In the current digital landscape and heightened technological use, the role of digital and new media art has a significant role in the way society will be built for further evolution. On such a note, Claudia Rafael speaks about her journey and philosophy to provide crucial awareness of fashion that reflects not only the current state but the future space that is to come.

Claudia let's start with the oldest memory you hold of your involvement with technology. How did it begin to play out in your early progressing years? Any fun stories that you recall?

When I was a kid my dad had an Atari to make music on, and an Amiga 500. Although he wasn't into gaming, he bought my older brother and me a joystick and some games that we could play there, and I was obsessed! Especially in playing games where some cuteness was involved, like Lemmings or Mouse Trap, or exploring fictional places while solving puzzles like The Secret of Monkey Island. All of them were 2d pixel graphics but super colorful and so fun. I couldn't stop playing Monkey Island. There were four floppy disks in the game. I remember when I finally cracked all the puzzles to play the last disk, I excitedly put it in the drive and it said "This disk has a write read error" Even today I exactly remember this situation! Haha, I was shocked. At the time, there was just rudimentary internet and no online shopping, it was impossible to get a new one quickly and I never played the fourth disk. Also, I was very into my Gameboy, playing Super Mario and Tetris. When learning for school was too stressful, I played Tetris completely through to the end and felt relaxed again, very meditative.

What is your precise academic background? Please tell us about your relationship with fashion and art, how did it all start?

After graduating in media design, I worked as an art director and visual artist for a Berlin-based creative studio, with an intensive focus on art and culture. This included working with galleries and museums, as well as with individual artists. I have been researching constantly on new media since I was a student and back then was surrounded by art on a daily basis. After 3 years, I set up my own business and started freelancing. Specializing in the intuitive development of visual concepts for art, music, and fashion, working on projects of varying scale and complexity with international clients, collaborators, and cultural institutions. At that time I started my first experience in art direction for fashion. Especially fashion and art go hand in hand. Fashion combines the component of design with the freedom of art, that’s why I see it as a melting pot of creativity.
With absolute enthusiasm for Technology and new artistic forms of the digital, I joined an international digital art collective in 2016. All members were connected worldwide through the internet. We enjoyed the exchange and sharing of knowledge about technological innovations, applications, tutorials, and philosophies. We passed on this knowledge: in workshops at universities and schools, lectures at design and art festivals, hackathons, and writing scientific texts. The Spark AR beta phase was open only to digital creators in 2018 when I participated. Alongside an in-depth exploration of AR and its impact on the physical world, I explored algorithms and machine learning. A series of exhibitions and lectures followed over the last few years. I am still working on both sides. I am super grateful to be able to make my art and super happy to be able to work on commercial projects that give me the freedom to express myself in this way.

Your views on technology and the future possibilities associated with its various mediums of art make you diverse and a level more relatable in the current digital art space that we have begun to experience. Would you be able to take us through the making of an effective visual piece? What mindset do you work within the process?

I try to keep myself updated with the constant work on projects and take time for research and development. With future projects, I mainly try to integrate a research aspect.
I love to work collaboratively. For instance, when a music artist wants me to create the visuals for their new album and its whole campaign (single covers, visualizers, digital extensions, etc), I first talk to the artist to get a connection. What's the background of the album musically and thematically, and what are their interests aesthetically of course I listen to the music.
Thankfully, I have been given the opportunity to work with artists whose work I really like. I think that this is the base to be artistically totally absorbed in. A collaboration between artists from different genres that really like and respect what the other does, whether in fashion, photography, music, art, or performance can be so inspiring.
Then I start to think about which technique I want to work with. Since I'm constantly researching new models and scripts, I usually integrate them seamlessly. I start testing and finding a way that I haven't done before, but always stay true to my aesthetics. When I have a visual result I'm happy with, I share it. Of course, there are also projects where I work with artistic techniques that I have used before and know exactly. Matching is essential.

Visuals for a set art direction, please elaborate on the growing new age culture that is digitally thriving in market spaces such as NFT and AR VR for many immersive experiences such as metaverse. What new shifts do you see coming for the art market and digital industry in the coming years? What do you think one should be prepared for?

