Pedro Alves da Veiga is an artist and researcher with a PhD in Digital Media-Art granted by the University of Algarve and Aberta University, where he is also a Professor and Sub-director of the PhD in Digital Media-Art. In his previous entrepreneurial career of over two decades he developed award-winning web design and multimedia projects. He is regularly involved in projects at the intersection of art, science and technology, and his research focus lies in the influence of the attention and experience economies in new media art ecosystems, art-based research methods, hactivism, artivism and new media curatorship. His art practice includes assemblage, generative creative programming and digital audio-visuals. He has exhibited his artworks in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, China, Thailand and the USA.
His artworks are the result of an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete facts and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realised through media art. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a mindless world, that constantly demands and shatters attention, his work deals with the representation and communication of ideals, seeking to metaphorically convey a message through aesthetics and technology, yet allowing the audience the freedom to (re)construct the plot.
Through his work he also questions contemporary visual culture, in which images, representations and ideas are aestheticised and consumed as commodities. By emphasising the communication of ideas and ideals, he creates work that stimulates diverse meanings and interpretations, albeit along a clear line of intervention. Associations and meanings collide. Space becomes time and language becomes image. Life extends beyond its own subjective limits. It is a human characteristic to share stories imbued with global values and cultural interactions, spanning across decades – or even centuries. Through his vision of these stories, Pedro challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our inner ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilised’ selves.
He currently lives and works in Estoril, Portugal.