Carl-Erik Engqvist

I am a contemporary artist and Artistic Director at Humlab, where I work with artistic perspectives on digital technology, which includes teaching, artistic research, daily routines, and other projects.

Since 2006, I have been working with questions related to robotics, nano-, biotechnology, and virtual worlds. Related to my artistic work, the meeting point between spirituality and advanced technology, contemporary and speculative, has been of great importance. Furthermore, these different technologies have regularly given me the opportunity and motivation to seek collaborations, both within and outside the art world.

This is a fundamental reason why I, as an artist, am active within Humlab, where I have been based since 2009, after I graduated from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts.

Another vital driving force is to find new ways and platforms for artists, primarily through conveying knowledge about digital technology and how it could be embedded into an artistic practice. Art can build new perspectives in professional fields to which it is usually not connected. At the same time, it can also show that research and technology have the potential to do the same for art.

In my work, I am also driven by a strong love for digital and analog games and game development. Lately, my investigations are gradually moving towards investigating storytelling in the context of games and AI-generated images.