Ricardo Cabret (b. 1985, Puerto Rico)

My interdisciplinary practice uses painting and software to unravel the tensions between technology, ourselves and the natural world. My process-based paintings reference complex computing systems while obscuring depictions of endangered landscapes and references to memories of Puerto Rico. Interested in abstraction as the process of revealing and concealing information, I use waxy, translucent layers to point to “data logging” in software, encapsulating the history of the painting’s creation similar to how software users’ actions are logged and stored in data warehouses. My software works are a nod to Net Art by open-sourcing code-based abstractions that invite the viewer to tinker and play with these technologies. In recent work, I deep dive into cryptographic ciphers and use popular cryptographic algorithms to generate compositions via ciphertexts. By translating the experience of theses digital technologies into a visual language, I aim to demystify these processes.