Daniel Pitarch
Doctor. Researcher and artist
Qualifications and academic training
- PhD in Human Sciences, Heritage and Culture from the University of Girona, 2021
- Diploma of Advanced Studies (DEA) in Audiovisual Communication from Pompeu Fabra University, 2006
- Degree in Audiovisual Communication from Pompeu Fabra University, 2002
Activity and/or professional career
Member of the artistic collective and studio Estampa, which works in the fields of experimental audiovisual and digital environments, with a critical and archaeological perspective. They make video-essay pieces, experimental animation, online actions, writing or installation. In recent years they have developed a line of work focused on the uses and ideologies of artificial intelligence.
As a researcher, in addition to his work in the Estampa collective, he focuses on the history of the audiovisual in an expanded sense, understanding it within the history of visual culture and technology.
He has taught degrees in Art, Communication or Art History.
Investigation
His individual research focuses on the history of audiovisuals. He has worked on the cultural reception of cinema in the first decades of the 20th century and in the interwar period, when it was a new medium that attracted utopian thinking about technology. His doctoral thesis on the writings of filmmaker and theoretician Jean Epstein or the edition of Walter Benjamin's writings on cinema for the Abada publishing house are inscribed in this line. He also researches in the field of media archaeology, particularly in the Hispanic context and from archival sources. He has also investigated experimental animation cinema (in a non-academic sphere, for example, in the context of Xcèntric and Aula Xcèntric at the CCCB) and collaborated on projects at the Filmoteca de Catalunya.
The Estampa collective works from artistic research and has presented its projects on AI technologies in academic spaces (Uniarts Helsinki or UNAM Mexico, among others), in contexts of dissemination (CCCBlab), artistic (A*Desk) or for publishers such as Caja Negra or Como Ediciones.
Publications
- Again the old and the new again" in Images, a public domain Barcelona: CCCB, 2020
- The bad student Critical pedagogy for artificial intelligences. Collective authorship of Estampa. Barcelona: La Capella–Barcelona City Council 2018
- Walter Benjamin Writings on cinema. Edition and introductory study by Daniel Pitarch. Madrid: Editorial Abada, 2017
- History of a Fantascope: A Device for Education in Nineteenth-Century Girona in Early Popular Visual Culture
- L'Autre Ciel: essai de lecture d'un texte inédit de Jean Epstein in Jean Epstein. Actualité et postérités Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016
Work
- Guest images, Estampa, 2022. Call Immaterial 2021, Tabakalera (Donostia) – Exhibition The one that is possible and the one that is not in La Capella within ISEA 2022
- Martian species, Print, 2021. Mars Exhibition. The red mirror, CCCB
- Auspicis, Estampa, 2019. UNZIP-El Prat call, relocated projects
- What do you see, YOLO9000?, Estampa, 2019. Video-essay for the CCCB's “Soy cámara” channel
- The bad student Critical pedagogy for artificial intelligences, Estampa, 2018. Barcelona Production Call 2017-2018
Awards
- Barcelona Crea 2021 Scholarship, Art and Science modality. Stamp. Project: Dicroics (optics)
- Production-research grants from the Institut Ramon Llull, NewArtFoundation, UOC, La Caldera and Hangar – Ars Electronica, 2021. Print. Project: Dark Chambers of Ideology
- Scholarship for research and innovation in the fields of visual arts of the Generalitat de Catalunya. 2021. Project: New forms of experimental audiovisual: The Vertigo of... + Please read them…
- Scholarship for research and innovation in the fields of visual arts of the Generalitat de Catalunya. 2019. Print. Project: Strafet. Eloquence and polyphony for the neuronal wires