Team

Pau Alsina, PhD, is a Lecturer at the Arts and Humanities Department of the Open University of Catalonia where he coordinates, teaches and does research in the Arts and Contemporary Thought area. He also teaches Digital Aesthetics, Media Arts History and Epistemologies at the Master’s degree of Media Arts Curatorship, in the ESDI Higher School of Design - Ramon Llull University, and Research in Design at the Master’s degree in Technological Product Design at the LCI School of Design.

Since 2002 is Director of the ARTNODES Journal of Art, Science and Technology, where he has coordinated special issues on Arts and Sciences such as Mathematics, Biology or Complexity Sciences. He is a founding member of the YASMIN Mediterranean Network of Art and Science. He has authored /coauthored several publications on Art, Science and Technology and Contemporary Philosophy, as well as has co-curated exhibitions such as "Cultures of Change: social atoms and electronic lives" (2009-2010) on Complexity Sciences and Digital Technologies at Arts Santa Monica, in Barcelona. He has also co-chaired conferences such as Interface Politics Conference (2016), Arts and Speculative Futures Conference (2016) or Art Matters Conference (2014).

He is member of the Board of Trustees of HANGAR Foundation, Barcelona Center for Research Arts, and the New Art Foundation, devoted to promoting New Media Art Collections and Conservation. With a strong interdisciplinary background in Philosophy, Arts and Engineering he got his Ph.D. in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture at the Barcelona University and since then he has been doing research in four areas which he tends to blend: 1) Software Studies and Bioart. 2) Media Archaeology 3) New Materialist Philosophies. 4) Science and Technology Studies, and specifically Actor Network Theory, applied to Art and Design.

Aida Sánchez de Serdio Martín is a doctor in Fine Arts and an educator, researcher and cultural worker in the fields of visual culture, education and collaborative art practices. She is currently a lecturer at the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), where he teaches at the Bachelor of Arts.

Previously, she has been a consultant for the Departments of Education and Publics at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2015-2016), and a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture of Umeå University (Sweden) (2014-2015) as well as the Cultural Pedagogy Unit of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona (1998-2014).

She has been visiting professor at the University of Lisbon, Goldsmiths College (London), University of the Republic (Uruguay), and Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Switzerland), among others. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on the connections between art, education and visual culture.

She has also taken part or collaborated on educational and cultural projects such as Associació per a joves Teb, Artibarri, Pràctiques Dialògiques (Museu Es Baluard, Palma de Mallorca), Transductores, Zones de Contacte (La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona), Pedagogies de fricció (Fundació Joan Miró), and Centre de Cultura de Dones Francesca Bonnemaison.

Doctora en Historia del Arte por la Universidad de Barcelona (2012). Desde 2008 es profesora propia en los Estudios de Artes y Humanidades de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, responsable de las áreas de arte, cine y medios de comunicación además de colaborar como directora ejecutiva de la revista académica Artnodes.

Su tesis doctoral Teoría y práctica del cine como dispositivo crítico (2012), trató sobre la emergencia de prácticas y colectivos cinematográficos vinculados a la izquierda durante los años treinta en diversos contextos geopolíticos.

Desde 2006 ha colaborado en grupos de investigación y proyectos de I+D financiados centrados en estudios sobre cultura y sociedad. Ha formado parte de dos proyectos I+D financiados por el MINECO, sobre la Recepción del Cine Moderno en España durante el franquismo y sobre Arte y Nuevos Materialismos en el que realizó investigaciones sobre prácticas activistas y audiovisual en la cultura digital.

Irma Vilà is a curator, researcher and cultural producer specialized in art, science, technology and society. Her career includes international projects that blend scientific or cultural research with curation, such as ‘Atlas of the electromagnetic space’ and ‘A chronology of the utopias of the radioelectric spectrum’ which she has exposed abroad. She has curated exhibitions at Arts Santa Monica Laboratory Space as well as at institutions such as CCCB and ArtFutura Festival. And she has curated screenings for Mapping Festivals as FIMG, Girona and FIMA, Morelia, Mexico.

She has a Multimedia Engineering Diploma from the Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona and a Master in Curation and Cultural Practices in Art and New Media from MECAD.

