Join us on Thursday 3rd December for Design Informatics Research Seminar with guest speaker Ricardo Vega Mora, who will present his transdisciplinary practice spanning drawing, collage, comics, and programming code.
Event Details
Ricardo Vega Mora Designer, artist, cultural manager
Talk title: Electric gestures: writing & drawing using data and code
Date: Thurs 3 Dec, 2026
Time: 16:00-17:00
Location: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, EH8 9AB
As an artist and designer, Ricardo’s practice unfolds within a transdisciplinary field spanning drawing, collage, comics, and programming code. Throughout this practice, he employs both analogue and digital media as materials for visual, textual, and sonic production.
His work explores the political, cultural, and aesthetic impact of digital technologies, utilised as machines for automated image generation, tools for subverting pixel order, devices for textual reorganisation, and media for data sonification, among other explorations.
Ricardo’s research uses data from diverse fields as raw material for artistic exploration and critical recontextualisation. His projects range from addressing the symbolic weight of national emblems (flags and anthems) and the subversion of social codes (the Chilean Constitution) to translating textual abstraction into visual and sonic forms (DNA).
In this presentation, Ricardo will examine some of his projects and motivations regarding data appropriation, as well as the importance of aesthetic exploration in its representation. Through subjectivity and personal perspective, this approach seeks to question a data-mediated society and challenge standardised paradigms of data representation.
Bio
Ricardo is a designer, artist, programmer, and cultural manager. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Design and Technology from Parsons, The New School for Design, and has studied Information Visualization and Data Science. He teaches at the School of Design and has also taught at the School of Engineering, both at the Catholic University of Chile (UC). He directs the Diploma in Data Visualization at the UC Design School. He is interested in transdisciplinary connections, pursuing studies in Philosophy and Science. He develops projects at the intersection of visualization, graphics, programming, art, and design, exploring the aesthetic and subjective representation of data. He is the founder of C80.cl, a project that, since 2015, has used visualizations to support a contextualized understanding of the 1980 Chilean Constitution. As an artist, he has participated in exhibitions, conferences, and presentations in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Estonia, and other countries.
Running Order
16.00 – Introcution and Talk by Ricardo Vega Mora
16.40 – Q&A
17.00 – End
In-person: Inspace, 1 Crichton St, Newington, Edinburgh EH8 9AB
Please note limited seats are available at Inspace for in-person audiences, so please book tickets in advance.
For inquiries about accessibility, please contact the DI team at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk or visit the Access webpage for more information about the venue: https://inspace.ed.ac.uk/venue-access/. If you have any enquiries about Inspace programming and the venue, please contact us at designinformatics@ed.ac.uk.
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About Design Informatics
The Institute for Design Informatics is a joint institute between Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Our mission is to bring design and data together to create a world that is socially just, where people live well, have agency and autonomy, and are able to adapt and transition how they live to ensure the planet flourishes. We seek to have a transformational impact on society by creating alternatives to dominant models of technology design and development, and to shape ethical and responsible data futures through applied research and practice.