Medialab-Matadero Madrid
Lucia Rebolino, faculty of LAB 5 The Mechanics of Truth
“Within LAB 5, I would like to pose questions rather than seek deterministic answers: what is left to be modeled, and what is left out when modeled? How can these intricate computational spaces be choreographed to render visible the conflicts embedded within them?”
BIO
Lucia Rebolino is an artist trained as an architect who later moved into computational design; though these trajectories never fully replaced one another, they merged to shape the research-based artistic practice she has today.
From architecture, Lucia brings a spatial way of thinking and an attention to scale and structure, while from computation, she learned to think through systems and relational logics; therefore, through code, where data slowly became an extension of my thinking. Through these intertwined backgrounds, she approaches the web as a site, as an architectural and branched, dimensionless yet deep space where research can unfold spatially, bringing a critical and conceptual lens alongside new investigative aesthetics.
“I am interested in unfolding and unpacking computational models, whether climatic, AI, or those where cascading effects collapse through interconnected systems, through design and technology. —says Rebolino in her introduction to The Mechanics of Truth— I see LAB 5 as a space to question together how these models of truth are built, where they fail, what they omit, and how, precisely through these omissions, “counter-models” and alternative mapping practices can emerge.”
Over the last three years at Forensic Architecture in London, Lucia developed the more rigorous investigative side of my practice as a researcher, mapping and visualizing human rights and environmental violations through architectural and computational tools. Working across cartography, data analysis, and web platforms, she actively contributed to the production of evidence moving between courtrooms and art institutions.
By inverting the forensic gaze from physical space to digital space, Lucia continues to apply forensic methodologies to computational infrastructures and the internet itself, examining how violence and conflict in the digital age often unfold through computational channels before becoming tangible in physical space.
“Through the LAB 5 program, I hope to explore these questions as a form of new-media artistic practice, using software, spatial thinking, and critical research to choreograph alternative ways of rendering visible these complex, often invisible systems of technology.”
Rebolino works for the renowned Forensic Architecture agency and is currently artist in residence at De Nieuwe Instituut (Rotterdam). She has taught computational design at Columbia University GSAPP (New York) and her work appeared on the e-flux journal. In 2025 she presented her work Unpredictable Atmosphere at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennial. A new version of the work is going to premiere at The Mechanics of Truth exhibition, to be held at Matadero Madrid from October 15 to December 13, 2026.
INTRODUCTION TO THE MECHANICS OF TRUTH
You can read here Lucia's introductory text about the conceptual framework of The Mechanics of Truth:
