Surfing the Web:
Remixing Rubbish.
2024-Ongoing
This project dives into the layered ruins of our digital present, where memory and obsolescence coexist in an endless cycle of decay and renewal. Guided by a bot that collects 3D models online, the project transforms forgotten data into strange, almost-objects—digital fossils that question who (or what) is really choosing for us.
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Una hora, set minuts i trenta-quatre segons2025
Single-channel HD video, color, sound
1h 10m 41s, looped
For 70 minutes, the camera watches as I replace the screen of my old phone; something I had never done before. I wasn’t trying to fix the device, I just wanted to recover the photos it held. The repair became an intimate gesture, a simple act between my hands and the machine, trying to see if, with patience and care, it was possible to access those memories again.
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44cm Stool
2023
3D printed with PLA
44cm tall
Commissioned to design a 44 cm stool for an exhibition, I naturally began collecting 3D models of stools found online. Using Cinema 4D’s volume builder, I started merging and playing with them until abstract forms emerged. The result is a strangely proportioned object with questionable balance. This piece exposes how a single object can be perceived and interpreted through multiple representations of itself.
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Archivo.me
2018
Installation
I have been collecting objects that surround my daily life, since I can remember. In 2017, my obsession to keep the present was collected in the form of an archive. A project where I exposed and asked why people like to archive and hold time stable, in a constantly changing world.
What is the sense of preservation?
Who decides on which things need to be preserved and which do not?
After a year, this project takes a step forward. The proposal is developed to raise more questions about the archive, this time closer to the art world. Giving agency to the machine to rationally decide what can be part of my archive, while the public has the emotional input and the final decision. I want you, as an observer, to participate and make the machine decide which object should I keep and which should not.
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Archivo digital personal
This archive-shaped project works in different ways. Through a process of design investigation and experimentation, it intends to bring us questions about the present’s obsolescence. Not only it is a personal project based in the documentation and itemization of a material stimulus set, which has accompanied me through my 22 year life, but is also involves the destruction of this set, and therefore, the assimilation of the ephemerally and of the importance of the action of forgetting over the action of remembering.
All this is related to Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity idea, which acknowledges that change is permanent. This idea is even more obvious in a digital paradigm, where nothing remains but constant change.
After this auto destructive process, I ask myself if I will be able to close this stage and become to a rite of passage towards somewhere else, where I can detach myself from all material memory in order to start all over again.
On the other hand, I wonder if in our contemporary socio-cultural context, the archives are sill considered functional, and if the preservation of material culture has become something useless
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Silly Archiving: on backlock, buffering, data hoarding
(2024-Ongoing)
PhD
El contexto contemporáneo se define por contradicción: acumulamos sin límites, pero al mismo tiempo hemos integrado la cultura del update y el usar y tirar. Vivimos en un limbo entre la
hiperacumulación digital y la obsolescencia programada, un ciclo de producción y virtualización; acelerado por las lógicas del neoliberalismo. En este panorama, la accesibilidad de datos y la
ausencia de estrategias para gestionar el exceso convierten la acumulación en el modo de archivo por defecto.
Somos la primera generación en dar por sentada una documentación exhaustiva de nuestras vidas. Desde el primer llanto, a las primeras interacciones en redes sociales. Hemos almacenado
compulsivamente fragmentos de nuestra existencia en la nube — arquitecturas físicas invisibilizadas.
Sin embargo, este exceso de información nos enfrenta a un recuerdo fragmentado de nosotres mismes. Me pregunto entonces: ¿de qué manera la sobrecarga informativa nos empuja a percibirnos
borrosas? ¿Es posible recuperar la agencia en un entorno saturado de datos, donde la acumulación parece imponerse sobre la memoria?
Esta investigación, basada en la práctica, examina cómo podemos desvincularnos de la saturación digital a través de estrategias de delimitación, selección, reducción y transformación. A partir del
análisis de proyectos como Archivo Digital Personal (2017), archivo.me (2018) y Surfing the Web: Remixing Rubbish (2023-ongoing), la tesis explora los límites entre archivo y colección, memoria e identidad, materialidad e información. En un proceso de cyber-autoetnografia, analizo cómo me he plasmado en internet desde 2006 — con la llegada de mi primer ordenador portatil — hasta el presente. Metodológicamente, esta investigación entrelaza práctica artística, etnografía digital y análisis de casos para desarrollar herramientas que permitan repensar la memoria digital y su relación con la construcción de identidad.
Aprender a olvidar y a borrar es tanto un gesto personal como político. Esta tesis busca desarrollar estrategias de cuidado que nos ayuden a habitar con mayor atención los entornos digitales en los que nos inscribimos. Frente a la ilusión de almacenamiento infinito, propone repensar nuestra relación con lo acumulado; aprendiendo a depurar, archivar y soltar. Así como en un sistema operativo la falta de espacio compromete su funcionamiento, nuestra saturación de datos nos mantiene en un estado de parálisis, atrapades entre el impulso de conservarlo todo frente a la incapacidad de procesarlo. Es urgente imaginar prácticas que nos permitan hacer espacio—no solo en nuestros dispositivos, sino también en nuestra forma de relacionarnos con el pasado y con nosotres mismes.
