V INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL FOR STUDENTS
In this new edition, we invite students and digital artists to reflect on the concept of inhabiting: what it means to build, occupy, or transform a space whether physical, emotional, or virtual. To inhabit can be a form of refuge or displacement, memory or transition, body or territory.
Through digital artworks that explore this idea from intimate, social, or technological perspectives, we seek to examine how art can represent the relationship between people and the places that define them.
The 5th SMTH International Contest proposes an open and contemporary vision of home, belonging, and the ways in which we inhabit the world.
This edition features the collaboration of the following centers: CC Príncipe Pío (Madrid), CC Plenilunio (Madrid), CC Zielo Pozuelo (Madrid), CC L'Aljub (Alicante), CC Isla Azul (Madrid), CC Boulevard Vitoria (Vitoria), CC Lagoh (Seville), CC Oasiz (Madrid), CC Max Center (Bilbao), CC Nuga (Madrid), CC Palacio de Hielo (Madrid), CC Nueva Condomina (Murcia), and CC L'Illa Diagonal (Barcelona).
The open call will run from February 1st, 2025, to March 30th, 2025.
A jury of experts will select the five best works, each of which will receive a €500 prize and be exhibited on all participating screens from April 30st to July 31th 2025.
We live in an era where the boundaries between the physical self and the digital self are blurring, raising fundamental questions: Who are we in the virtual space compared to our identity in the physical world? Do we create new personas online, or are they extensions of who we already are? How does the virtual environment affect our personality?
Through this call, we invite students to reflect on the impact of virtual interactions on our self-perception, exploring whether these environments reflect our "true" selves or, instead, promote idealized versions. This is an identity in constant flux, where the tangible and intangible intertwine, allowing us to question and reimagine our essence in a connected world.
We want to explore how these relationships redefine our sense of community and connection, questioning whether technology brings us closer to a more authentic understanding of ourselves or distances us from it. In this way, "Digital Reflection" becomes a space where each piece addresses the complexity of existing in a constantly shifting reality, where both self and society are in continuous transformation.
We inhabit houses, bodies, memories, and rituals.
We inhabit objects, noises, wounds.
We also inhabit the world.
This open call arises from a simple yet urgent question: what does it mean to inhabit?
Home is not always a roof. It can be a gesture, a memory, a body that cares for us.
But it can also be a border, an absence, an exile, a conflict.
We invite students and digital artists to explore the intimate act of inhabiting from the everyday to the universal, from the bodily to the political, from the spiritual to the technological.
We envision this digital art exhibition as a poetic architecture of the spaces we inhabit — both visible and invisible: the familiar turned into symbol, the gesture as a channel of understanding, the object as memory, the body as refuge or battlefield.
THEME
POETIC ACHITECTURE
IMAGE
EX FIGURA
Barbara Stallone studied architecture in Venice and Mendrisio, under the guidance of Ishigami, Aires Mateus and Botta. Afterwards, she worked in BIG New York, Kengo Kuma and Sou Fujimoto, before collaborating in the fashion industry with Villa Eugenie in producing fashion runway sets for several major brands.
Francisco Silva studied in the Porto School of Architecture, under Siza and Souto de Moura, and in the Academie van Bouwkunst. Afterwards, he worked for Jean Nouvel, Sou Fujimoto and, recently, with various fashion brands and museums in the development of scenography projects.
EX FIGURA is the combination of both and, at its core, a multidisciplinary studio that operates with different forms of art.
Merging the knowledge and experience of people working with art, architecture, design and others, the goal of every project is to create a strategy that, taking advantage of the site, can put forward an experience that is meaningful towards anyone that uses it. After designing and building multiple spaces and objects in different parts of the world, the studio always sees it as fundamental to collaborate with various people from many backgrounds in every new endeavor.
Barbara Stallone studied architecture in Venice and Mendrisio, under the guidance of Ishigami, Aires Mateus and Botta. Afterwards, she worked in BIG New York, Kengo Kuma and Sou Fujimoto, before collaborating in the fashion industry with Villa Eugenie in producing fashion runway sets for several major brands.
Francisco Silva studied in the Porto School of Architecture, under Siza and Souto de Moura, and in the Academie van Bouwkunst. Afterwards, he worked for Jean Nouvel, Sou Fujimoto and, recently, with various fashion brands and museums in the development of scenography projects.
EX FIGURA is the combination of both and, at its core, a multidisciplinary studio that operates with different forms of art.
Merging the knowledge and experience of people working with art, architecture, design and others, the goal of every project is to create a strategy that, taking advantage of the site, can put forward an experience that is meaningful towards anyone that uses it. After designing and building multiple spaces and objects in different parts of the world, the studio always sees it as fundamental to collaborate with various people from many backgrounds in every new endeavor.
