Carlos Castellanos Headshot

Carlos Castellanos

Assistant Professor

School of Interactive Games and Media
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences

Office Location

Carlos Castellanos

Assistant Professor

School of Interactive Games and Media
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences

Bio

Carlos Castellanos is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher with a wide array of interests such as cybernetics, ecology, embodiment, phenomenology, artificial intelligence and transdisciplinary collaboration. His work bridges science, technology, education and the arts, developing a network of creative interaction with living systems, the natural environment and emerging technologies. His artworks have been exhibited at local, national and international events such as the International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA), SIGGRAPH & ZERO1 San Jose.

Select Scholarship

Journal Paper
Castellanos, Carlos. "PlantConnect." Leonardo 56. 4 (2023): 337-343. Print.
Ferguson, Arron, Carlos Castellanos, and Philippe Pasquier. "Digital Music Interventions for Stress with Bio-sensing: A Survey." Frontiers in Computer Science 5. (2023): 1-19. Web.
Diblasi, Johnny, Carlos Castellanos, and Bello Bello. "Beauty: Explorations of Machine-Microbial Agencies." ACM Transactions on Graphics 6. 2 (SIGGRAPH 2023) (2023): 1-10. Print.
Shows/Exhibits/Installations
Castellanos, Carlos. PlantConnect. 2019. Asia Culture Center, as part of the International Symposium on Electronic Art, Gwangju, South Korea. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. Beauty. 2024. College of Design, Iowa State University, Ames, IA. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos. Focus Art Fair, New York City, NY (invited). 2024. Focus Art Fair, New York City, NY. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. Brownfield Tokenization Protoype. 2023. Rohester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, NY. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. Beauty. 2022. The Earth, Our Home: Art, Technology, and Critical Action (invited - only invited work out of 20 exhibited), ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community, online. Exhibit.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. Beauty. 2022. ACM Multimedia, Lisbon, Portugal. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. Beauty: Compositional Agents. 2022. Centro Cultural Universitario Rogelio Salmona (Festival International de la Imagen), Manizales, Colombia. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos. Post-Natural Prototypes. 2022. Centro del Carmen de Cultura Contemporánea, Valencia, Spain. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos. Beauty. 2021. S.P.A.C.E. Outdoor Exhibition, McBride Park, Vancouver, BC, Canada, https://www.imapon.org/space-banners/. Exhibit.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. Dendritiformis. 2021. Festival International de la Imagen, Manizales, Colombia (online). Performance.
Castellanos, Carlos. Beauty. 2020. UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, Sant Cruz, CA (online). Exhibit.
Castellanos, Carlos and Bello Bello. PlantConnect. May 2019. Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea. Installation.
Castellanos, Carlos and Bello Bello. ISEA2019, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Asia Culture Center Residency, Gwangju, South Korea. May 2019. Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, South Korea. Installation.
Invited Keynote/Presentation
Castellanos, Carlos. "Computation, Beauty and Becoming: Notes on Art, Aesthetics and Ecological AI." Beauty Investigated Symposium. Iowa State University. Ames, IA. 15 Feb. 2024. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Intersections of Living and Machine Agencies in the Arts." Zoom On Art. Rutgers University. Camden, NJ. 22 Feb. 2023. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "n/a." Welcome II. Rochester Contemporary Art Center. Rochester, New York. 26 Jan. 2023. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Intersections of Living and Machine Agencies in the Arts." IBMCP Lecture Series. IBMCP (Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celuar de Plantas)). Valencia, Spain. 26 May 2022. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Material Agencies: Encounters Between Machine Intelligence and the More-Than-Human World." Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER). Universitat Politècnica de València. Valencia, Spain. 21 Oct. 2022. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Intersecciones de Agencias Vivas y Mecánicas en las Artes: Modelos Especulativos de Relaciones entre Humanos y No Humanos." Volumens Festival. Volumens Festival. Valencia, Spain. 30 Sep. 2022. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Hybrid Space: Interactions of Science, Technology and the Arts." ITP Lecture Series. New York University, Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). New York City, New York. 3 Apr. 2020. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Human-Nonhuman Relations in New Media Art." ACC Lecture Series. Asia Culture Center. Gwangju, South Korea. 23 May 2019. Guest Lecture.
Castellanos, Carlos. "PlantConnect - ACC Creators in Lab." International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2019). Asia Culture Center. Gwangju, South Korea. 23 Jun. 2019. Guest Lecture.
Peer Reviewed/Juried Poster Presentation or Conference Paper
Bobadilla, Mariana Perez, Elizabeth Demaray, and Carlos Castellanos. "Cosmologies of Care: Epistemological and Ontological Repositioning of Symbiotic Relationships in Art and Living Systems." Proceedings of the 28th International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2023). Ed. n/a. Paris, France: n.p..
Castellanos, Carlos, Bhushan Patil, and Johnny Diblasi. "Beauty." Proceedings of the Machine Learning for Creativity and Design Workshop, 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing (NeurIPS 2021). Ed. n/a. Sydney, Australia: n.p..
Published Conference Proceedings
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny Diblasi, and Bushan Patil. "Beauty: Machine Microbial Interface as Artistic Experimentation." Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’22). Ed. n/a. Daejon, South Korea: ACM, 2022. Print.
Pangaro, Paul, et al. "#NewMacy Studios Act I: Re-defining Stability." Proceedings of the 66th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Ed. n/a. online, USA: International Society for the Systems Sciences, 2022. Web.
Bunnell, Pille, et al. "#NewMacy ACT II Studios—Redefining Stability." Proceedings of the Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design 2022 Symposium. Ed. n/a. Brighton, United Kingdom: n.p., 2022. Web.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny DiBlasi, and Bello Bello. "Beauty: Machine Microbial Interface as Artistic Experimentation." Proceedings of the 30th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (MM '22). Ed. n/a. Lisbon, Portugal: ACM, 2022. Print.
Castellanos, Carlos, Johnny Diblasi, and Philippe Pasquier. "Beauty: A Machine-Microbial Artwork." Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design (EvoMUSART), Late-Breaking Abstracts. Ed. Antonio M. Mora and Anna I. Esparcia-Alcázar. Seville, Spain: ArXiv, 2021. Web.
Castellanos, Carlos, et al. "On Creating Multimedia Interfaces for Hybrid Biological-Digital Art Installations." Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Multimedia Modeling. Ed. Y. M. Ro, et al. Daejeon, South Korea: Springer, 2020. Web.
Castellanos, Carlos, et al. "Sentience and Trans-Species Collaboration: Considering the Aims, Desires and Perceptual Landscapes of the Non-Human." Proceedings of the  International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2020). Ed. Christine Ross and Chris Salter. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: ISEA2020, 2020. Print.
DiBlasi, Johnny, et al. "Agency & Autonomy: Intersections of Artificial Intelligence and Creative Practice." Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2020). Ed. Christine Ross and Chris Salter. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: ISEA2020, 2020. Print.
Salimi, Mahsoo, et al. "Liminal Scape, an interactive visual installation with expressive AI." Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2020). Ed. Christine Ross and Chris Salter. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: ISEA2020, 2020. Print.
Castellanos, Carlos. "PlantConnect and Microbial Sonorities: Exploring the Intersection of Plant, Microbial and Machine Agencies." Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2020). Ed. Christine Ross and Chris Salter. Montreal, Quebec, Canada: ISEA2020, 2020. Print.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Un/Green Agency: Human-Non-Human Relations in New Media Art." Proceedings of the 4th Open Fields Conference on Art-Science Research. Ed. Raitis SMITS, Rasa SMITE and Jens HAUSER. Riga, Latvia: n.p., 2020. Web.
Castellanos, Carlos. "Microbial Sonorities." Proceedings of the Art Machines: International Symposium on Computational Media Art. Ed. Richard William Allen. Hong Kong, Hong Kong: School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, 2019. Print.
Levy, Ellen, et al. "Life, Agency & Ecology: Aesthetics of Human-Nonhuman Encounters in Environmental and Biological Art." Proceedings of the College Art Association Annual Conference. Ed. Jim Hopsfensperger and Hunter O'Hanian. New York, NY: n.p., 2019. Print.
Book Chapter
Castellanos, Carlos. "Intersections of Living and Machine Agencies: Possibilities for Creative AI." The Language of Creative AI: Practices, Aesthetics and Structures. Ed. Craig Vear and Fabrizio Poltronieri. Berlin, Germany: Springer Nature, 2022. 155-166. Print.

