Labor

About

Mano Leyrado – Magister in Fine Arts (Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin).

I’m a Creative Technologist specialized in art, culture & communication.

My hybrid background allows me to manage the entire project process, from conceptualization and project management to the technical production of communication assets.

Services

Advanced Digital Support: Deep experience in media design, covering video production, graphic design, web development, coding, CMS platforms, and more. AI tools integrated.

Production and Logistics: Hands-on assistance, preparation of artworks, installation, and de-installation of exhibitions.

Documentation and Communication: Content generation, support in project communication, and preparation of materials for publication.

Email copied to clipboard

ARCHIVE: Creative AI

2026 — Barcelona, Spain

Tecnología [In]visible (Ágora Digital): AI Previsualization

Multichannel Installation, Previsualization, Scripted Testimony, Synthetic Media, Voice Cloning

Video production for a six-channel installation gathering real testimonies about technology. Before the shoot, a fully AI-generated reference version previsualized the piece, featuring synthetic people, scripted statements, and cloned voices. The mock-up set framing, pacing, and channel logic across all six screens ahead of filming.

Client: Gracias Grecia · Palau Robert, Barcelona

AI Tools: Runway, Nano Banana, Midjourney, Claude, ElevenLabs

Post: After Effects, Premiere

2026 — Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sarmiento, La Clase: AI Poster & Historical Faceswap

Archival Restoration, Faceswap, Generative AI, Poster Design, Theatre

Poster art direction and full production for the theather play Sarmiento, La Clase. Restored and color-graded historical portraits of Domingo F. Sarmiento form the base, onto which a faceswap maps actor Juan Leyrado in character. Upscaling then prepares the composite for photographic realism at large-format print size.

Implements a custom AI pipeline to bridge 19th-century historical iconography with contemporary performance. Synthesizes original portraiture and actor physiognomy through latent space manipulation, avoiding automated distortions. Delivers high-fidelity textures and chemical emulsion aesthetics for large-format urban media.

Technical Process:
Restoration & Color: Neural texture recovery and 19th-century chromatic colorization.
Hybridization: Feature exchange via ComfyUI nodes, balancing historical records and actor references.
Refinement: Manual gaze adjustment and high-fidelity upscaling for outdoor printing.

Production Meeting

This work explores the tensions between body, labor, and technology in a present defined by hyperconnectivity and accelerated obsolescence. 

The piece functions as a time-based sculpture. When exhibited, the wax figures are lit, beginning a process of self-consumption over approximately two hours. 

Ecosystem v02

In this work, exhibited in different versions, the focus lies on how nature is reproduced, mediated, and consumed.

2025 — Berlin, Germany

Sonotaku: Anime-Referenced Cover Art within IP Limits

Album Art, Anime Aesthetics, Generative AI, IP Compliance, Style Abstraction

Cover art and motion for a Spotify release built around the look of a popular anime. The brief called for the reference series’ unmistakable feel while staying clear of third-party IP, so the workflow abstracts style rather than reproducing characters. Generative iterations settle on an original image that reads as fan-adjacent without infringing.

2024 — Vienna, Austria

Elenchus: Creative AI Video

AI Ethics, Generative AI, Latent Space, Neural Networks, Synthetic Media

Video research on boundaries between natural and artificial via Generative AI. Features a dialogue with an artificial agent leading to semantic collapse. Custom workflow navigates latent spaces to generate organic textures based on video game assets.

Acquired by Belvedere’s Bildarchiv & Ursula Blickle Video Archiv’

Ecosystem v01

The series questions the distance between the organic and its simulacrum, exploring the tension between fascination, consumption, and artificiality in our relation with the nature.

Women Labor

Technofeudalisms is a series that explores the concept of techno-feudalism through scenes of medieval workers, but traditional tools are replaced by laptops.

Born in Bs. As, based in Berlin, raised on internet.

Statement

Mano is an artist and media designer whose work unfolds within the hybrid space between the analog and the digital. His practice merges material experimentation with critical reflection to explore power structures, virtuality, and the cultural transformations of the digital age. Operating on the premise that ‘text’ (in a semiotic sense) must be manifested through materiality itself, he moves across installation, sculpture, performance, and video, selecting the medium that best serves each concept.

His work aims to position itself at the edge of the present, exhibiting it and triggering questions rather than offering answers. Mano sees art’s primary role as reflecting contemporary phenomena and operating at the borders of the established—expanding, blurring, deforming, and subverting them. Through this approach, his series have addressed emerging themes such as accelerationism, techno-feudalism, data culture, gentrification, the philosophy of nature, and relational identities.

