Diego Flores Diapolo on learning from YouTube and the importance of “acting on instinct”

Experimentation truly is at the core of everything Diego Flores Diapolo makes. A self-described audiovisual creative, Diego has spent ten years working in the CGI industry and in his personal practice continues to push technologies, blend techniques and mediums, and explore new aesthetics.

Sound plays a huge role in Diego’s works, so it’s no surprise to hear that he got his creative start in this realm. As a child, growing up “surrounded by mountains in the Argentinian mid-west [in] San Juan province,” his father let him play around with a CD cover design software that he used for DJing, and although Diego didn’t realise it at the time, it was his first foray into design, music and technology. After going on to design flyers for parties at school and then nightclubs as he grew older, things really took off for Diego when he began dabbling in 3D and motion design. “I created my first experimental animation where the image reacted to the sound. I uploaded it onto Vimeo and without any expectation was chosen as a Staff Pick,” he recalls. “Really excited, I ran to my mum to tell her what was happening. She didn’t understand a single word but I really needed to share this feeling of self-pride with someone.”

Although Diego’s mum was unsure of the relevance of a Staff Pick, it did its job and 2veinte, a studio based in Buenos Aires, reached out and offered Diego a full-time job. “I left university and San Juan without even thinking about it,” he says. “It’s been a truly rewarding experience. I spent three years learning from my mates, they became a school for me, along with YouTube.”

Today, Diego is based in Italy and works as a freelance CGI designer, creating “carbon copies of objects and environments one might find mundane” and turning those everyday things into “visuals of desire”. In between his commercial projects, he works hard to push himself technically and visually, and the fruits of that labour can be found on his website under the humble title “things”. Here, you’ll find graphic design, 3D works, film and motion design, and illustration. It’s a hodgepodge of mediums and aesthetics but this bridging of several ideas and outputs is exactly what excites Diego to keep designing. “What I most like about the medium is that it involves many disciplines,” he says. “Especially the richness of aesthetics and concepts that fit in different sectors of society, allowing a constant mutation of the artwork, the artist and its audience.”

Importantly, Diego always strives to try out creative pursuits that are new to him, as this offers a chance to break his rhythm and appreciate things with a new vision. In turn, he learns a lot that he can then take forward in his design work. “For example,” he says, “in my pottery lessons I learned about the appreciation of the process itself. It was more important the path you made and not the final result.”

Diego describes a piece titled Cryonics as his last “big” project. A two-minute short, it explores the intersection between “transhumanism and fashion,” inspired by a poem by Richard Brautigan, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. The film, as Diego attests, is a “CGI pool full of cybernetic aesthetics”.

In terms of what provides the inspiration for his works, Diego says it is generally subcultures and underground movements – in particular, their relationships to their environments. However, there’s no signature visual style that this interest dictates; in fact, having considered the notion of creating a signature style several times over the years, Diego now actively pursues the opposite. “Each time I analyse it, I find it less meaningful. I don’t want to force anything,” he explains. “Changes are natural for me and I love changing together with my art.”

So what’s next for the creative who relishes evolution? Diego responds confidently: “Keep learning. Keep doing. Keep acting on instinct. Keep appreciating the process. Keep living.”