Philippines

China

Cantonese

This Mandala was a project of mine during the winter months a few years ago, where I was inspired by moving into a new home and wanting to create something that represented where I come from, and just flowing with life in a circular pattern.

Winter 2019

When I hear our native tongue in music I feel every inch of my body respond 
I picture the clothing we wear and 
The dances we do 
The ground is still warm with sandy dirt 
As Inti brushes our skin reminding us of what’s true 
That the land that humans have colonized with never be theirs 
And soon they’ll be extracted without a clue 
Because the ground still screams for her children 
Ella sabe lo que está pasando y es testigo del sufrimiento mundial 
Pachamama nunca era propiedad 
They may try to erase connections 
With their industrialization 
And their infections 
But the land screams for her children 
Pachamama siempre se recordará

And when our native music plays 
She remembers how we honor our givers of life 
For a moment we connect the way we did before the colonized days 
Images of my ancestors smiling and yelling with joy 
Inti watching over them as they come alive 
Because even when I was stripped from them 
Memories from the past my blood still relives 
Pachamama siempre gritatará 
Our culture is still surviving 
We will always hear her call 
Every time I hear the music, I feel us rising 
Pachamama will scream for her children 
Until they all can come home

Wiyankiku?

Ecuador

Kichwa

Indigenous

I wonder if in the future the Kichwa Otavalo community will still be known for being “Mindalaes” traveling merchants, will we travel across galaxies or planets?

ñawpa

United States

Peru

Andes

Latinx

Created for the Alternative Worlds Andean collection.

I find a lot of inspiration in the tocapu as a symbol embodying the mystery of the cosmos. My first completed tocapu design, I found the process of creating this to be compelling and meditative, and a welcome departure from all of the time I spend programming websites and software.

I’m inspired by the possibility of incorporating more tocapus into my work, and into my life, as I imagine these designs to be not a part of my past, but an active and important part of my present. They’re also, in my humble opinion, very nice to look at.

Sky Tocapu

A circular mandala with geometric patterns

A woman walking across a starlit path towards a city on the horizon

A diamond-shaped geometric pattern against a blue background

White text 'Ana Somnia' on white background

Envisioning the Future

On "Different Folks" and Andean musical fusion

<a href="https://anasomnia.com">Ana Somnia</a> is a meditation on what it’s like to dream. It’s also a piece that uses a single interactive element to draw us into an animated world, a clever decision that is minimalism at its best.

On the title screen, atmospheric sounds introduce us to Ana Somnia’s creepy Tim Burton-esque world. We promptly find ourselves inside a little girl’s bedroom. The girl, sitting up in bed, tells us to turn off the lights and goes to sleep. The piece then waits for our interaction, and we hear a music box playing in the background.



<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/3/anasomnia-2-1024x652.jpg">



It’s here that the clever trick comes out. To “turn off the lights,” you can spoil the fun and cover up your webcam with your hand; or, if willing to play along for a moment, you can turn off the lights in the room you’re physically in (yes, that involves getting up and turning the lights off in real life), to trigger the webcam into opening the rest of the story.

After doing so, Ana’s dream world comes alive, and we progress through a series of animated images, including strange creatures, tentacles, and assorted objects, as well as music and sound effects to match.



<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/3/anasomnia-3-1024x695.jpg">



For me, it’s the subtleties that really make this piece come alive. The world is nicely fleshed out, from the sound design and music down to the seemingly trivial details (in the opening scene, for example, hovering over the teddy bear will cause it to cover its eyes).

Also interesting is how much the webcam adds to the experience. It’s a great example of creating new kinds of artistic meaning with technology. This animation could’ve been a simple video… but isn’t it cooler when there’s interactivity involved?



<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/3/anasomnia-4-1024x648.jpg">



I always love to see artists doing interesting things with the technology at their disposal. Now this is just an idea, but it’d be great to see, for example, an e-book that uses the same webcam principle to add some extra immersion in telling its story.

Ana Somnia was created by German artist <a target="_blank" href="http://www.kimkoester.com">Kim Köster</a>. You can support him by purchasing Ana Somnia posters and other merchandise <a target="_blank" href="https://rostlaub.com">here</a>.

Ana Somnia is a meditation on what it’s like to dream. It’s also a piece that uses a single interactive element to draw us into an animated world, a clever decision that is minimalism at its best.

Get Lost Dark Ana Somnia

Turn out the lights and explore a dream world in Ana Somnia

Everyone

Bolivia

Colombia

Mobile Android Browser

Desktop Safari

Desktop Chrome

Desktop Firefox

Mobile Safari

Mobile Chrome

Mobile Firefox

Interactive Fiction

Zine

Game

New Media Literature

Poetry

Visual Art

Guide

Experimental

Serious Game

Introspective

Andean

Quechua

Asian American

English

Spanish

A few minutes

About a half hour

Babycastles Residency Presentation

Connected From Afar: Web Art Jam Presentation

Anthology Website Link

Etsy

A cover image with the text "Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide", & a cute character at the summit of a mountain alongside a flag.

The background is the Colombian Flag with the Words "Colo-Mitolo-Gital" spanning each stripe. In the foreground is a floating back and a pair of red heels. In the top right, there is two buttons

Text alongside a black and white image of a woman

Front and back covers of a zine showing illustrated flowers and a colorful collage

Left: a cute blob with a speech bubble saying, "Hi! I'm an artist who wants to use AI in my work!" Right: 4 icons with the text "You'll need: 1) Dataset, 2) Model Code, 3) Training resources, 4) A publishing plan"

A page with the title "dataset". On the left, an illustration of files and papers drifting down from a cloud into a large stack of papers.

A page with the title "Model Code". On the left, an illustration of a stack of blocks, and another block about to be placed on the pile of blocks.

It is a dialogue box describing the story "El Dedo En El Baño" overlaid onto the background. The background is the Colombian Flag with the Words "Colo-Mitolo-Gital" spanning each stripe. In the foreground is a floating back and a pair of red heels.

A black background with a bag in the center and the words "there is a finger inside the bag"

A woman with a white shirt and yellow skirt standing against a city background

A Modern Ghost

Machine learning tools provide the potential for unprecedented creative expression, but also the potential to cause unintended harms.“Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide” is an illustrated zine composed of questions and case studies to help AI artists use AI techniques responsibly and with care. We suggest that artists using AI should consider themselves part of the broader responsible AI community. As a result, it is important to consider factors such as consent of people represented in your datasets, labor involved in the model development and pre-existing codebase/tools, and AI infrastructure and environmental costs of training machine learning models. We hope that artists will attend to the potentially unintended harmful consequences of work as understood in domains like information security, misinformation, the environment, copyright, and biased and appropriative synthetic media.With this guide, we believe that by reflecting on what is “responsible” for their own creative works, artists can push forward best practices employed by all AI practitioners.Doing so can ensure that they harness the expressive potential of AI, responsibly.The Responsible AI Art Field Guide has been featured by Gray Area, DISEÑA, and Mozilla Festival.&nbsp;

Making AI Art Responsibly: A Field Guide

Colo-Mitolo-Gítal is an anthology that reinterprets different family stories while layering in Colombian history and culture as a way to understand my own heritage through the lens of computation, the web, and play. Each object represents a chapter within the anthology with the first two stories being: "El Dedo En El Baño": For generations, there was a cloth bag in my great-great grandmother’s bathroom said to contain the finger bone of a family member who had passed away. When visiting the grave became impossible after my family was dislocated by the civil war, the bone was taken to maintain a spiritual link. "La Señora Con Tacones": A well-liked woman on my father’s street mysteriously went missing after a night out. She was never found, but the sound of her heels clacking could still be heard coming down the street every night as if she’s trying to make it back home.Colo-Mitolo-Gítal was researched, Designed and Developed By <a href="http://kevincadena.com/" target="_self">Kevin Cadena</a>. It was playtested by Andres Chang, Artemio Morales, Arnon Karnkaeng, Tracy Leung, and Hyacinth Ramsay. Special Thanks to Chantal Feitosa, Claudia Rincon, Nidia Rincon and Jose Mauricio Cadena.This project was produced during the 2020 Fall Residency Program at <a href="https://www.babycastles.com/" target="_self">Babycastles.</a>

Colo-Mítolo-Gítal

Cat Scratch Fever vol. 1

Beanie Hat Prototype

First Generation

Andinx

Mosqhoq is a poem both about dreaming and the longing to wake up. It's also a bit of a love story, for a person and a language. 

It is written at an intermediate Quechua level with English and Spanish translations. Notes are included at the end to explain my translation choices and also give more context for Quechua words that have no exact translation.

