Pablo Garcia

Fulbright-University of Dundee Scholar Award (Art and Design)

Pablo Garcia is a Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where his research-based creative practice explores and reframes historical artistic processes for a 21st-century audience. His work examines the intersection of forgotten analog methods and cutting-edge digital technologies, paying homage to centuries of human-machine collaboration in art and design. Through a multidisciplinary approach, he investigates art-and-technology relationships across site-specific installations, machine-assisted drawings, kinetic sculptures, optical illusions, speculative architectures, and original scholarship.

While at the University of Dundee, Prof. Garcia will be working on his ongoing research project, “An Interactive Guide to Drawing Machines from the Renaissance to Artificial Intelligence.” Humans have used machines to draw for over 600 years. Sophisticated digital imaging technologies have all but erased centuries of analog artistic and scientific invention from public consciousness. What does it mean to put pencil to paper in an age of artificially intelligent imaging platforms? Prof. Garcia will ask students, teachers, and public audiences to use his physical reconstructions of historical drawing machines to explore how forgotten art-technology collaborations might influence the future of creativity.