Currently Teaching

IGME-470
3 Credits
The rich variety and widespread adoption of gestural touch screens, motion-sensing devices, weight-reactive surfaces, wearable digital devices, and similar interface products demonstrates the demand for well-integrated devices and services that seamlessly couple people and environments. Such products can interface computers with real-world inputs and outputs, and give people new ways of controlling and experiencing their devices and information. This course provides a rapid technical introduction to basic electronics (components, circuits, microcontrollers, etc.) and emphasizes the application of interface design concepts to physically interactive and innovative product development. The course requires solo and team projects that blend electronics, programming, and design.
IGME-480
3 Credits
Interactive media development is a rapidly evolving field. This course provides an opportunity for students to learn and experiment with emerging themes, practices, and technologies that are not addressed elsewhere in the curriculum. Topics covered in this course will vary based on current developments in the field. Students will explore, design, and develop creative interactive experiences pertaining to the semester's domain area. Programming projects are required.
IGME-670
3 Credits
Technologies and techniques for producing and manipulating digital audio are explored. Topics include digital representations of sound, digital audio recording and production, MIDI, synthesis techniques, real-time performance issues, and the application of digital audio to multimedia and Web production.
IGME-690
1 - 6 Credits
This is intended to allow for special one-time offerings of graduate topics. Specific course details (such as the course topics, format, resource needs, and credit hours) will be determined by the faculty member(s) who propose a given seminar offering. (Varies)
STAR-701
3 Credits
This course will introduce a contemporary technology used by the course instructor in their studio practice. Students will be encouraged to investigate how this technology may be applied in their making process. The subjects offered in the course will vary according to the faculty teaching the class. The course can be taken multiple times with faculty permission.

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