Laura Sub1
hola@laurasub1.xyz
@laurasub1Barcelona, 1995
Laura sub1 is a computational artist, non-object designer, and Internet collector exploring the intersection of 3D printing and virtual objects. Embodying the ethos of the Digital Diogenes, her work investigates cultural trends of accumulation, obsolescence, and over-saturation. Through practices of hacking, repairing, and collecting, she nurtures a culture of appreciation, sustainability, and care within digital materiality.
Laura’s research centers on the performative archive as both a poetic and political tool. She questions traditional notions of preservation by building chaotic, dynamic constellations of digital files, fragments, and objects—embracing imperfection, ambiguity, and technological failure. Her work reflects on how digital artifacts shape our understanding of memory, desire, and identity.
Utilising 3D software, she observes a transformative shift in material culture, introducing new methods for documenting cultural heritage and reshaping our understanding of matter, entities, identities, history, and politics. In her digital archiving process, Laura constructs a collection of data downloaded from the Internet, accumulating 2D representations of everyday artefacts. This practice, driven by the digital realm’s effortless capacity to save and erase, raises critical questions about the problematic nature of the Cloud, its materiality, and its ecological impact, urging a reevaluation of our digital interactions in a hyper-connected landscape.
Selected for the long stay residency at Hangar and recently a PhD student at BAU, College of Arts and Design of Barcelona, combines academic research with an artistic practice. Her research project, Silly Archiving: on backlock, buffering, data hoarding —explores soft, speculative modes of storing and sensing in computational environments.
higher education
2024-Ongoing PhD Candidate at Bau University Barcelona
2018-2019 Graduate Diploma on Contemporary Art
2017-2018 MA Computational Arts at Goldsmiths University of London
2013-2017 BA Visual Design at Bau University Barcelona
work 2024-Ongoing Lecturer at Bau University and Elisava, Barcelona
2024-Ongoing Freelance Digital Creative and Visual Designer
2019-2023 Digo.digital: creative team working on CGI (director full time)
2019-2020 The Face Motion Designer (freelance)
2019 Assistant director at DIGI GXL
2013-2017 Freelance Retoucher
exhibitions2025 “Manifold 2.0” Hatcham Building Goldsmiths, London.
2024 “Gold Computing” Goldsmiths University, London
2024 “Con Placer” for Meritxell de Soto at Sonar Festival
2024 “Baby no more” screens design and visual at TNC, Barcelona
2023 “44cm” at Nave 6, Barcelona
2022 Dome Visuals for Mira Festival, Barcelona
2022 “Chair” at SVD Gallery, Barcelona
2021 “Press Home to Unlock” at IDEAL, Barcelona
2021 “L’Home Industrial” for MMMAD at Roca Gallery , Madrid
2020 “Going Away TV - The Wrong Biennale” at Arebyte Gallery, London
2019 “Internet Moon Gallery” Online
2019 “This is Real Love” visuals at Sala Beckett, Barcelona
2019 “Show me your Data” 310 New Cross Road, London
2019 Loop Festival at TKM Gallery Barcelona
2019 “Deep Fake” for Mira Festival, Barcelona
2018 “Echosystems” at Hatcham Building Goldsmiths, London
2017 BA Degree Show at Palo Alto, Barcelona
Lectures & Talks
& Publications
2025 “Volver al cuerpo a través de la máquina; o, ¿es la máquina ya un cuerpo? Recuperando la materia visible a través de cables inconexos”, article for Inmaterial
2024 Goldsmiths residency talk presentation
2023 Nuevas Mitologías “Sobre Magia y Tecnología”
2023 LCI MA Art Direction, workshop
2023 Laboratori de creació, Eina Barcelona
2023 LCI, Art direction and Visual research workshop
2021 IDEP MA Art Direction, References workshop
2022 HRTZ Festival at Bau, Barcelona
2020 “My Barrio” Online about @digo.digital
2020 LCC BA Art Direction, workshop, London
Scholarships & Volunteer
2025 Resident at hangar.org
2024 Goldsmiths Computational Arts Alumnae Residency
2023 “Creative manifesto for a critical AI future” at Arts Santa Mònica in Barcelona
2023 “Variable Thresholds”, with IN-Residence at ADI Museum in Milan
2023 “Circular City Challenge”, at Fab Lab Barcelona
2019 Volunteer Archive South London Gallery
Last Updated 09.07.25
Con Placer
Meritxell de Soto
tour visuals
2024
Various video works
3D animation
Locally run Stable Diffusion
Direction and production of visuals for Con Placer tour by Meritxell de Soto.
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Vase test 01
2023
3D render
3D print PLA
Explorations on Volume Builder.
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L’home Industrial
2021
3D render animation
With Digo Digital for MMMAD Madrid.
For devices,
one brain,
no body.
2024
Journal text
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Performing online
2018
3D render video avatar animation, face caption
Volver al cuerpo a través de la máquina, ¿o la máquina ya es un cuerpo?Recuperando la materia visible a través de cables inconexos2024
Locally run Stable Diffusion
AI images generated for an academic article.
In Search of Dreams: Cheating the Status Quo
2022
Dome projection for MIRA Festival, Barcelona
with @digo.archive
A fictional VR game set in an imaginary world where the only way to win is to show off your dancing skills. Have fun, dance, and break the rules!
Exploration on 3D fabric simulation
2019
3D render animation