ars machinica

Software studio in Madrid. We build applications for art and expression, and software for art installations.

Ars Machinica, S.L. · Madrid, Spain

Who we are

Ars Machinica was founded by Marcelo Soria-Rodríguez, an artist and strategist based in Madrid.

His practice investigates the intersections of humans and machines — how technology changes the way we see ourselves, and the role emotions play in that. Trained in telecommunications engineering and signal processing in Spain, the United States and Finland, and largely self-taught as an artist, he has written code as a means of expression since 2004.

Before founding the studio he co-founded BBVA Data & Analytics, where he led data strategy, and Databeers, a data-literacy movement that has run events in more than thirty cities across ten countries. His generative work has been released through Art Blocks Curated and fxhash, and shown at Art SG, Art Basel Hong Kong and Bonhams.

More of his work and writing: iillucid.com

Projects

The studio is new. These are the things it is building, and the work its founder made before it existed.

In development

blitvibe

iOS · in development

A personal expression tool. Generative visuals and an eight-bit step sequencer, composed together on a phone and recorded as a short loop. blitvibe.com

socrates

In development

A tool for sharpening critical thinking — a way to examine an argument, find what it rests on, and test whether it holds.

Selected prior work by the founder

Entretiempos

2021 · Art Blocks Curated

A long-form generative work about time scales, and how the meaning of an event depends on the scale you choose to observe it from. Built on a “polycircles” paint system inspired by Sonia Delaunay. View

above/beneath all & all above/beneath

2025 · Cure³ at Bonhams

A generative work on the human condition and how it endures under the stress of illness, built with signed distance functions and raymarching. Shown in the digital section of Cure³ at Bonhams, in support of Parkinson’s research. View

Contact

For anything at all — enquiries about the studio, its work, or support for anything we have released: