Juan Cortés is a Colombian artist, researcher and creative technologist working at the intersection of digital culture, memory studies, and ecological politics. His practice explores how technological systems shape historical narratives, territorial governance, and botanical knowledge, with a particular focus on South America.
He is the lead developer and conceptual director of the Virtual Museum of Memory at the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (CNMH) in Colombia, where he oversees the design of large-scale digital museographic platforms that integrate archival standards, decentralised storage systems, and participatory methodologies. The Virtual Museum received an Honorary Mention in Digital Humanities at Ars Electronica 2026, the UNIDO Top 10 Global Innovation Award, among other international recognitions. His work in this context engages with questions of historical representation, collective memory, and citizen-driven digital heritage.
Cortés' artistic practice critically examines the entanglement of data, artificial intelligence, and extractivist logics, often through counter-taxonomic and speculative frameworks. His projects frequently draw on ecological and agro-political contexts, addressing issues such as monoculture, biodiversity loss, and the colonial foundations of classification systems.
Notable works include A Tale of Two Seeds: Sound and Silence in Latin America's Andean Plains (co-produced with Semantica Studios), an eco-acoustic installation awarded the Golden Nica at Ars Electronica 2023, and As Above So Below (co-produced with Semantica Studios), an immersive installation exploring geological time and extractive landscapes.
His work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, festivals, and research contexts, including platforms such as Ars Electronica, MoMA, and Mesh Festival, and is shaped by long-term collaborations across art, science, and technology rather than one-off techno spectacles. Cortés regularly works with tools such as real-time 3D environments, decentralised networks, data visualisation, and custom hardware, treating technology not as an end in itself but as a critical medium through which to examine ecological systems, extractivist infrastructures, and the political consequences of contemporary computational culture.
He is the founder of Atractor Estudio, a creative-technology studio based in Bogotá, through which he develops interdisciplinary projects spanning contemporary art, digital museography, and experimental research. Works developed with Atractor Estudio include Verdor, A Tale of Two Seeds, Mapeo para la Reconstrucción el Río, Dark Matter, Perverse Mutation, Anomalous Transmission, Fables About Chatos, Surrounding Worlds, and The Migrants. His practice is grounded in long-term inquiry, institutional collaboration, and a sustained engagement with the political dimensions of technology and ecology.