Franco Palioff is an Argentinian-born multi-media artist who focuses on themes of futurism, technology in relation to humanity, our place as humans in the digital world, and religion, whilst focusing on a distinct duality in his work. Not only is Palioff a self-taught oil painter, creating his own unique visual interpretations of mythological stories in detailed, intricate creations, yet he is also trained in nuclear engineering, allowing him to create robotic objects, technological installations and 3D digital explorations that question the divide between humanity and the metaverse, and the scope for their hypothetical combination.

The first of these physical robotic objects Palioff created was made to question South America’s experience to spirituality and the concept of religion, showing a delicate exploration of the entire human experience, as well as its relation to the digital world in recent times. Continuing this split between the intracity of human life and the mathematical nature of technology, Palioff uses painting to research sex and how such a personable experience can be recontextualised in the modern world and the concept of ‘3D post-porn’.

What drew you to exploring robotics and 3D ways of working in the first place?

I guess robotics and electronics have been there since I have a memory. My parents told me I was fascinated with how things work. Later I got very involved in chemistry and electronics, but also was mixed with some sort of alchemy feelings, my treehouse was sort of a lab but also a ritualistic place where I used to explore meditation and time would stop there for me for long years.

Later computers came and got involved with coding, physics and mathematics when I was a teenager. But 3D was unknown to me at the moment. I actually started on 3D at the university, but doing computational 3D simulations, that’s why I was later starting a PhD on computational fluid dynamics that I never finished, but worked on the area for 3 years. 3D art videos I started doing seven years ago, with Blender as my software of preference. I see it as a big cinema where I can control every variable. It is a complex world very related to what I do in painting somehow.

Do you think in the future, humanity and the digital world will combine or work in conjunction in some way? If so, how?

Well I think that is already happening, we use a bunch of technologies that are an extent of our capabilities and memory. I think of the internet or our phone as a transhuman device because it extrapolates what 20 years ago we were not capable of doing. These decades are somehow key to how we interact with technology. But I`m not trying to celebrate and cherish this moment, I like to use technology to code behavior of robots to express a social idea that sometimes is the only way I’m able to channel.

What programs do you like to work with when exploring digital and 3D processes?

The software I use is generally Blender and Houdini. I still sculpt with the mouse. But I also use Solid Edge, AutoCAD, and Zbrush. Also learning Unreal because I’m developing an art-game.

I see that you are not only a digital artist, but also an oil painter- do you prefer tactile or technological ways of working, and why?

Both of them are of my preference, some days it`s more about the expression of the hand, letting the feeling express through color and body expression through a brush, sometimes it`s more a need to expand an idea that is also on painting, but the animation is needed, because it can hypnotize through a screen with sound. I also think that what I learned on painting and drawing is in 3D, especially because I like to mix a good amount of materials and textures in 3D to create a chaotic brush. Maybe it`s like going to a chaotic arrangement to then look and choose.

I see that you have created ‘characters’ for videos you have created - do you have a favourite of these characters? Do they have a storyline you could tell us?

I think Evra is one of my favourites, because she was the first where I dive into painting and sculpture at the same time in 3D space. Where I felt the technique was getting into what I like to do. My characters are very ugly normally. Since I was young I used to draw normative ugly and pretty normative bodies at the same time. They were already talking from a superficial and social point of view. And they are violent in my head. I’m writing a short at the moment and things are getting bloody and fleshy and sexual, but with sarcastic social criticism.

At first the storyline was more on the line of an animated painting as I see it. With time I started writing scripts of each take and objectives of the animation, that`s when I started seeing myself as a video artist, I want to create short movies in the future, and the storylines are more related with the concepts I put on the robots and installation I create, but with the imaginary world of my painting.

How do you think technology has impacted the art world? Do you think it will eventually end up benefitting art, or hindering it?

