Artist Interview: Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez

Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in Spain and currently lives in Cologne. Her work asks central socio-political questions while intertwining documentary with fiction, and autobiographical studies with technological experiments.

The artist creates virtual reality, 360-degree, or sound installations, audio walks or holograms in complex immersive spatial scenarios. She explores the non-human agency powers in societies while often interactively putting the audience in conversation with virtual animal figures.

We asked Nieves about her art, creative process, and inspirations.

Can you tell us about your background as a digital artist? How did you get started in this field?

I have a somewhat classical artistic background, primarily leaning towards sculpture. However, I've always been fascinated by digitization techniques and began experimenting with photogrammetry, which led me to take an interest in glitches and how to incorporate these 'moments' as part of the aesthetics of my work.

What inspires your art? Are there any particular themes or subjects that you enjoy exploring through your artwork?

In my work, I focus on ideas of new materialism and communication and navigation between species. I'm interested in using visualization technologies that allow playing with different ways of experiencing reality. The use of technologies like VR, AR, or creating browser-based experiences could be termed multiperspective technologies, which enhance stepping into someone else's shoes and working with empathy.

Can you tell us about Night Companions? How did the exhibition come to be?

“Night Companions” emerged from an earlier piece, “Lonely Machines,” an augmented reality and rendering work featuring compositions starring space machinery and satellites that disappeared after completing their intended mission. Each of these probes, and any body we release into space in general, reflects light, potentially becoming a sort of artificial star. Thinking about this and about Starlink wandering through the sky made me ponder how constellations and polarized starlight can distort the orientation of species that depend on them. One of these species is the dung beetle. With this concept, I applied to the E.R.D.E. open call for ecology-based projects and was able to materialize the piece.

*Night Companions, exhibition by Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez at Academy of Media Arts, Cologne*

Can you tell us about some of your favorite pieces or a past or upcoming project? What makes them special to you?

One of my favorite pieces is “No habrá servicio los Domingos ni en el cumpleaños de la Reina Victoria” (eng. “There will be no service on Sundays or on Queen Victoria's birthday”). It's an old immersive installation with fragments and samples obtained from an open-pit mine in southern Spain. What makes it special for me is that it represents part of my biography, and it features the place from which part of my family comes from. With this piece, I started working on themes like the Anthropocene and the construction of digital landscapes. On the other hand, it's based on a system where sensors like Arduino can send inputs that modify the experience in virtual reality. This is a line of research I'd like to revisit.

You work with AR, VR, browser experiences, interactive installations — can you describe your process? Do you come up with a concept and then decide on the medium, or does medium come first?

In my case, the medium is subject to the idea or concept I'm working with because I believe that any medium or technology we work with is highly coded and carries a syntax that inscribes itself in the piece. Therefore, it's necessary to consider these 'additions' from the very beginning. Generally, I start with an idea that I find interesting or unsettling and imagine how to build from there. It's similar to what I mentioned before about 'Night Companions'; I play with situations and the possible consequences they might have for other species.

Are there any specific projects or goals you're currently working towards as a digital artist? What do you hope to achieve in the future?

I'd like to continue experimenting with the idea of virtual reality as a system where different external inputs can influence the entire system. The idea of VR as something that separates us from reality doesn't interest me. What about if we try to understand the VR and non-VR system as two organs perpetrating an osmotic process, in which the communication tissue is based on sensors, far beyond position or rotation? In my investigation, I will try to think of 'reality' as something based on the feedback provided by the space and on the synergies that come with the presence of the spectator/player.

The new virtual reality should be oriented to ask questions about our definition of the 'real' from a human-oriented point of view and to question it with the help of experiments in a game engine. I am interested in VR as an assemblage, as a system that gets activated with and by the environment. Using sensoric environments and scanning systems like a volumetric capturing system, I want to investigate new forms of generating and processing the virtual picture that gets projected onto the retina. I want to use the technological consent that drives VR and reverse-engineering techniques to break the perceptive system in which this technology supports itself (anthropocentric). The grammar of the pictures should be reoriented to become multiperspectivistic. VR is not to be a continuation of optical realities that place humans in the center of them, but an empathic technology that allows us to grasp other perspectives of reality (non-human).

What is a profound childhood memory?

Naming just one experience is difficult, but I'm generally very interested in childhood memories and recalling when I lived in Spain. I've tried to translate these childhood moments and memories into a VR experience, 'storm tank,' to be able to revisit them virtually. The light, the atmosphere of this place are based on those childhood memories, where the idea of the passage of time isn't important; everything stands still.