Domenico Dom Barra

He is an artist of Neapolitan origin, Italian creator of visual contents and educator who works in the field of digital art and new media. His artistic aesthetic is situated in the realm of machine glitches, where he interprets technical issues in various digital environments and styles, strongly influenced by the culture of new media and the world of the Internet

As an artist he explores the concepts of error, limit, unpredictability, diversity, fragility, imperfection, and vulnerability in his works, with glitch as a central theme. Building on these foundational ideas, he develops his research and practice across various topics related to temporality, functionality, accessibility, opportunity, and the impact of new technologies, design, and politics on human relationships in terms of interactions and values. He focuses on the relationship between humans and machines, with an emphasis on networks, communities, intelligence, language, memory, identity, and how these contribute to the critical evolution of a new world, society, and humanity. His work also addresses their conception and perception through machines, leading individuals to new self-awareness.

He experiments and works with a variety of different media, with a preference for creative use of hardware and software to generate images, GIFs, videos, and installations. His favorite technique for glitch art is databending, which involves altering the data stored within digital file formats, compelling the machine to perform non-standard operations to create glitch artifacts included in his projects.

As of 2017, he adopted the artist nickname Altered_Data. He chose this name because he strongly identifies with his artistic practice, databending. The choice is also supported by the belief that daily alterations of online data are shaping, manipulating, and influencing our identity, as well as our behavior and thoughts projected onto others. We become like an "emotional rollercoaster" chased by algorithms on social media. The artist was born with an immune system disorder, which triggered a series of physical problems, as if imperfection were coded into his DNA. In this sense, Altered_Data is real.

He has participated in numerous curatorial projects, and his works have been exhibited at DAM Gallery in Berlin, the Media Center in New York, Galerie Charlot in Paris, the Digital Art Center in Taipei, online at The Ethereal Aether at the State Hermitage Museum, the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO], the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the MediaLAB at the University of Brasilia, online at the Wrong Biennale and with Arebyte, as well as in many other galleries and cultural art events worldwide, on the internet, and in the metaverse.

He was part of the Major Tendons project on NewHive curated by Molly Soda in collaboration with the American music producer Suicideyear. He organized Italy's first glitch art exhibition, Tactical Glitches, curated by Rosa Menkman and Nick Briz. He also collaborated on the first edition of The Wrong Biennale by glitching the logo for the biennale's official website. As Mighty Kongbot, alongside Italian graphic designer and artist Luigi Console, he contributed to the 3D Additivist Cookbook curated by Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke with the project "The Anti-Anthropocaliptic Set" for surviving the Anthropocalypse. Since October 2018, he has been part of PPPATTERN, a commercial design project by art director Renato Fontana featuring some of the most influential creatives in the Italian art scene.