Augmented Reality is inherently dependent on the physical world yet the physical world becomes more and more dependent on its virtual counterpart. Emerging approaches in these combined realities influence each other and therefore will change each other.
The way we experience ourselves in virtual realities affects us as much as the way we experience ourselves in the physical world.
Speaking of now, most people are still much more familiar with AR than with VR, as it is in fact much easier to understand. What we already perceive in the physical world is augmented with a digital layer. A great way to create immersive experiences, especially in art, with moving paintings, extended sculptures, etc.
And when technology in VR becomes so precise and advanced that our minds can no longer tell if what they are perceiving is physical or digital, we will become much more immersed in this technology. Additionally on what you see a wide range of senses will be addressed - from sound to touch, to scent.
NFTs will become everyday life assets, concert cards gonna be NFTs, rights or parts on creative works across all genres, etc, all decentralized.
What I really like about NFTs in art, aside from finally being able to sign a digital artist's work, is the ability to make them react to each other. A series of NFTs that react differently depending on which or how many of them you collect, and so on.
As another example, generative art has an additional code on the blockchain that reacts to the time you mint it, so its unique outcome is linked to the specific time that the individual chose. I can’t wait till this is doable with A.I. visuals.

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Claudia your work has been exhibited in many places and your collaborations are beginning to tell the shifts of collective perspective on the way we view the relationship with technology. Please tell us what you wish people to be considerate and aware of. How do you want the viewers to understand the intentions behind it?

With technology, we can alter the digital appearance of our bodies, which enables us to develop more personal and abstract interpretations of our physical selves. Using technologies to change circumstances, which are dictated by nature towards an individual approach to beauty, has a huge emancipatory potential for self-realization. Digital tools and resources to learn how to use them have never been more available than they are today.
The easy accessibility of tools like AR or AI opens up the possibility to develop a novel approach to beauty.
Using these tools in an emancipist way will free what is considered beautiful from the current social norm.

On the subject of intentions via art for technology, What do you fear for the coming generation that is born in a technological heightened environment? I feel a bit uncomfortable when the topics of surveillance and face recognition come up. What is your intake on the role of digital and new media art amidst the social shifts that digitization has begun to weave for our society?

Everything is very quickly accessible. Technology is beautiful and enriching as long it’s not used in an abusive or addictive way.
With all the new media inventions, fast technological progress, and the internet, it is absolutely essential to look critically and reflect on the latest technological tools, use them in an emancipist way, and act in an educational manner.
Technology can be extremely helpful. For instance, Artificial Intelligence in medicine: It can tell much faster than a doctor when you need to go right away to the hospital based on body readings – before something serious happens. But of course, AI also gives us deep fakes and fake news.
The same has to be said for Augmented Reality, when we talk about face filters, for example. It’s amazing that the socially accepted norm of “beauty” can be substituted by strategies to become different. Alienation is used as the potential for distinction, turning socially normed otherness into a new way to create differentiated beauty. You can have blue skin, pointy ears, 4 eyes, gills, be your own Avatar, etc. Augmented Reality enables the relief of YOUR idea of beauty that lives in YOUR body and mind. And when we like how we look with Augmented Reality, it can feedback positively on our physical self and boost not only our online but also our offline personality. Without AR we wouldn't be able to express ourselves so easily in a way that is not biologically plausible.
The flip side is the filters that reflect the beauty trend of the mass media, which dictate to society how to look.

Last but not least, in the context of the digital future and its imaginations leading to the sci-fi film genre, which character of a movie you possibly would like to be a part of, and who is your recent favorite techno music artist on the list?

No specific character but I would love to shape-shift. I <3 TECHNO I’ve been listening to techno music since I was 16. It calms me down when a track starts from second 1, in a stress-relieving way, and always gets me in a good mood. I really like it when Ben Ufo is playing, Roi Perez, Kristian from Âme, Marcel Dettmann sometimes and currently listening amongst others to Bjarki, Daniel Avery, and Andy Stott.