Education · Culture · Technological transformation

Matías
Barreto

Educator · Technology consultant · Humanist technologist

Steering technology toward human well-being and life in common requires strengthening human, institutional, and collective capacities.

Between La Plata and Mar del Plata · institutional work in Campana · nationwide reach

Profile

About me

Matías Barreto

I am a humanist technologist, educator, and consultant in artificial intelligence and digital transformation for education and culture. My work seeks to strengthen creative forms of citizenship and steer technology toward collective well-being and the construction of livable futures.

Since 2009, I have researched the relationship between technology, learning, and creation across the arts, new media, and education. My practice connects learning laboratories with open studios, where making the process public becomes part of the artwork. In both spaces, the maker approach turns the prototype into a way of thinking: learning by doing, experimenting with materials, and building knowledge with others.

I am especially interested in human–machine interaction and augmented cognition: how technologies transform and expand the ways we perceive, think, and create. Today, that trajectory also takes shape in the development of artificial intelligence systems and the design of learning experiences, programs, and strategies for educational and cultural institutions.

A practice developed across academic, cultural, and public institutions in Argentina, Spain, Germany, and Romania.

  • Argentina UBA · UNA Artes Multimediales · UTN (General Pacheco, Delta, and Rosario) · UCES · CCEBA/AECID · Nube Baja · Escuela Martín Buber · Municipalidad de Campana
  • Spain Universitat de Barcelona
  • Germany Jugendhaus Fellbach
  • Romania Casa de Cultura de Alba Iulia · Casa de Cultura de Cluj-Napoca

Line of work

Genealogy of ideas and programs

The laboratory is the connecting thread: a way to research, create, teach, and build capacities with others, from the body and the stage to materials, code, artificial intelligence, and institutions.

Explore the timeline
  1. 2009–2016

    Laboratories, bodies, and creative environments

    The body, the classroom-as-laboratory, and collective creation articulate a practice grounded in experimentation, participation, and care for the conditions that enable creation.

    Archive 01 Proyecto Magritte presented to an audience at Teórico Datos, UBA.
    Teórico Datos / UBA · Proyecto Magritte presentation · 2009
    View development

    The laboratory takes shape as a method for researching, learning, and building with others: an open forum for heterogeneous actors and forms of knowledge, where bodies, relationships, environments, and technologies participate in the experience. Between 2009 and 2012, this perspective runs through Proyecto Magritte, the Laboratory of Communicational Practices and Designs, and teaching at Laboratorio Datos (UBA). Its records on the classroom-as-laboratory, distributed intelligences, extradisciplinary collaboration, and collective creation extend into «Edupunk aplicado» (2012); «On Creative Environments» (2015–2016) expands the inquiry toward the ethical and affective composition of spaces, times, and relationships.

  2. 2017–2021

    Matter, memory, and systems

    Artistic practice explores light, movement, memory, and materials as agents in sensitive, interactive, and changing systems.

    View development

    The inquiry moves toward hybrid settings that bring together code, optical devices, real-time video, glass, biomaterials, and performative practices. Matter ceases to be a passive support and becomes a partner: it carries memory, imposes rhythms, and participates in processes of morphogenesis alongside bodies and technologies. The seminar «Art in the Age of Biotechnology» (UNTREF, 2019) contributes a framework of technoscience, complex systems, and human and non-human agencies to a practice that asks how livable worlds can be co-created.

  3. 2022–2023

    Human–machine co-creation and generativity

    The research connects human–machine co-creation, generativity, and algorithmic perception with a concrete practice of code, data, and artificial intelligence.

    View development

    From 2022 onward, research into generative systems, synthetic minds, planetary infrastructure, and algorithmic perception also becomes technical practice: creative coding, Python, data analysis, machine learning, and computer vision. Its digital publication is concentrated between April and August 2023 and approaches AI as an ecosystem of agencies and a cultural and educational question, rather than an isolated tool.

  4. 2023–2024

    Institutional circulation

    The ideas circulate through classes, programs, and laboratories across Argentina, Spain, Germany, and Romania.

    Archive 02 A computer-vision demonstration presented to an audience at MediaLab CCEBA.
    Applied computer vision · MediaLab CCEBA · 2023 · a line of practice also developed at Universitat de Barcelona
    View development

    The research became classes, programs, and laboratories: a guest lecture at Universitat de Barcelona (2023), two programs at MediaLab CCEBA/AECID (2023–2024), a class on systems art in the age of generativity at the Multimedia Arts degree (UNA, Cátedra Causa), training in Alba Iulia and Cluj-Napoca endorsed by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, work at Jugendhaus Fellbach, and the in-person creation laboratory at Nube Baja (Buenos Aires, 2024).

  5. 2024

    Computing, play, and materialities

    The Computer Science orientation and Maker Space translate the research into a demanding, playful school experience.

    View development

    Escuela Secundaria Martín Buber (Buenos Aires): curricular co-design, together with Carolina Quintana, of the Computer Science orientation and its Maker Space. A playful, highly demanding pathway for students aged 14 to 16 —from introductory programming and video games to embedded systems, interfaces, and experimentation with materialities— adapting content typical of the first university year and building on learning developed earlier in international contexts.

  6. 2025–present

    Institutional synthesis

    ETI integrates the genealogy into policy, teaching laboratories, university programs, and technology education.

    View development

    The genealogy translates into Integral Technology Education, teaching laboratories in language, AI, and image, university programs at UTN, digital-skills bootcamps, and advisory work on educational, cultural, and technological transformation policies. In 2025, this includes participation as a guest professor in UCES's Diploma in Responsible Artificial Intelligence.

Situated practices · 2018–2024

Six laboratory situations: body, scene, city, network, open studio, and immersion.

01 / 06
  1. A person interacts with a small light device in a dark room.
    01Body and device · Jugendhaus Fellbach · 2018
  2. Translucent strips and geometric structures illuminated in green and magenta.
    02Scene and matter · Área 624 · International Day of Light · 2021
  3. The Fuente de las Nereidas illuminated in green and violet during a nighttime intervention.
    03City and memory · 8M intervention at Fuente de las Nereidas · 2021
  4. A person stands before a blue projected network covering the wall.
    04Networked body · CCEBA · 2023
  5. Participants experiment with materials, projections, and devices in an open studio.
    05Open studio for artistic and pedagogical practices in systems arts · Nube Baja · 2023
  6. People share an immersive projected-light experience in an in-person laboratory.
    06Collective immersion · Nube Baja · 2024

Present

Institutional activity

Buenos Aires

IFTS N.º 24

  • Full Professor, Laboratory of Language Processing Technologies, LLMs and Agentic AI.
  • Full Professor, Digital Image Processing and Computer Vision.
Rosario

UTN Facultad Regional Rosario

  • University Extension Lecturer in AI Engineering programs and solution prototyping with an AI for Good approach.
Campana

Municipalidad de Campana · Secretaría de Modernización

  • Advisor on Modernization and Digital Transformation in Culture and Education.
  • General Affairs Coordinator, Polo Tecnológico Educativo de Campana.

Conceptual framework

Integral Technology Education

Integral Technology Education is a pedagogy of care, upbringing, and citizenship for inhabiting sociotechnical environments. It begins from the premise that technologies are neither neutral tools nor external to life: they shape attention, relationships, time, learning, and possibilities for action. Technology education means developing individual and collective capacities to understand, modulate, create, limit, and govern these environments.

Principle
Well-being is neither a side effect of innovation nor an exclusively individual responsibility. It is a structural condition that must guide policies, institutions, infrastructures, and technological practices.
Application
As an original design framework, ETI helps shape policies, educational programs, and institutional environments that connect digital well-being, technical understanding, judgment, creation, and democratic capacity to make decisions about technology.
  1. D01

    Attentional, bodily, and relational care

    Digital well-being is a horizon for care, empathy, upbringing, and life in common. This dimension provides criteria for evaluating rhythms, relationships, decisions, and infrastructures, engaging individuals, organizations, and public policy alike.

  2. D02

    Technical understanding

    Understanding how systems work in order to avoid dependence on opaque explanations or purely instrumental use.

  3. D03

    Epistemological judgment

    Evaluating evidence, models, sources, uncertainty, and the limits of technologically produced knowledge.

  4. D04

    Creation

    Moving from consumption toward the capacity to imagine, prototype, and build technologies with cultural and social meaning.

  5. D05

    Sociotechnical citizenship

    Recognizing that contemporary life unfolds across environments where physical and digital dimensions are intertwined. It means understanding how these systems distribute capacities, rights, responsibilities, and power, and participating in steering them toward collective well-being and democratic life.

  6. D06

    Technological sovereignty

    Building independent capacities to decide which technologies to adopt, adapt, reject, or develop collectively.

Its purpose is for people, communities, and institutions to become more than technology users: actors capable of making informed decisions, building their own capacities, and steering innovation toward public, democratic, and socially meaningful ends.

The extended framework —nine operative concepts, principles, practices, and indicators— is published in Spanish.

Learning environments

Labs and learning

Public teaching repositories and intensive learning experiences that extend education beyond the classroom.

Code projected from a computer during a programming activity.
Programming and prototyping · Campana Joven · 2024
Participants follow a learning activity in a Campana Joven space.
Learning and community · Campana Joven · 2025
Bootcamps & Digital SkillsCampana Joven · Bootcamp format · 20252025: View all 10 experiences

AI and prototyping

  1. Artificial Intelligence from Scratch

    Understanding, experimentation, and construction of assistants and prototypes.

  2. Building Apps with Artificial Intelligence

    From idea to MVP through LLMs, interface design, and rapid prototyping.

  3. Vibe Coding: Web Design with AI

    AI-assisted web development and deployment, focused on context and design judgment.

  4. Generative AI for Business

    Adoption strategies, assistants, and process automation.

Data, programming, and automation

  1. Data Analysis and Visualization

    From raw data to visual stories for decision-making.

  2. Introduction to Python

    Programming logic through small, clear, and useful scripts.

  3. No-Code Automation with n8n

    Workflows, APIs, webhooks, and process integration.

Design and creative technologies

  1. UX: User-Centered Design

    Research, early validation, wireframes, and user testing.

  2. Playful Electronics

    Physical computing, sensors, tangible interaction, and play.

  3. Creative Coding and Digital Art

    Code as an expressive medium for images, installations, and generative systems.

Pedagogical work

Programs and learning experiences

A selection of learning pathways involving artificial intelligence, programming, design, and creative technologies across different educational contexts.

Students work with electronics and computers in the Maker Space.
Maker Space and Computer Science Orientation · Escuela Martín Buber · 2024
Participants work with materials and tools in a collective workshop at a cultural venue.
Creative practices and technology · CCEBA · 2023

Student access

Workshops and training

Recent activities and student materials are indexed in Spanish.

Talleres y capacitaciones

Find your next workshop Content in Spanish

Collaboration

Areas of work

Two complementary lines of work to strengthen capacities, guide decisions, and build technological environments in service of human well-being and life in common.