WINNERS
ANNA REN
MARCOS & HEF
YAGO PASCUAL
SOFIA ESCRIBANO
JORDI CABESTANY
ARTISTS
ESTEBAN RIVERA
A Colombian designer, currently based in Valencia, Spain, pursuing a Master's degree in Interactive Design at the Escola d’Art i Superior de Disseny de València (EASD). A music lover and admirer of art and cultural events. His work moves between the analog and digital, combining elements of the physical world with digital technologies to generate immersive stimuli. He is interested in new media art, generative art, interactive installations, and immersive experiences. His main tools include Touchdesigner, Ableton Live, and Python.
'Digital Cascade' is a contemplative piece that explores organic movement and subtle transformations over time. The work unfolds a generative waterfall of pixels that slide and reconfigure, evoking the duality between the natural and the virtual. While the code governs the structure of the piece, its behavior suggests the unpredictable and ephemeral, reminding us how, today, even the most primitive and natural elements are permeated by technological society.
IÑAKI CANCILLO
Iñaki Cancillo Mora is a designer and visual artist exploring how design and digital media shape cultural narratives. With a background in architecture, his practice moves across artistic and curatorial projects, project management, and digital content creation. He works with both manual and digital techniques, using tools like photogrammetry, 3D modelling, and sound design to build immersive visual experiences. His work reimagines the boundaries between technology, art, and material culture, reflecting on how digital media transforms creative processes and perceptions.
'Digital Birth' reflects on birth in a world where technology shapes, contains, and mediates bodies. The work situates this act within synthetic environments, where the organic unfolds through layers of artificiality, questioning the boundaries between the natural and the manufactured. Through a partially visible body, distorted by plastic interfaces, it reveals the tension between biological life and the digital frameworks that enclose it. The rigid frame acts as both a boundary and a support, suggesting a larger structure that regulates movement and autonomy. By isolating this moment of emergence, Digital Birth explores how human identity is constructed under the influence of external systems, bringing into play the aesthetics of the artificial and the fragile relationship between control and freedom in the digital age.
LIDA ZACHAROPULOU
Lida Zacharopoulou is an interdisciplinary artist, creative coder, and data scientist from Athens, Greece. She holds a BSc in Computer Science (University of Athens) and an MSc in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media (UPF). She worked as a software engineer at CERN and is currently working in the data science field while completing an MA in Digital Arts at Athens School of Fine Arts. She has participated in international festivals including Sónar+D (Barcelona), FILE Festival (São Paulo) and ROS Film Festival (Alicante) and in group exhibitions in venues like Medialab-Prado (Madrid), Kunstquartier Bethanien (Berlin), VAA (Vilnius), Technopolis (Athens), Kapnergostasio (Athens) and Costa Navarino (Pylos).
'Latent Life' investigates the boundaries between the artificial and the organic, the real and the simulated. It reflects on identity as a constantly shifting concept within digital environments. Through a dialogue with artificial intelligence, texts are transformed into living forms. These entities emerge from the algorithm’s latent space, questioning the authenticity of digital creation. They breathe, dissolve, and reconfigure, revealing the instability of the virtual self. The work asks whether digital processes can generate real life or merely simulate what already exists. It blurs the lines between creation and imitation, authenticity and transformation. Within the context of Digital Reflections, it questions whether these changing forms reveal a deeper truth or move us further away from it.
OFF_DISARTIST
A 3D artist of Franco-Spanish nationality currently living in Madrid, he studied a 4-year degree in animation at U-tad. He specializes in real-time rendering and shaders for visuals and interactive experiences. In recent years, he has developed an interest in live real-time visuals. He has worked on projects for musical artists such as Kinda Patri and JustinBEATS, focusing on creating atmospheres that perfectly complement their projects and concerts. On the other hand, he has participated as a VJ and 3D artist in events like ROOTEDcon (Madrid) and Arcu Atlanticu (Gijón), developing audio-reactive and interactive projects
PERSONALITY_ERROR critiques how personalities are formed from what is seen and felt. However, much of these stimuli come from the digital worlds. In a constant transformation, the personality reflects what it is, hidden behind imaginary masks that spin around it. The world is viewed through a fictitious window, where everything, in the end, becomes data that gets lost in the infinite. A simple error can transform all that wonder we know into hell. With this piece, the aim is to show the duality of social media and the internet: how they are constantly transforming and reflecting those worlds within oneself. It also seeks to highlight how, on many occasions, we hide behind masks in front of others. Digitalization has brought great benefits to growth, but at the same time, it has made us forget what is truly real and tangible, much like when the brain loses its ability to distinguish between reality and the digital.
P.A.R.T.V
A collective of designers from different nationalities, based in Madrid. Focused on digital design and passionate about audiovisual creation and experimentation
Altered Ego is a project that dialogues about the negative consequences of the current digital context. Throughout its dreamlike, and at times nightmarish, imagery, it addresses issues such as body dysmorphia, self-esteem/constant comparisons, and the loss of individual identity. It is structured in the form of a loop with the aim of creating a sense of repetition, reflecting the routine nature of our society's relationship with social media and the habitual consumption of it. The alternative aesthetic, referencing phenomena such as chromatic aberration or fragmentation through collage, seeks to convey precisely the suppression of what defines you, only to never find it again.
