Bio

Roy Macdonald is an artist that works with technology in the Arts field; from video and moviemaking, to interactive installations and music, striving to make an intelligent use of it. Code and computers are his primary tools. His artistic and creative curiosity alongside with his inborn aptitudes for math and sciences as well as for leadership, establishes him in a position in which he can act, both as a, leader and bridge in multidisciplinary teams and endeavors. He enjoys challenges, especially if this means to learn new things and embark towards uncertain results.

He is an active contributor to the artistic oriented coding toolkit openFrameworks.

On 2010 he created his own new-media design studio, called Macrobio, in Santiago, Chile. Here, he and his team work mixing code with motion graphics and video, to create interactive installations and experiences. On early 2014, Macrobio was split up due to different business points of view. Then he refocused his practice from strictly commercial to more artistic oriented and personal work. As such he has just shown his work in just a few collective exhibitions.

On fall 2015 he assisted to the School For Poetic Computation in New York City. He was one of the main developers and artists contributing to SFPC’s Re-coded collaborative and collective project, which has been shown at Dayfornight festival 2015, Houston, Texas, Google I/O 2016 in Mountain View, California, Sonar Festival 2017, Barcelona, Spain, MicrosoftConnect 2017 and SFPC’s 7 years anniversary exhibition (2020) both in New York City.

During March and April 2016 he was teaching creative coding at OF COURSE in Shanghai, China.

Since 2018 Roy has been collaborating with the Santiago-based light-art collective Trimex Collective.

During the summer of 2018 he was part of the first Computational Arts Residency setup by the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London and the Victoria and Albert Museum Digital Programmes. The results of this residency was shown at the Digital Design Weekend exhibition in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

On September 2018 his work was shown at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz,Austria.

From August 2019 to late February 2020, was a “Someting in Residence” at RunwayML doing some experiments with Machine Learning.

Currently he is residing in Santiago, Chile.

Drop me a line: macdonald.roy (at) (the electronic mail from the big G).

Artist Statement

I’d say that my ultimate interest is knowledge, while my ultimate goal is being able to make something with the knowledge I’ve gained. As I try to understand the world that surrounds me, I gain knowledge. Software has become a tool for me to understand my life.

Even when I might change the specific subject of my research, these tend to fall on relatively well defined area; arts, design, sciences and maths. I’ve explored movie-making and video art, interactive installations, motion-graphics design, physics, camera optics, music and electronics among others, all with a heavy emphasis on technology. Code and computers have become my primary tools, creation canvas and exploration vehicles.

Software and code works over digital “matter”, even when it is only comprised of zeros and ones, its possible configurations are nearly infinite. As an artist I have the ability to change the way in which this digital matter is usually presented to us -either by exaggerating, changing the point of view or establishing new relationships between the matter itself- it is possible not only to reveal new aspects of the world but also state our position towards it or the impact of personal experience over this perception.

Coding also allows me to create tools for myself and for others, hopefully providing new or improving the existing ones. As such, sharing -knowledge and experience- has become an important aspect of my artistic practice, which embodies in teaching, giving workshops, working with or helping other artists and creators, as well as actively participating in open-source software communities online.

The way we experience our world has become hugely mediated by electronic technology. Approaching and forcing the limits of technologies is not a practice particular to artists, although I think there is no better position from which to pursue such as it is from the arts field and the artist’s mind set, especially when dealing with nascent technologies. This position is probably the only one where usefulness is not a question, bold moves are encouraged, taking risks is desirable, failure can be a gift and uncertain results can be sublime.