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Matthew Ortega

Born in 1985 in New York City. Lives and works in Queens, New York.

Matthew Ortega is an artist, designer and musician working at the intersection of art and technology. He attended Mason Gross School of the Arts in the 2000s, where remix culture and questions of authorship reemerged as a result of new technologies. He was drawn to the excitement about the use of internet detritus and blatant disregard of copyright in new works of art. He primarily began to use collage and digital media to take part in this open source sense of culture. Beyond the use of traditional media such as cut and torn paper, he also worked with video and sound by using archival film and youtube clips to create fictional narratives. After a brief hiatus working as a digital designer, he acquired the skills to start creating custom software to further expand his artistic expression. Though he still works with ideas of refuse, decay, and distortion that come from remix culture, he also began to explore what technology can offer to one’s art practice.