Background and Education

Born in Buenos Aires, Mano’s interest in the relationship between the IRL and the digital began in adolescence through self-taught graphic design and mural graffiti. While he studied Graphic Design, he joined Estado Lateral Media Lab, one of the first media labs in Latin America, where he specialized in programming and the development of interactive installations. Simultaneously, Mano started a decade of experience as a live video performer (VJ), participating in festivals in Argentina and abroad.

From 2012 onwards, his focus expanded toward artistic practice and independent cultural production in Buenos Aires. This shift was intensified after participating as an artist in exhibitions with Forward collective at the EAC in Montevideo, the Palacio de las Artes in Buenos Aires, and the Kulturni Centar Beograd in Belgrade. Mano then studied Art Curation and Cultural Management, produced the Pirámide Selva festival, Plank festival, and co-founded the art space CPU (contemporary processes unity), which he co-directed until 2020 in the Palacio Barolo.

When moving to Berlin in 2019, Mano completed the residency at ZK/U and organized the Salvajes festival. Then he began Sculpture studies at the Weissensee Kunsthochschule (KHB) in 2020, a move driven by the desire to enrich the materiality of his art practice after years of conceptual and digital work. In 2024, his Erasmus exchange was completed at the Digital Arts Department in Vienna run by duo übermorgen.

Mano obtained the German Diplom degree in Sculpture from Weissensee KHB in September 2025 with honors, and is currently working on his Master’s thesis project. In 2026, he was awarded the 1st-runner place of Beyond Future Art 2025 and his video art work ‘Elenchus’ was acquired by the Ursula Blickle Video Archiv at the Belvedere.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Education

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Sculpture Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, 2020–2025
  • Guest Student in Digital Arts (übermorgen) University of Applied Arts Vienna, 2024.
  • Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Art Curation and Cultural Management @ CIC, Buenos Aires, 2015-2018.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Seminars

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • Mutationen zeitbasierter Systeme im Raum // by Anika Meier
  • Medienkonvergenz und -hybridisierung // by Kevin Abosch
  • Unfamiliar Valley Seminar // by Prof. Gabriel Rud, 2024.
  • UR Seminar // by Prof. Gabriel Rud, 2023.
  • Eine Archäologie der künstlichen Intelligenz // by Prof. Knut Ebelding, Berlin/Venice, 2023.
  • The Milk of Dreams // by Prof. Knut Ebelding and Prof. Dirk Peuker, Berlin/Venice, 2022.
  • The Milk of Dreams // by Prof. Knut Ebelding and Prof. Dirk Peuker, Berlin/Venice, 2019.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Clinics

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • 1-1 Meetings // with Prof. Gabriel Rud, 2024.
  • Clinic // with Luz Peuscovich, 2022.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Exhibitions

╰─..★.──────────╯

╭──────────.★..─╮

Live Video Performances

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • Festival Fase @ Centro Cultural San Martín, Buenos Aires, 2017.
  • Museo del Cine @ Buenos Aires, 2018.
  • Festival Ciudad Emergente @ Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires, 2016.
  • Ubuntu Tribe @ Glashaus, Berlin, 2014.
  • Festival Fase @ Centro Cultural San Martín, Buenos Aires, 2013.
  • Voodoohop Nova @ Casa das Caldeiras, Sao Paulo, 2012.
  • Panorámica @ Fundación Telefónica, Buenos Aires, 2012.
  • Tecnópolis @ Buenos Aires, 2011.
  • TrimarchiDG @ Mar del Plata, 2009-2013.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Prizes

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • 1st Runner-up, 2025 Beyond Future Art Prize.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Grants

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • Mecenazgo cultural de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, 2016.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Residencies

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik @ Berlin, 2021.
  • Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik @ Berlin, 2019.

╭──────────.★..─╮

Asisstant

╰─..★.──────────╯

  • Exhibition technical assistance, Susanne Schuda @ Bildraum 07, Vienna, 2024.
  • Class Assistant, Claude Closky @ KHB, Berlin, 2022.
  • Class Assistant, Dr. Tyyne Claudia Pollmann @ KHB, Berlin, 2021.
  • Exhibition technical assistance @ FACA, Buenos Aires, 2018.
  • Exhibition technical assistance, Jean Jullien @ Pictoplasma, Berlin, 2014.
  • Exhibition technical assistance, Mariana Castillo Deball @ Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2014.