Patrícia J. Reis (b. Lisbon, PT) is an installation and media artist based in Vienna, Austria, whose practice spans diverse formats and media to critically explore human-machine interactions in times of advanced automation, extractivism, and post-colonialism. Her work destabilizes the boundaries between science, technology, and belief systems through speculative methodologies that pose questions such as “How do we believe in machines?”,“How can we redefine agency and consent in human-machine relationships?”, “How do technology reflect and reproduce human power dynamics, and how can we challenge this?” and “How is technology shaping us bodily?”.

Challenging the dominance of visuality as the primary mode of experience, Reis employs technology to expand and stimulate corporeal perception, inviting viewers into multi-sensory explorations. Inspired by media theory and cybernetics, Reis draws parallels between human and machine behaviour—examining systems, programs, and automatism—while playfully engaging with the human body’s own sensory mechanisms as a “black box”.

Grounded in the premise that there is no “software without hardware,” her work is informed by feminist hardware, eco-feminism, and feminist hacking, employing new materialist perspectives, aiming to contribute to the decolonisation of technology through speculative art and design practices.

Reis studied Painting at ESAD (Caldas da Rainha, PT, 2004), Media Art at Lusófona University (Lisbon, PT, 2011), and holds a Ph.D. in Art from the University of Évora (PT, 2016).

Currently, she is a Senior Postdoctoral Researcher and recipient of the Elise Richter Program Grant (PEEK) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, AT (2023–2027), leading the artist-based research project “Hacking the Body as the Black Box”. Since 2015, she has also been lecturing in the university’s Digital Arts Department.

Since 2012, Reis has been a board member of Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory*, a feminist hackerspace in Vienna, AT, where she curates exhibitions and collaboratively creates and researches on interactive installations at the intersection of art, gender, science, and open-source technology.