No Vacancy: Ricardo E. Zulueta, RISING GLITCH LEVELS

RISING GLITCH LEVELS, a video installation created specifically for No Vacancy consists of a single-channel experimental digital video mapped to the sculptural form of the Betsy Hotel Orb. The work combines animation, glitching, datamoshing, saturated color and fragmented views with an ambient sound composition. Familiar images of architecture, coastline and everyday life pulse, ripple and reassemble in constant motion, rendered directly onto the Orb's glowing surface. The piece draws from an ongoing practice with glitch aesthetics to utilize digital instability as a source of energy. Color separation, shifting texture and rhythmic transformation become tools for celebration and resistance: a way of picturing change, adaptation and renewal. Sited along Ocean Drive, in a city defined by constant reinvention, the video invites viewers to see glitch not as technological failure but as an opportunity to create a visual language that imagines new forms emerging from old ones. Ricardo E. Zulueta is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar who holds a Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies and an M.F.A. in Visual Art from the University of Miami. His practice functions across a genealogy of mediums including video, digital imaging, photography, computational media, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. His immersive multimedia installations explore the intersectionality of mediated expressions of gender, behavior and identity within socio-political landscapes. Through research and praxis, Zulueta examines how technology and media shape, interrogate and subvert normative notions of identity through experimental modes of storytelling. Zulueta is a recipient of the South Florida Cultural Consortium Artist Fellowship, Oolite Arts’ Ellies Creator Award, Art Matters Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Cintas Foundation Artist Fellowship and the Miami Individual Artist Grant, among others. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as the Smithsonian Institution, Museo Alejandro Otero, Steirischer Herbst, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Western Front, Artists Space, El Museo del Barrio, International Center for Photography, White Columns, Grey Art Museum, Norton Museum, Bronx Museum, Fotofest Biennial and Creative Time Summit at Perez Art Museum Miami, among many others.