GAINESVILLE, August 15, 2024 – The UF Center for Arts, Migration + Entrepreneurship (CAME) announced today the selection of Marlon Barrios Solano as the next Maker in Residence with a focus on AI and the Arts. Recognized as a pioneer in integrating dance, cognitive science and emerging technology, Barrios Solano brings deep experience as an interdisciplinary artist, creative technologist and researcher to the University of Florida. During his three-year term as Maker, Barrios Solano will lead creative research and productions integrating arts and technology.
The Maker in Residence program is a core pillar of CAME, bringing nationally and internationally recognized artists to UF to foster innovative research while creating opportunities to engage students and the broader community in arts and technology. The residency provides space for the Maker to create within and across cultures, connecting artists, technologists, entrepreneurs and diasporic communities. In this role, Barrios Solano will bring global research connections to UF and collaborate with faculty across campus to shape new initiatives such as an AI & Arts Certificate Program set to launch in the 2024-25 academic year.
CAME director Osubi Craig praised Barrios Solano as an innovator for his work in AI tech and the interaction between motion and dance. “Marlon brings an amazing resume and portfolio of performance work and research that he has cultivated for the last 30 years. His adaptation and use of AI tech in performing arts makes him a great artist to bring to the Center in this moment. As UF seeks to lead the way in exploring new AI applications, Marlon’s residency provides a perfect opportunity to examine the activation of AI into creative spaces to build new possibilities and horizons.”
Most recently, Barrios Solano, a Venezuelan-American, held artist residency positions with the Rewilding Cultures program at Radiona in Zagreb, Croatia, and at Lake Studios Berlin, Germany. His work investigates computational creativity and synthetic cognition to design hybrid complex systems where language and self-organizing processes generate the aesthetic experience. His artistic practice includes machine learning for embodied digital interaction, generative AI, movement and voice, creative coding and app development and generative writing. Barrios Solano frequently publishes and distributes his work with an open-source license to promote broad accessibility and engagement with emerging technologies.
Heidi Boisvert, PhD, assistant professor of AI and the Arts in the UF School of Theatre and Dance, served as chair of the Maker search committee that selected Barrios Solano. Boisvert describes Barrios Solano as a pioneer in dance-tech. “Throughout his career he has embraced and experimented with the latest emerging tech as it surfaces. He has also been instrumental in catalyzing critical discourses around dance, tech, embodied cognition through over 200 interviews with practitioners, technologists and scientists around the globe. His vast knowledge base and unconventional, experimental ethos will be invaluable to helping shape COTA’s new AI & Arts Certificate program.”
Along with holding an MFA in Dance and Technology from The Ohio State University, Barrios Solano completed the General Assembly Software Engineering Immersive Program. He has authored essays, collaborated with choreographers and musicians, performed professionally and held research and artist residency positions internationally. In 2007, Barrios Solano launched dance-tech.net, a social network for interdisciplinary explorers of movement performance, innovators, and emergent performance practices.
CAME Associate Director Porchia Moore cites the Center’s unique position as an incubator for Barrios Solano’s innovative research and creative production: “There is no university in the United States that has the kind of unique center that is CAME, and attracting a mega-talent and pioneering scholar like Marlon is a major accomplishment for the University of Florida. As the next Maker, Marlon will lead us into a new era of visionary Artificial Intelligence innovation, exploring how AI impacts our modern lives as we navigate the arts, migration, and entrepreneurship. I am excited about the projects Marlon will bring to enhance our scholarship, our collective learning, and our understanding of 21st-Century digital tools. I am thrilled to welcome Marlon to CAME and the greater UF and Gainesville communities!”
“We are incredibly fortunate to be welcoming Marlon as our CAME Maker in Residence,” says UF College of the Arts Interim Dean, Jennifer Setlow. “The breadth of his knowledge, curiosity, and international experience will bring an unparalleled resource to our college at a key moment in our trajectory. Over the three years of this position, we will benefit from having Marlon as a member of our community, and from collaborating with him as he investigates arts, migration, and entrepreneurship through the platform of artificial intelligence while consistently foregrounding the ethical issues raised by generative AI.”
Barrios Solano is the newest in a line of Makers helping to transform the landscape of CAME’s research and programming. CAME continues to collaborate with its inaugural Maker, Qudus Onikeku, on Atunda: An AI Deep-Tech Solution to Economic Health and Mobility supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Most recently, CAME’s 2023-24 Visiting Maker Braxton Rae, a theatre artist, led creative workshops for College of Engineering students via the IGNITE program (Innovation Gator Network for Inspiring Technological Entrepreneurship) to increase design innovation. This summer, they collaborated with Dr. Boisvert to produce an original performance integrating devised theatre techniques and AI technology. CAME looks forward to Barrios Solano continuing to build upon their trajectory of research and community engagement.
Contact: Marie Kessler, Operations and Program Manager, UF Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship
Phone: 352-294-9059
Email: came@arts.ufl.edu
