Rob Duarte’s practice is driven by a need to bring to the surface the politics embedded in all technology. Through sculptures and installations, Duarte draws attention to the ways in which technology often creates more problems than it solves, reinforces existing social hierarchies, and disguises its political ideology through slick “user friendly” interfaces. Over the past decade, Duarte’s critical gaze into the social, political, and cultural aspects of technology has materialized in works whose subjects are as disparate as public pay phones as vehicles and mediators for storytelling, the moral and ethical entanglements of turpentine production in the South, and the sandwich maker as the ultimate object of consumerist desire.

Education

• 2011 MFA Visual Art, University of California San Diego (San Diego Fellow, UJIMA Graduate Scholar)
• 2004 BFA Sculpture, Massachusetts College of Art & Design
  

Areas of Responsibility

Co-director of the Facility for Arts Research. Director of REBOOT Laboratory. Area head for Digital Media. Instructor for graduate and undergraduate courses, including Digital Fabrication, Mechatronic Art, and Physical Computing: Wearable and Electronic Art.