UF Center for Latin American Studies
Days: Tuesdays
Times: 9:35 am - 12:35 pm
Location: Grinter 376
Course description
Foundations of Art+Technology is an immersive journey into how creativity and technology have evolved together to shape the world we live in today. This course offers a condensed glimpse into history, anecdotes, tools, and apps, unveiling the dynamic intersection of art, language, technology, and advancement.
We will trace the evolution of these domains from ancient inventions to contemporary practices, revealing how artists have always been innovators by designing and experimenting with tools, machines, and complex systems long before the digital age. Students will learn the fascinating continuum that connects early thinkers like Archimedes and Al-Jazari to pioneers of media and interactive art.
The class will dive into groundbreaking ideas and groups, from cybernetic theory by Norbert Wiener to experimental literature like OULIPO, and from avant-garde sound experiments to the birth of video art. The course also highlights influential Latin American artists who have intertwined art and technology.
It’s worth emphasizing that the course goes beyond a purely historical perspective. Through hands-on workshops, students will explore sound synthesis, interactive media, and other artistic approaches, learning how technologies from early mechanical systems to videogames can become powerful creative tools.
Works developed during the seminar will be exhibited at the UF Galleries by the end of the course, providing students with a professional platform. Consistent participation is essential, as student engagement significantly contributes to the collective learning environment and the success of the group exhibition.
About Yucef Merhi:
Artist's statement
My practice explores the intertwining of language, technology, and history, highlighting the contemporary impact, cultural influence, aesthetic qualities, and combinatorial properties of poetry, code, data, electronics, and computer interfaces.
I consider language to be the most sophisticated form of technology that we have ever created. Language is the operative system of our thoughts, memories, cognitive abilities, and behaviors. It organizes every single aspect of our lives and civilization, carrying the information that is transmitted and stored from generation to generation. In this sense, we can say that human life is built on language. Language is also the foundation for instructing, controlling, and interacting with technology, serving as the required means to communicate commands and information to machines. Along with language, history offers the vital context for understanding who we are, where we come from, and where we might be headed.
From there, I've been able to develop playful, discerning, and poetic experiences, including interactive poetry generators, political/philosophical installations and video games, as well as site-responsive architectural projects that blend the past with the present. One of my firmest convictions is that poetry transforms objects into art in the same way that it converts noise into music. The relation poem-object that I have laid out seeks to redefine the role of the poet and subvert how we experience written language in our time.
Poetry is disruptive. It can slip under the radar to question the status quo without explicitly stating opposition. This inherent condition of poetry led me to repurpose outdated technologies, but also to devise works and actions that show the vulnerability of governments, corporations, institutions and public figures. As a result, the hidden layers of control and surveillance that shape our interactions with the digital and physical world are publicly exposed.
Just as poetry distills complex emotions and ideas into a few carefully chosen words, my practice seeks to distill the complex forces of power, control, and resistance into interactive, immersive experiences that challenge both the viewer and the systems at play. As we continue to live in an increasingly mediated, algorithmic world, it is more essential than ever to question, reinterpret, and reshape the tools we use to communicate, understand, and define our reality.
Yucef Merhi (Digital artist/poet/computer programmer, Venezuela)
Fall 2026 Kislak Family Foundation Artist in Residence
Center for Latin American Studies
Email: TBA
Tel: TBA