EXHIBITION SPACES
13 SPACES // 7 CITIES
ANNA REN
Anna Ren is a New York–based new media artist working across expanded animation, performance, installation, and interactive media. Her practice explores hybrid spaces between physical and digital environments, focusing on how technology mediates relationships between body, memory, and space. Drawing from experiences living across different cities, her work investigates cultural displacement and in-between states through immersive environments and real-time visual systems.
Ren recently completed her BFA in Interactive Media Arts from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited and presented internationally at venues including Ars Electronica Festival, ISEA, ACM TEI, CAA, and THE BLANC.
MARCOS & HEF
Marcos Micozzi and Hef Prentice are Argentine artists whose collaborative practice brings together sound, sculpture, digital design, and immersive technologies to explore new ways of perceiving memory, space, and time. Their work transforms ephemeral phenomena into material and visual experiences through audio, virtual reality, digital modeling, animation, and 3D printing.
XYZ Sound Sculptures proposes an innovative language for collecting, reinterpreting, and transforming sound. It is a protolinguistic system that converts sound into form, time into matter, and trajectory into tangible structure.
This project is a convergence of multiple disciplines: acoustics, wave physics, motion analysis, sound engineering, generative design, digital sculpture, cognitive neuroscience, and 3D printing. Here, sound gives rise to form—a radical inversion of the traditional paradigm in which form generates sound. It is a three-dimensional glyphography that proposes a new way of thinking about communication and perception, challenging conventional ways of experiencing sound. An embryonic, nonverbal alphabet that might one day be read by future intelligences.
XYZ Sound Sculptures also proposes an unprecedented archival system. Just as the musical staff encoded sound in pitch and duration but discarded its spatial dimension, XYZ captures precisely what the staff ignores: the trajectory of sound in space—how it inhabited the air, how it moved. Each sculpture is a three-dimensional document of a sonic event, a record of information that until now had no way of being preserved.
YAGO PASCUAL
Visual artist, 22 years old, and Fine Arts student at the Complutense University of Madrid. Their practice operates at the intersection of technology, corporeality, sound, and gender, examining how bodies relate to both digital and physical environments. Through their work, they investigate and question contemporary structures of power, identity, and perception.
Working from a hybrid approach, they develop projects that combine traditional media—such as sculpture and installation—with digital formats, including video, sound art, and technological tools. Their work is oriented toward creating sensitive and immersive experiences that foster critical reflection and dialogue around the relationships between the human, the technological, and the collective.
Their most recent body of work proposes an intimate journey through the inner spaces of the self, represented as shifting architectures composed of rooms, electronic prostheses, and organic, breathing walls. In this context, each wall functions as a symbol of boundaries, memories, and defense mechanisms. The work frames the exploration of interiority as a process of recognition and acceptance of one’s own complexity, where fears, guilt, and repressed desires emerge and reshape the internal landscape. By confronting them, these elements are re-signified as guides, inviting the viewer to inhabit, understand, and reconcile with a constantly mutating inner territory, and to find meaning within their own darkness.
SOFIA ESCRIBANO
Sofia Escribano (Hunan, 2003) is a Spanish artist, graduated in Fine Arts from TAI and currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Digital Fashion at IED. She primarily works through video and sculpture, drawing from the languages of fashion and 3D.
Her practice explores themes related to space, time, and affect through virtual and organic materials such as wax and plant matter. She investigates finitude through the boundaries between different planes or worlds, and identity as a response to a relational ecosystem, constructing an imaginary in which the notions of boundary and core are questioned through speculative fiction.
Spectro draws from future nostalgia. It reflects on the longing for a shared future that will never come to exist. The work is situated in the mourning of love and materializes it through absence, understood as a void one becomes attached to. These are traces of the past that persist over time, inhabiting the space between memory and desire, thus constructing longings for what could have been.
In this context, the absence of one body over another gives rise to ruins that exist in a time to which they do not belong, forming architectures of the past within a present where they only fit under the suspension of desire, or as specters of a platonic future.
JORDI CABESTANY
Jordi Cabestany is a filmmaker and audiovisual creator. He holds a postgraduate degree in Cinematographic Photography from ESCAC, a Master’s degree in Digital Video from UPF, and a Fine Arts degree from the University of Barcelona.
He currently teaches in the field of art and co-directs the contemporary dance company La Taimada together with choreographer Olga Álvarez.
He has created films and videos that have been screened at numerous international festivals and exhibited in art centers.
STONE AGE is a digital meditation—a tension between weight and emptiness. The work strips down digital space to uncover a mineral truth: its permanence. Every form is a reality, a memory suspended in time. STONE AGE is a cartography of the soul, a geological memory—the will to leave a trace.