It has impacted hard and forever I`d say. Tech is part of our lives, and helps out our lives in many ways, why would we put it out of art itself? There are lots of buts here. When a new technology comes to the surface, it takes years or decades to understand what generates on our mind, social behavior or economical balance. Take NFT’s as an example, we digital artists have the function to shift where this can go. To a simple tool to create value on a complex unknown chain to most ones or to create new projects interesting from social point of views and from artistic point of view? I’m not very sure if it benefits or hinders it. I think having a brush and common materials is already having technology. Things got digital, so since society expanded in that way, art does as well. If we would have spent that time on morphing into more emotional meditative beings, then we would be better prepared for technology? I’m not sure if the question is that it benefits or hinders, it’s just the medium, reflecting what we have become in good and bad ways.

What are your core sources of inspiration?

Inspiration comes when meditating or when dissolving time in threads and being able to be true to one itself. Asking, but more to the self and doubting everyday might be a good firestarter. I remember it was through meditation that I started to draw and paint on my mind, then it would become way easier to paint and achieve what I wanted to experience with the brush. So I guess inspiration is always morphing into different triggers due to our plasticity and memory itself. We are always seeking that new emotion.

Do you have a favourite piece you have created?

I created an exhibition here in Berlin about a month and half ago. It was about symbolic violence. I put a wheeled robot that I built coded with machine learning tools which was walking all around the gallery. It measured how happy or sad the people in the gallery were. This robot would then trigger two different installations. When the critical mass of happiness (of people in the gallery) was above a certain threshold one installation would be triggered, and another would be triggered if the critical mass of sadness, disgust and surprise was above a threshold.

One installation was a robot hanging from the ceiling with a motor. This ‘person’ was 3D printed and was surrounded by edible jelly. It was an amorphous being. This being when triggered would fall from the ceiling to the ground. The more happy or neutral people were, the higher from the ceiling the robot would fall. This violent act would be triggered only when everyone in the audience accepts this act through their glances (read by the robot as happiness or neutrality). With this project I want to highlight how we as a society accept or allow certain silent violent acts to happen in front of our eyes. I put the visitors as accomplices of the violent act (the fall). They were the ones who triggered it and they knew about it.

There was another installation at the same exhibition that spoke about human addiction to violence. I used the concept of game addiction which I also related to the rat experiments on cocaine, which can be represented by a triangle. You buy new gears and with this you kill some monsters. When you kill a monster, you get a reward and with this reward you go back to buying more gear. So it is a cycle where you release dopamine when you buy new gear. I created another robot which was also hanging from the ceiling but this one moved in a triangle shape. While moving on one side he picked up screws and left them on the other point as a form of reward. Then he went to the middle and shouted at the people in the gallery, thereby exercising violence. From here he waited for the other robot to detect sadness or disgust or surprise (because he shouted at them) in the audience. Once sadness was detected, he went and bought more gear. I basically created a being that is addicted to violence.

Both installations are a research on violence as I see it, a complex cultural powder mix of social manners and a fleshy sort of chemical intrinsic to human nature.

If you could collaborate with any artist in history, who would it be and why?

Well since I like intensity and excess in painting I would choose Goya, Rubens, Kapoor, Giger. Sarraceno and Wei wei have a tasty political point of view for me as well. Rachmaninoff, Skriabin and Prokofiev for the intensity I like when I play piano. Bjork the emotional multi variable feeling. And Lola Bhajan has the South American queer political intensity that resonates on my art.

Do you have any projects in the works for the future you can tell us about?

At the moment I’m finishing a project of 11000 generative NFT’s which is a 3D digital research on algorithmic nature. A parallel evolutive nature. I take it as a first project on NFT`s, where I’m able to entertain myself on 3D generative code, also learn about how and where we want to go with NFT’s. Lots of questions came to myself when I was offered to do so. I already see a second project where those questions start to be answered. I also have different projects on robotic installations that I`m looking forward to building this year and a short 3D movie as well.