is also directly related to the fauna of both birds and insects that feed on them. And finally the fungi or lichens who are in charge of interconnecting and decomposing these trees when they die. In other words, the project will have 3 thematic and conceptual axes, the first related to the life and importance of the forest, the second to its sustainability and reproduction, and the third to the actors in charge of its decomposition. These scans were made in a series of trips to the Amazon in which multiple species of trees, lichens, flowers and plants were captured. Among these scans are various flowers such as “heliconias” and trees like a 500-year-old “ceiba”.

CV Summary

Education

• Graduate Media and arts studies in the University of the Andes, 2015

Exhibitions

• 2021 Bogotá, Colombia Febrero . Galería La Cometa, Individual exhibition
• 2020 Bogotá Exposición Virtual, Ganador premio Idartes te cuida (arte con tecnología)
• 2019 Subachoque, Colombia. Marzo – galeria Jeymarte, Individual exhibition
• 2019 Bogotá, Colombia Abril – Feria del Libro, Pabellón del Bicentenario
• 2019 Bogotá Colombia Agosto – Salon de arte joven Embajada de España y Colsanitas
• 2019 Bogotá Colombia Agosto – Embajada de Francia sede Chicó
• 2019 Bogotá Colombia Septiembre, Feria del Millón
• 2019 Bogotá Colombia Septiembre, Galeria espacio alterno Uniandinos
• 2019 Bogotá Colombia Septiembre, Salón arte joven club el Nogal
• 2018 Bogotá, Colombia. Octubre – Feria del Millón,
• 2017 Bogotá, Colombia. February – Remate, Galería SGR / Pieza de Realidad Virtual
• 2017 Bogotá, Colombia. November – Festiva Sonar 2017 A/V experience. Installation
• 2017 Bogotá, Colombia. December – Festival de Fulldome Bogotá. Fulldome piece
• 2017 Bogotá, Colombia. November – Festival la Republica. VR short
• 2017 Bogotá,Colombia. June- Festival Indiebox. VR Installation
• 2017 Bogotá, Colombia. October – Salon de exposición festival arttec. Installation
• 2016 Bogotá, Colombia. September – Artefacto, Bitácora / VR Installation
• 2016 Bogotá, Colombia. August – Mientras tanto en el Mundo, Mas Allá / VR Installation
• 2015 Bogotá, Colombia. June – Festival IndieBox – VR Installation
• 2015 Bogotá, Colombia. March – Achiote, La Redada – VR Installation
• 2015 Bogotá,October- Salon de exposición festival arttec. VR Installation
• 2014 Bogotá, Colombia. Abril, Festival EQNX / Installation
• 2014 Bogotá, Colombia. Mayo, Colabóreme con la salida. Proyectos de Grado Universidad de los Andes. Installation
• 2014 Bogotá, Colombia. Septiembre, Salón Seneca. Installatión

Gallery