Blog | Martin-Calvino-Art | United States

martin calvino

artist - scientist

focused on abstract painting,

the intersection of

media arts with

genomics, machine learning

and tango culture

SUBORDINATED REALITY: open call for [video art + short film exhibition] on behalf of Videokanava art

Mar 5, 2020
4 min

SUBORDINATED REALITY: open call for [video art + short film exhibition] on behalf of Videokanava art

SUBORDINATED REALITY_ Open Call for video artists and filmmakers Application Period: March-2 to May-25, 2020 Weblink: http://www.videokanava.com/open-call.html Curator: Martin Calvino Confirmed exhibition and screening places include: Sep-12-2020 UG-Fest, Contemporary Art Centre Pispala, Tampere, Finland Sep-21 to Sep-29-2020 VBKÖ, Vienna, Austria May-7 to May-23-2021 ARS 108, Factory 108, Nokia, Finland July-23 to July-24-2021 NEON KUNST, Berlin, Germany Summer 2021 Videokan

Automated detection of political ideology from text: a case study of newspapers in Uruguay

Nov 12, 2019
53 min

Automated detection of political ideology from text: a case study of newspapers in Uruguay

ABSTRACT_ Although objective reporting is the landmark of professional journalism, several academics have argued that the media is ideologically biased. The association of the printed press (newspapers) with political parties have long been acknowledged in Uruguay. However, the lack of studies that empirically demonstrate and measure the extent of ideological bias towards political affiliations has prevented scholars from addressing the ideological diversity of newspapers. He

Visualization of Convolutional Neural Network's representation of images from Calvino's artworks

Sep 7, 2019
9 min

Visualization of Convolutional Neural Network's representation of images from Calvino's artworks

Synopsis_ Previously a Convolutional Neural Network was used by the author to classify images derived from artworks containing handmade visual elements relative to images derived from artworks created entirely with computer code [1]. However, the visual concepts learned by the network that helped it to correctly classify artworks weren't investigated. In this work the author explored a visualization technique [2] to elucidate the inner workings of Convolutional Neural Network

Image classification of Calvino's artworks using Convolutional Neural Networks

Jul 19, 2019
13 min

Image classification of Calvino's artworks using Convolutional Neural Networks

SUMMARY_ Image classification using Convolutional Neural Networks was used to asses the artistic portfolio of Martin Calvino's work that included hand's gesture derived artworks from algorithmically created artworks. The machine learning algorithm approach used could effectively predict the nature of the artwork with 90% accuracy. This work could be used as inspiration to cataloguing images from art collections at museums and art organizations. BACKGROUND_ Artificial intellig

Jun 11, 2019
14 min

ENCHUFE: Montevideo electroTango Festival

Organizers of the program 'Viví Tango' under the sponsorship of 'Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo' (Montevideo - Uruguay) have recently reached out to me requesting the writing of a commissioned proposal for an art-tech-tango event that could combine audiovisual elements with those of tango culture. Such an event - I was told - could be combined into the second edition of the 'Festival por la Convivencia Montevideo Tango' to be realized on September-28-2019. After an initi

Re-appropriation of short films for video art creation

May 6, 2019
2 min

Re-appropriation of short films for video art creation

In this brief essay, the author describes the re-appropriation of the previously created and released short film named "Ocho Cortado: Altered Realities of a Tango Dream' as raw material for video art creation and; at the same time as accompaniment to an electroTango sound composition from the same author. The video art piece combines elements from traditional tango danced in non-traditional settings such as the subway in New York City, traditional tango music re-mixed into no

Helitron Art - from Network Graphs of Wikipedia pages, to DNA sequences from DNA transposons, to Alg

Martin Calvino in collaboration with Chunguang Du

Apr 16, 2019
10 min

Helitron Art - from Network Graphs of Wikipedia pages, to DNA sequences from DNA transposons, to Alg

Synopsis_ The work presented here explored the aesthetic possibilities of using Helitron Transposon DNA sequences from the maize genome as raw material for the creation of algorithmic art. Complex network graphs constructed from Wikipedia pages were re-mixed based on the DNA sequence of a particular Helitron element belonging to the Cornucopius family after they were aligned. The work extends general efforts from the artist in integrating art with science, and strengthen in p

Natural Language Processing of facebook messages; and their inclusion into an abstract painting

Mar 23, 2019
45 min

Natural Language Processing of facebook messages; and their inclusion into an abstract painting

Synopsis_ In this work the author attempted to hybridize aspects of contemporary digital communication such as Facebook text messages, personal data derived from social media use, text analysis and visualization using computer algorithms, and traditional abstract painting. As result the author conceived and created an abstract painting (acrylic on cardboard) having regular mail envelopes containing excerpts from incoming and ongoing Facebook messages. These messages were the

Interactive audiovisual augmentation of physical paintings

Mar 8, 2019
4 min

Interactive audiovisual augmentation of physical paintings

Background_ Concurrently with the beginning of 2019, I started an artist-in-residence at the 'Art And Artificial Intelligence Lab' at the Computer Science Department of Rutgers University. When reflecting on the current use (and future possibilities) of deep learning for visual art generation, I thought of the importance to train neural network algorithms based on my own visual inputs derived from the results of my artistic work. The generative output of deep learning algorit

'TechnoArte Latino' at Princeton Public Library: insightful discussions on the role of techn

Jan 28, 2019
4 min

'TechnoArte Latino' at Princeton Public Library: insightful discussions on the role of techn