She is the Director of the journal Mosaic and Executive Co-Director of the scientific journal Artnodes. She lectures on the Bachelor Degrees in Multimedia, Digital Design and Creation, and Arts at UOC, specializing in the field of creativity, digital art and culture; sound art and design. She is a member of DARTS research group.

She forms part of the creative recycling group Luthiers Drapaires and the audiovisual artists collective Telenoika. She is one of the founders of the cultural research and innovation laboratory ZZZINC.

Bachelor of Fine Arts (1993), Postgraduate in Visual Culture Studies at the University of Barcelona (2004) Degree in Graphic Design at Llotja School (2005), and Master in Multimedia Applications at the Open University of Catalunya (2013). She is currently the Director of the Arts Degree at Open University of Catalonia (UOC).

Since 2010, she is lecturer of Informatics, Multimedia and Telecommunication department at the Open University of Catalonia, she teaches in Multimedia Degree and in Design and Digital Creation Degree. She has also taught about creativity and graphic design in Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Autonomous University of Barcelona and in several vocational schools.

She has an extensive professional experience as a graphic designer, illustrator and pre-press specialist too. Nowadays she is enrolled at the Network and Information Technologies PhD program at the Open University of Catalunya. Her artistic and academic research is focused on the study and creation of visualizations as technological tools for exploration, experimentation and learning, with social, cultural, ideological and political implications

Pau Waelder holds a PhD in Knowledge and Information Society at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), where he is a contributing lecturer in Humanities studies. He has presented his research and work as a curator in new media art festivals such as FILE (São Paulo), Futur en Seine (Paris) and Mediaterra (Athens), museums and art centers such as CCCB, MUSAC and Arts Santa Mònica, as well as the universities: Universidade Federal Juiz de Fora (Brasil), Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo y la Universidade Católica de Porto (Portugal), among others.

He has curated, among others, the contemporary art exhibitions Real Time (Arts Santa Mònica), Remote Signals (ARS center, Tallinn), Data Cinema (Media Art Futures) and Extimacy. Art, Intimacy and Technology (Es Baluard). He has published articles and essays in the magazines Art Press, ETC Media, art.es, a::minima and Input, as well as Leonardo (MIT Press), M/C Journal and Artnodes, among others.

He has written for the blog of the VIDA Art and Artificial Life Awards (Fundación Telefónica) and is contributing editor and author of the blogs Art Matters and Design Matters at UOC. He is also editor of the Media Art section in art.es magazine.

Pierre Bourdin graduated in Computer Science and Robotics Engineering. He has been teaching computer science in France for 10 years before moving to Barcelona. Pioneer of virtual reality and 3D programming he is finalizing a PhD under the supervision of the Pr. Mel Slater at the EventLab at the University of Barcelona. His line of research considers the use of virtual reality as tools to study the behavior of people in virtual worlds both at the technological level and at the psychological level.

Formada en Historia del Arte en la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela y con estudios de máster en los ámbitos del patrimonio cultural (UGR) y el arte y el diseño urbanos (UB), soy doctoranda del programa en Sociedad de la Información y el Conocimiento de la UOC con la tesis “Museología Relacional en la Fundación Joan Miró y la Fundación Antoni Tàpies”.

Durante los últimos años como investigadora en formación he participado en diferentes congresos nacionales e internacionales, he podido publicar algunos artículos y capítulos de libro y he formado parte del proyecto I+D+I HAR2014-59261-C2-1-P “Arte, Arquitectura y Nuevas Materialidades”, dirigido por la Dra. Lourdes Cirlot Valenzuela. Actualmente resido en Madrid, donde compagino la actividad académica con trabajos como librera y medidadora cultural.

Javier Melenchón received his B.Sc. and M.Sc degree in Multimedia, B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Computer Science and PhD from Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain, in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2007, respectively. He worked as an Associate Professor in Universitat Ramon Llull from 2001 to 2007. Since 2007, he has been working as an Associate Professor in Universiat Oberta de Catalunya, teaching various subjects within the multimedia degree (digital image processing, video systems and image processing, music and acoustic systems, digital content integration).

