Elsa Carvalho

Portugal

Elsa Carvalho (b. 1973) is a Portuguese software engineer and artist who began her visual art journey in April 2021. With a PhD in computer science, she brings a deep technical foundation to her creative practice, merging her expertise in programming with artistic exploration.


Her work blends creative coding and artificial intelligence, focusing on the interplay between nature and organic forms. She uses code-generated visuals as seeds for AI-driven transformations, generating forms that evolve and respond like imagined natural systems. She has recently moved into immersive video, extending these approaches to create animated, painterly, fluid worlds.


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Butterflying #2

Butterflying_2_Elsa_Carvalho_AI.mp4

Butterflying explores transformation as a continuous state rather than an event. Patterns surface and fade, guided by subtle internal forces, where structure remains present but never fixed.

Colour drifts between translucency and depth, as if layers were folding into one another. Nothing settles, nothing repeats. What persists is change itself, quiet, fluid, and inevitable.

technique

ai

format

portrait

duration

01:00

year

2025

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More from Elsa Carvalho

More on digital art

Generative art
Generative art refers to a way of creating artworks using an autonomous system. In digital art, these are usually generated from code and algorithms created by the artist, often with certain predefined parameters or systems. Although these parameters guide the final outcome of the work, generative art is generally a surprising way to create artworks, as the results are often unexpected and the number of possible outcomes can be infinite.
AI
AI art is a branch of generative art that uses artificial intelligence. Unlike other generative artworks, AI artworks use specific complex algorithms and models derived from machine learning. The most common methods for creating AI art today are GANs (generative adversarial networks) or proprietary prompting platforms such as ChatGPT, Sora, Midjourney, or Dall-e.
3D
3D art uses 3D software such as Blender, Cinema4D, Houdini, or video game software such as Unity to create works of art. In 3D works, artists can either arrange assets (the 'objects' in a 3D artwork or world) that they have created themselves or purchased from other creators to create elaborate environments and scenes (an approach to 3D art called 'set dressing'), or specialize in sculpting, which involves creating their own objects and assets.
Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry is a specialized 3D technique that allows 3D objects to be created from numerous photographs taken of an object or scene from multiple angles. These photos are then compiled to determine the specific positioning, shape, and dimensions of the object in space, and then converted into a 3D model. Initially developed for engineering and urban planning, photogrammetry has become a way for artists to produce extremely accurate 3D models from real-life images.
Collage
An extension of the traditional, plastic approach to collage, digital collage involves searching for and cutting out multiple images, extracting them from their original context, and recomposing them in a new arrangement to create a work of art. Artists can use their own photographs or find images on the internet.
Illustration
Digital illustrations are created using software such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or Procreate. As with drawing on paper, the artist uses a stylus to sketch a figure or object, usually on a tablet, to construct a scene or artistic universe. Unlike traditional drawing methods, digital illustration is much more forgiving, as mistakes can be easily corrected and drawn elements and objects can be easily moved around within a scene.
Video
Video artworks primarily use a recording camera, but may sometimes include additional post-processing or editing to distort, modify or add additional elements to the image. Some artists use state-of-the-art recording equipment to create macro zoom-ins or time lapses, privileging fidelity to the subject matter. Others use additional softwares to significantly modify or warp the video, creating an alternative perspective on the world that surrounds us.

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