Date: Sunday-May-5-2019 Hour: 2-to-4:30 PM Location: Princeton Public Library Weblinks: https://princetonlibrary.org/event/technoarte-latino https://technoartelatino.github.io/ City: Princeton, New Jersey Admission: FREE Curators: Martin Calvino & Aaron Montoya-Moraga TechnoArte Latino is a multimedia art event featuring latin artists currently living in United States who use cutting edge digital technologies as central part in their creative practices. The event will host ta

'OCHO_CORTADO': Altered Realities of a Tango Dream

Dec 31, 2018
4 min

'OCHO_CORTADO': Altered Realities of a Tango Dream

Synopsis_ 'OCHO_CORTADO' is a short film depicting altered realities of a tango dream from a female dancer's perspective. The story takes place on a subway commute (NYC's subway) when the main character (female dancer) fall asleep on her seat and start dreaming about dancing on the train platform. There are three independent dancing dreams during her daily commute, each dream with a stranger/dancer that gets into the train and seats next to her. While the female character is

'looping_thoughts': my first album of electronic music with a notch of tango remix

Dec 2, 2018
2 min

'looping_thoughts': my first album of electronic music with a notch of tango remix

On Friday-November-30-2018 my first album of electronic music, with name of 'looping_thoughts', was released under Record Label Bandurria (Figure 1). It contains five distinct sound compositions each with a unique style derived from combining electronic music with a notch of tango remix. The album is available for download on 'bandcamp' (Figure 2) at the following weblink. Figure 1. Screenshot of Bandurria's website displaying represented artists and all their music album rel

Audio_visual studies of dancing bodies and electro_tango sound compositions

Nov 5, 2018
3 min

Audio_visual studies of dancing bodies and electro_tango sound compositions

The use of technology in artistic processes has the potential to re-interpret traditional aspects of culture. I've been interested in exploring computer vision algorithms and electronic music to create video-art and electronic sound compositions that re-asses tango culture from the perspective of new media arts [see references]. This has allowed me to experiment with novel aesthetic approaches that depart from the traditional visuality of tango culture and re-contextualize it

Re-interpreting dancing bodies in video-art

Oct 16, 2018
2 min

Re-interpreting dancing bodies in video-art

When video becomes art? Or to re-frame the question: What is video art? For the purposes of this study, video art relates to the moving image acquiring new aesthetic characteristics separated from the realism involved in the original recording of the video. Thus, realism is not an end in itself but a medium used by the artist to compose. I was inspired by dancing bodies as raw material for video-art creation, re-interpreting them as dynamic objects that can be changed, altere

Approaching Uruguayan culture through the lens of New Media Arts: summary of event held at the '

Oct 13, 2018
6 min

Approaching Uruguayan culture through the lens of New Media Arts: summary of event held at the '

The implementation of digital technologies to traditional aspects of Uruguayan culture provides a fertile playground to hybridize the past and the future. In the event titled 'Approaching Uruguayan culture through the lens of new media arts', three artists from Uruguay (Luisa Pereira, Marco Guarino, and Martin Calvino) currently working in New York City talked about their efforts in applying cutting edge technology to explore sound art, candombe and tango. The event also coun

Electro_Cortinas_Milongueras: electronic music + tango re-mix

Aug 29, 2018
2 min

Electro_Cortinas_Milongueras: electronic music + tango re-mix

Extended Play (EP) COVER_ The rendering of music in tango social dance is structured in groups of three or four songs, with each group separated by a non-tango song called 'the cortina'. Cortinas allow dancers to exchange partners throughout the night. Most of times cortinas are not played until completion and are only there to signify a 'break' among group of tangos. Because there is no established rule as to which music genre should be played as cortina, DJs explore a wide

Creation of synthetic microRNA169 gene copies using machine learning

Aug 6, 2018
4 min

Creation of synthetic microRNA169 gene copies using machine learning

Synopsis The implementation of machine learning algorithms to synthetic biology could, in principle, generate novel hypothesis about living systems because machine learning can help in the identification of design rules for construction of functional network architectures and synthetic gene circuits. Synthetic biology as discipline is concerned with the creation of gene networks to re-program living cells and ultimately endow them with new capabilities for an array of biotech

Exploring the expressive capacity of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) for tango lyrics composition

Jul 4, 2018
7 min

Exploring the expressive capacity of Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) for tango lyrics composition

In this essay I describe a methodology to help curate tango lyrics that were created using machine learning (ML herein). The method is based on text analysis of the corpus used as input to guide the selection of ML-generated paragraphs containing words of interest that were frequently used by famous composers. I've previously experimented with a tensorflow implementation of an LSTM (a particular type of RNN) known as 'char-rnn' to create tango lyrics from a corpus containing

AI-Generated Tango: pure machine creativity churns out tango lyrics like those of the golden age

Jun 9, 2018
4 min

AI-Generated Tango: pure machine creativity churns out tango lyrics like those of the golden age

The culture of tango and its community -be it in Argentina, Uruguay or anywhere else in the world- is inherently obsessed with the past. With ritual fervor we listen and dance to tango songs that were written, composed and rendered more than 70 years ago. When I used to live in Uruguay, I've heard my parents, relatives and friends say: 'the past was a better time' in remembrance of tango, as well as politico-economic and athletic achievements from previous generations. Simila

Automation of 'news headlines' on DONALD TRUMP using machine learning

Jun 3, 2018
3 min

Automation of 'news headlines' on DONALD TRUMP using machine learning

Much have been said about the socio-cultural and political consequences of fake news, and their dependency on digital media technologies for its amplification. This is reflected in the concept of 'post-truth', in which objective and verifiable facts are no longer as influential in shaping public opinion as those specifically made to appeal to emotions and personal belief regardless of veracity. A clear example of mis-information virally spreading over social networks occurred