Mosqhoq (Dreamer/Soñadora)

SHTF: A Post-Apocalyptic Pick Your Path Adventure

(Dear Charles #3) Thinking, Feeling, Creating

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 2

In his first letter to Art, Charles writes on human nature, technology, and the 90s Disney film "Honey I Blew Up the Baby"

First Letter to Art - Human Nature, Technology, and Blown Up Babies

As you know, I just turned 31 this past week, and I’m considering more and more what I value, what we as a culture value, how I find myself within that and how to live a good life.

(Dear Charles) The Shape of Our Future

One day recently, I was browsing social media. And I realized, I couldn't stand watching it anymore. I couldn't stand seeing more and more suffering and future suffering in the world...

Letter to Art #2 - Egos, Deadlines, The Twisties, and Sandwiches

We might take someone’s outward appearance for granted, just beneath the surface though everything is always flowing. It takes listening to one another’s stories to feel just how malleable life is...

(Dear Charles #2) Cultivating Cultural Change

Letter to Art #3 - Young People, Unmoored Asian Americans, and Doing Good

Newgrounds

Itch.io

This is an experimental multimedia essay, written to my friend Charles, reflecting on the act of making art. It includes writing, illustrations (doodles), and music.It's also a test of my internal studio tools for creating new media literature experiences for web in Cocos Creator.This is the third in a series of letters we've been exchanging: <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/playlist/dear-art-dear-charles/2" target="_blank">Dear Art, Dear Charles</a>.

In this series of essays we delve into generational anxieties, life reflections, and vulnerabilities as we unpack what it means to be a human in the 21st century. In the tradition of old timey letter exchanges, these essays are written with no prior coordination and only exchanged when they are posted publicly. In this way, we hope to foster discovery at every point along our journey; we invite you to join us!

a series of letters

Dear Art, Dear Charles

Free

Paid

Resonate

Book

Artificial-Intelligence

Creative-Coding

Artmayu.com

Website

Instagram

Twitter

I'm a software developer, director of Artmayu Studios, and founder of AltSalt.I love the digital and literary worlds, especially exploring new kinds of digital literature, from experimental multimedia books to narrative adventure games.Currently, I'm in the process of learning more about my Andean background, and thinking through how to bridge that heritage with the world of technology.

Guttenberg Arts is dedicated to increasing opportunities for artists that encourage artistic evolution while creating cultural experiences for the community that promote creative thinking. Since 2014, we have promoted the visual arts through providing practicing artists with the space and time to develop their work, engage with the public, and expand their community.Participating artists benefit from increased career opportunities and public exposure through peer collaboration and promotion to curators and collectors in the tri-state area.We enable artists to explore new techniques in our studio (a 4,500 sf facility for the visual arts accommodating working in 2-D &amp; 3-D including printmaking and ceramics) and to share their experiences through artistic mentorship, creating new opportunities for artistic evolution.  Supporting Guttenberg Arts will provide artists the space and time they need to develop work that represents the uniqueness of their voice and the platform to share it.Guttenberg Arts hosts a dynamic array of public programming that includes, free community workshops for all ages, panel talks and artist lectures providing diverse perspectives and actively engaging a range of audiences inspiring new dialogs. Guttenberg Arts aims to be a cultural cornerstone that serves the arts and artists within the community to create meaningful experiences.

Paper Crown Press is an artist-run publisher committed to creating uniquely designed artists’ books and magazines that push the boundaries of publishing while promoting interdisciplinary collaborations across visual art and literary forms. We collaborate with a range of artists, designers and writers every year and encourage unfettered pursuit of personal vision, without regard to current trends. Since 2010, Paper Crown Press has been publishing Carrier Pigeon, a quarterly magazine of illustrated fiction and fine art. More recently we began publishing outstanding and affordable books related to the field of art and literature and the collision of both.

Carrier Pigeon is an artist-run magazine of illustrated fiction and fine art. Four times a year we put creative control into the hands of the contributing writers, illustrators, fine artists and designers in order to promote respectful interdisciplinary collaboration. The results are organic, collaborative, and quickly evolving compositions featured alongside full portfolios of contemporary work by fine artists from an unrestricted demographic range. We believe that loyalty to each artist’s personal vision, without regard to current trends, provides the best environment in which to collaborate on fully personal work. The main goal of this journal is to provide a magazine that is, in itself, a piece of artwork.