His main interests are artificial vision, human-machine interaction, human voice analysis and its application to the improvement of teaching within the framework promoted by the European Higher Education Area. He is involved in various research projects in these areas, focusing his activity on the development of realistic interfaces and customizable media with an important component of the signal processing of video and audio.

Graduated in audiovisuals and multimedia at ERAM – University of Girona (Spain), master in Graphical Interface Design at the University of Lincoln (UK), doing his PhD on Interfaces and Tools for Interactive Cinema and i-docs.

He is an assistant professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC.edu) where he teaches Video, Interactive Design, Interactive Media and Virtual Reality. He has given talks and workshops at several national and international institutions on art and technology.

He has been awarded with prizes on digital art, and some of his works have been shown in art centres and festivals in Spain, France, Serbia, Helsinki, Singapore and Canada. Amongst them, Arts Santa Monica (Barcelona), Sala de Arte Joven (Madrid), KC Grad (Belgrade, Serbia), KUVA Art University (Helsinky, Finland), VAD Festival (Girona, Spain), Ingràvid (Figueres, Spain), and the National Academy of Fine Arts, NAFA (Singapore).

He uses several techniques, from performance art to sculpture, coding and media art, to generate interactive artefacts. Most of his works -however beautiful in its surface- are there to challenge preconceptions about technology and a reminder of how it needs to adjust its potential to human measure and nature.

Susanna Tesconi is a lecturer, educational designer and researcher, her work is inspired by the interaction between people and technology. After getting a degree in Philosophy of Language, she became a primary school teacher. During her teaching practice, she started observing the interaction between kids and technological devices and decided to improve her technological expertise, being her goal to engage groups of children in developing their own technologies. She got a postgraduate degree in interaction design and she discovered the universe of open hardware, creative coding and digital fabrication.

Since 2010 she designed and implemented several educational programs and learning environments that use, among other things, design, DIY DIWO mindset and digital fabrication in order to improve the motivation of students and promote a methodological change in teachers. Those programs took place in several formal and informal educational institutions such as LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Gijón), Universitat Autònoma Barcelona /UAB, TUMO Center for Creative Technology (Armenia), Tabakalera-Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporánea (Donostia), Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, BAU/Centro Universitario de Diseño (Barcelona) y Fundación
Orange.

As researcher she focuses on the transformative power of design practices and prototyping in teacher education, a topic she worked deeply during her PHD at Department of Applied Pedagogy of UAB, Universitat Autònoma Barcelona.

Since 2014 she’s also Senior Fellow at the FabLearn Fellowship Program at Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, a cohort of researchers and educators working on the design of learning environment for Makerspaces and Fablabs and the creation of shareable, open source educational materials.

Since 2017 she’s a lecturer and researcher at UOC, Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications Faculty, where teaches user experience design, digital fabrication and creative coding in several undergraduate and graduate programs.

Enric Mor, PhD, is lecturer in human-computer interaction at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and in interaction design at Eina, School of Design and Art and Elisava, School of Design and Engineering.

Director of the UOC UX Design postgraduate program and director of the UOC-Telefonica Chair on Design and Multimedia Creation. His main research areas are interaction design, human-computer interaction and technology enhanced learning. He has published several papers in international conferences and journals.

Researcher and cultural producer focused on the processes involved in the construction of remembering and oblivion in digital culture, unconventional arts histories, media archaeology and digital materialities. Graduated in Image and Sound Design by the Buenos Aires University and Master in Curatorial and Cultural Practices in Art and New Media by MECAD/Universitat Ramon Llull.

VaninaHofman holds a PhD by the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3)/Open University of Catalonia, where she enjoyed a pre-doctoral grant. In her thesis Hofman studies the ecology of plural and divergent practices of preservation and archiving of media arts. She has presented the process and outcomes of her work in different conferences and publications.

Vanina have joined the Arts & Humanities Department (UOC) as a research fellow of the R&D Project D-FUTURE (Future Practices: Spaces of Digital Creation and Social Innovation). Since 2006, she has been carrying out the independent platform Taxonomedia and she has coordinated several activities, publications and projects in Spain and Latin America.