Danae Tapia is a multimedia artist born in the Chilean working class and based in Rotterdam since 2016. Her practice addresses automated digital technologies, cognition science and religious studies.
She is a self-taught artist. Has a BA in Social Communication from Universidad de Chile, a Master of Science in Management from the University of Bristol and a Research Master in Comparative Literary Studies from Utrecht University. Currently she is a doctoral candidate at the European Graduate School in the Philosophy, Arts and Critical Thought program.
In 2018 she founded Digital Witchcraft Studio. This venture started as an artistic-research initiative dedicated to collect and showcase advanced non-conforming approaches to the use of tech. To the present day, Digital Witchcraft has executed a series of projects addressing posthuman technology. This work has been funded by several international foundations.
Next to her artistic practice, she has worked in several tech nonprofits advancing open source values, such as Article 19 in London, the Riseup Collective in the US, Coding Rights in Brazil and Derechos Digitales in Chile. Danae is frequently speaking in public, she has presented her work in places such as the Kodaiji Buddhist Temple in Kyoto, Casa de las Américas in La Habana, RightsCon in San Francisco and Taipei, the Garage Museum in Moscow, Mozfest in London, Hackers on Planet Earth in New York City, JSConf in Honolulu, and more. She also has a broad writing register and has published in magazines, academic journals and outlets of creative non-fiction.
She is a lecturer at the Willem de Kooning Academy, a Rijksakademie alumna, recipient of the Mozilla Fellowship and of numerous scholarships and awards.
Esoteric Algorithms and Re-Enchanted Technologies
Group exhibition with Tega Brain, Danae Tapia, Dasha Ilina, Ginevra Petrozzi, Margarita Athanasiou, RYBN.ORG (with b01, Femke Herregraven, Brendan Howell, Martin Howse, Nicolas Montgermont, Horia Cosmin Samoila, Antoine Schmitt, Marc Swynghedauw, Suzanne Treister); workshops and events with Crawlers, REINCANTAMENTO, Tommaso Cappelletti & Jumoke Fernandez
Rijksakademie
Selected as a resident 2022-2024
Reader at Slow Reading Group on AI
SLOW READERS are collectively pulled and guided by the negotiation of individual interests, fascinations, and disciplinary backgrounds. Research is emergent, transdisciplinary, and at times, rubbing against the grain of linear logic. Some of the reading methods employed are slow code reading, quilted or fragmented reading, adjacent reading, annotation as reading, divination reading, transcription as reading, reading aloud, reading through translation, reparative reading, dataset reading, reading
Lecturer and researcher
- Designed and delivered the course for the Hacking minor, a specialisation open to third-year students of fine arts
- Selected as researcher to develop a special program on computational bots and autopoiesis
- Supervised students in research projects and throughout internship processes
- Gave lectures and workshops for first- year students to introduce the Hacking minor
- Collaborated with colleagues to develop interdisciplinary curricula
Oracle Bots
This is a comprehensive examination of the bot format, its relation to the concept of autopoiesis and its potential contribution to a theory of automated art. It started as an academic essay at Utrecht University, then I was funded to do a work of artistic research, I organized workshops and did a residency to create bots.
Mozilla open web fellowship
Selected as an open web fellow to carry artistic research on dissident approaches to technology.