The Andean diaspora* community in the United States is confronted with discrimination and a sense of dual exclusion from both Latinx and white US heritages due to histories of colonialism and imperialism that continue to impose Western epistemologies across time and borders. Rima(y) Raíz, an Andean diaspora collective based in NYC, NJ, IL and CA, confronts these issues by documenting and sharing inter-generational oral hxstories of the Andean diaspora in efforts to reclaim a sense of identity, alter dominant narratives about their communities, preserve experiences and knowledge of their elders for the next generation, and create a sense of solidarity. &nbsp;We are inspired by Andean notions of time, space, and community such as pachakutik and the ayllu and we choose oral hxstory as a medium due to its inter-disciplinary, borderless nature. Oral hxstory also acts as a way to decolonize the production of knowledge. The main components of the project are (1) interview three generations across the US-Andean diaspora, including community leaders (2) archive the oral histories in a public website, (3) share and discuss the stories via a podcast, zine, public space installations, and virtual Raymi or parties, and (4) organize gatherings of Andean organizations and leaders to celebrate and unite cultural advocacy efforts.Coloniality may have traversed time and space, but so has our resistance.*The Andean diasporic community includes people with South American heritage from Andean countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Hence, Rimay Raiz utilizes the term Andean to refer to this region of South America, as opposed to folks that are strictly from the highlands. We remain inclusive of the many nationalities in the Andean region, and recognize that people that may identify with diverse backgrounds, such as that of the coast and the Amazon, Black, Indigenous, mestizo, and we welcome all people who identify with our mission and background, whether they are recent immigrants, second generation, or have not connected to their ancestral countries for generations.

I am gardener and composter passionate about equity in the food system. Quinoa scholar and oral history and community archive enthusiast. Runasimita yachapakuq. Member of the Rimay Raiz colectivo.&nbsp;

Ecuadorian-American sociologist, of Huancavilca and Kichwa descent. Bi-coastal, born in Queens, NY and raised in both NY and CA. Musician, community activist, project coordinator at an immigrant and workers rights org, and co-founder of Rimay Raiz.&nbsp;

I am a triple fire sign, Catholic and a feminista. My family is Peruana, my parents immigrated to the U.S. and I was raised in Central Florida. I write poetry on Mami_soy_emo on Instagram about growing up in the between of Peruvian and American culture, therapy , sisterhood, empath struggles, and my ongoing haphazarduous love life. I am inspired by my Mamá, sunsets, pollo a la brasa con papas, and humanity's ability to heal. I am also an immigration attorney who works with survivors of gender-based violence, a plant mom to 17 plants, and a mediocre ukelele player. I am currently working on a zine about my therapy journey.&nbsp;

I am an Indigenous Adoptee from Peru. I've grown up in Brooklyn, NY and I've gone back to Peru several times to reconnect with my biological family.&nbsp;

Bridging the worlds of the West and Andes through storytelling...Artmayu is a digital book production studio, and the studio behind AltSalt!Our name comes from Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon, and Mayu, the celestial river from Andean cosmology.In addition to maintaining the AltSalt website, we make animated ebooks, games, and other creative digital projects.

Colombian-United-Statesian born + based in Queens, NYC and raised in Orlando, Florida.&nbsp;I'm interested in the narrative potential of the internet; A web that is playful, poetic and surprising.&nbsp;

Editorial content by the AltSalt team.

Shirley identifies as a queer, asian-american woman of color. She works as a community organizer in Northern Colorado and as a yoga teacher. When not being self-referential in a bio, you can find her painting watercolors, biking around town, dancing, or reading a book.

animator and illustrator currently studying at school of visual arts. a rat girl

Imanalla! I'm Sandy, a zinester librarian in sunny southern California. I started making zines as a way to practice and maintain Quechua, my ancestral language and one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages of the Americas. I now feel like I have too many zine ideas and too little time, but I try to make it work!&nbsp;I participate in several Andinx community projects like the annual May Sumak Quichwa Film Showcase and oral history collective Rimay Raíz. I love creating spaces for our community to share our cultures, languages, and experiences in the diaspora.&nbsp;In my spare time, I enjoy reading/watching things in the realms of sci-fi, fantasy, or horror. I also like to weave and garden (especially with, you guessed it, Andean potatoes!).&nbsp;

Writing, scriptwriting, andean ethnofuturism, nueva trova, improvised music, folk music, non white centric SciFi, decolonization and decolonising art

I'm a writer and cartographer. I mostly write scif/fantasy and have worked on some table top rpg projects such as the in*die zine and unbreakable rpg. I manage the integral states project, where I draw US states and territories as fantasy maps and pair them with pre-colonial histories.&nbsp;

Envisioning an alternative world

Sky Tocapu

Creator Background

Creators