I am Esteban Garcia Bravo, a Colombian-American visual artist specializing in using video mapping, LED control, and digital fabrication to create light-based interactive installations. As we move into a new era of expanded consciousness, I feel the responsibility of making art to bring light to our communities. I want to be a catalyst for positive change through art creation and education. I realized that art has the unique power to heal me and others through the kind connections formed through dialog and collaboration. I taught at Purdue University in the Department of Computer Graphics Technology, and have recently moved to a new position in the Department of Art & Art History at San Jose State University. My new contact is: esteban.garciabravo [at.] sjsu [dot] edu
Bio
Esteban Garcia Bravo, MFA, PhD, is a Colombian-American artist and scholar specializing in computational art, digital media, and public art technology. He is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media Art & Spatial Art at the CADRE Laboratory for New Media at San José State University.
Garcia Bravo’s research explores the “lost histories” of early computer art, critically examining aesthetics within media-cultural contexts. His book Cybernethisms (Purdue Press, 2015) investigates the work of computer art pioneer Aldo Giorgini, while his studies on José María Yturralde document Spain’s first computational designs from 1968. His writings appear in leading journals, including Leonardo, The Design Journal, Artnodes, Acoustic Space, and CITAR Journal of Science and Technology of the Arts.
His work has been presented at major international conferences such as SIGGRAPH (2011, 2015, 2017, 2022, 2023), ISEA (2012, 2013, 2015, 2017), Media Art Histories (2013), Expressive (2016), and EVA London (2015). In 2022, his research on the preservation of traditional African dances using deep learning techniques won the Best Art Paper Award at SIGGRAPH.
Beyond research, Garcia Bravo is actively engaged in the computational art community, serving as a reviewer for ACM SIGGRAPH Art Papers since 2016 and as Art Exhibition Co-Chair for the IEEE Visualization Conference in 2017. He has multiple public art installations across the United States. His artwork uses computational design, light technology, and digital manufacturing for placemaking through an interactive and community-oriented approach.