About Hugo Paquete

Hugo Paquete, PhD  is a sonic media artist, composer, and researcher whose practice reimagines sound as a medium of philosophical inquiry, infrastructural critique, and post-human speculation. Operating at the crossroads of Critical Sound Studies, media archaeology, and post-digital performance, his work composes with systems, not just sounds, to expose the hidden architectures of technology, control, and life.

Central to his methodology are the concepts of micro-sound and maximum sound, articulated through algorithmic sabotage: the hacking and repurposing of natural and technological forces, biometric data, satellite tracking, electromagnetic fields, and generative algorithms. By embracing glitch, entropy, and systemic collapse, Paquete reframes technological failure as a compositional resource, transforming collapse into vibrational knowledge and cultivating new modes of perception.

His performances and installations unfold within a post-techno aesthetic, where rhythmic residues, machinic noise, and infrastructural signals are sculpted into speculative sonic architectures. These works manifest as cybernetic ecologies, in which human performers, stochastic algorithms, and live data systems intra-act. They are not representations but operational systems, dynamic sonic territories where agency is distributed, listening becomes survival, and sound itself functions as a form of cultural resistance.

Ultimately, Paquete positions the artist as a sonic theorist and system builder, mediating complex relations between humans, machines, and environments. His practice offers a vital listening framework for a world saturated with invisible technologies, proposing sound as both a forensic tool and a speculative force for rethinking perception, agency, and the technological unconscious.

Major Works

Major works include Negentropy: The Last Man in the Wasteland (2014), which sonifies CO₂ data through fragmented deepfake vocals; Unevenness (2015), a 24-channel composition carried aboard NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission; Zoe: Actant (2017), exploring biological and algorithmic vitality; Obscure Radiation (2018–2019), combining electromagnetic frequencies and luminous data with support from the Gulbenkian Foundation; and Orbital Eccentricity (2020–2021), developed at ZKM | Hertz-Lab with European i-Portunus, which sonifies real-time satellite data.

Over the past two decades, Paquete has established an internationally recognized career, with more than 40 works presented in over 15 countries at major institutions and festivals including Ars Electronica (Austria), ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Germany), Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Sweet Thunder Festival (USA), IN-SONORA (Madrid), PNEM Sound Art Festival (Netherlands), Audiorama 4 (Stockholm), SoundGate: Utzon Centre and Platform4 (Denmark), Sonic Vigil V (Ireland), Festival Música Viva (Lisbon), IMEB Bourges (France), Zeppelin Festival (Barcelona), DAW Festival (Zurich), FILE Festival (São Paulo) and others.

His projects have been supported by cultural and research institutions including the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Creative Europe / CreArt, DGArtes, European i-Portunus, and the Leonardo da Vinci program. He also collaborated with Lithuanian artist Julijonas Urbonas on Talking Doors (2010), awarded a Prix Ars Electronica Distinction, a Japan Media Arts Festival Jury Recommendation, and an Honorable Mention at Live 2011 Grand Prix (Turku, Finland).

Education & Research

Paquete holds a PhD in Digital Media Art (2022), funded by FCT, which he completed with louvor e distinção (highest honors). His doctoral thesis, Imanências Espectrais: Reflexão sobre o Pós-Digital nas Artes Sonoras (Spectral Immanences: Reflection on the Post-Digital in Sound Arts), theorizes an emergent diegesis of post-digital sonic event immanence and the subcultural resistances formed at the intersections of art, technology, capital, and sonic politics—establishing critical foundations for his practice.

He completed the curricular component of a PhD in Musical Sciences at the New University of Lisbon (2017) and holds a Master's degree in Contemporary Artistic Creation from the University of Aveiro (2014), where he defended the dissertation Entropia Disfuncional: noise, glitch e caos nas artes sonoras (Dysfunctional Entropy: Noise, Glitch, and Chaos in Sound Arts). This research explored noise and glitch as autonomous media within sound arts, drawing on art–science methodologies, avant-garde traditions, and post-digital aesthetics to demonstrate how concepts such as chaos, entropy, and indeterminism open new artistic paradigms at the intersections of art, technology, and philosophy. He also earned a degree in Fine Arts and New Media from the School of Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal (2011).

Current Work

He is the director of Absonus Lab, a laboratory for the creation of acousmatic music, sound, and digital media art, integrated into the Anna Lindh Foundation and the European Media Art Platform (EMAP). He is also a researcher at CIAC – Research Centre for Arts and Communication and iAlab Sensoria (UBI).

Through his practice, Paquete turns sound into an instrument of critique and speculation, repurposing technology, weaponizing noise, and forging new modes of listening that resonate from the subatomic to the planetary scale.

I do not compose sounds—I compose cybernetic ecologies.
        I do not seek harmony—I seek the resonant frequencies of rupture.
        I do not document reality—I weaponize instability to destabilize its capture.

In the noise of collapse, we encounter the signal of the real.
        In the resonance of entanglement, we glimpse fugitive futures.
       Through sonic intra-action, we inhabit, resist, and regenerate worlds.