Santiago Sares (b. 1991) lives and works in Buenos Aires, part of a generation of Latin American artists working between affect and machine logic. He takes apart traditions the eye already knows, and builds them back with the instruments of the present: his own signal, read live from the body through EEG and other biometric channels, run through custom models, affective computing, and quantum computation to shape the visual work, with generated sound completing the experience.
He works one question at a time, a year to each. Generative Emotions gives a year to feeling, a single state per series; Quantum Consciousness turns to the mind. The process behind the work he has published as Data Poetics, and he treats each framework as an open line of study rather than a finished project.
What the work is finally after is plain: to make feeling legible again in a culture that has learned to read being moved as naïve. The work has been shown across different countries — Italy, the United States, China, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Argentina, Portugal, France, Estonia, and Spain — and in residencies including AIHokusai (Japan) and Primavera Digitale (Florence).
Sares works from a stark contrast: the surface stays calm; underneath, everything is moving. Each piece holds a single moment still, using classical technique alongside the instruments of now — not to let the machine speak for him, but to prove a human hand is still behind it.
For Sares, working with these tools is an act of authorship, not automation — a space where intention shapes the computation, so the algorithm carries a human purpose instead of just running one, and that purpose is what gives the work its truth, not how realistic it looks. In an era where the line between the factual and the fabricated keeps thinning, art becomes testimony — a trace of a human being who was actually there.
“Start from the most extreme intimacy to reach what is most shared.” — Santiago Sares
Mundo[OS]
SuperRare x NADA
Rituales Tecnológicos II
Digital Residence · Inspicio
Madrid · Alicante · Vitoria · Bilbao · Sevilla · Murcia · Barcelona
A live experience where human and machine enter into dialogue using the Sensus System — a custom biometric platform developed specifically for this piece. Through an EEG device worn by the participant, brainwaves are captured and interpreted in real time by an AI classification system trained on five emotional states: focus, calm, excitement, frustration, and neutral. The detected emotional state drives the generative visual system, activating and transforming the piece so that each participant produces a unique version of the artwork. The result is a living data sculpture that grants consciousness a visible contour, transforming the mind's inner, ever-shifting activity into shape.
Developed with technical support from the NotSociety team. The system integrates a custom EEG pipeline with a real-time visual code environment and a machine learning classifier trained on biometric session data. Curated by Marianella Baladán and Natalia Uccello as part of Rituales Tecnológicos II at Palacio Libertad, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2025–2026. The installation occupied the immersive room on the second floor of the venue, running continuous sessions across both editions of the show.
