Diego Bonilla

Big Data is a generative video poem exploring the interplay between data, aesthetics and meaning. Created between 2019 and 2021, it was a finalist for the International Coover Award for Best Electronic Literature and has been included in FLAT Journal (UCLA Department of Design Media Arts) and the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 4. The work has been presented at festivals such as the Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Athens Digital Arts Festival, the Film and Video Poetry Symposium, the International Video Poetry Festival, and Experiments in Cinema 16, and has been exhibited at the Crocker Art Museum, Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, and the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University.

Uku Pacha is an award‑winning virtual reality short film blending Andean cosmology with modular storytelling. The film premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2021 and has won multiple awards, including Best Virtual Reality Film at the Short Sweet Film Fest in Cleveland, Best Film at the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival, Best Film at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, and Best Film at the New York City IO Film Festival. It has been selected for festivals such as the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, LA Latino International Film Festival, Demetera International Short Film Festival, Avanca International Film Festival, and River Film Festival.

Accidental Occurrence is an experimental modular film that explores the intersection of two disparate lives through algorithmically constructed narratives. A sophisticated program dynamically generates each version, weaving audio, music, and visual elements through combinatorial paths. Viewers can shape their experience from 5 to 70 minutes while maintaining narrative coherence, adjusting character focus, editing patterns, and foretelling sequences. Featured at film festivals across six continents in 2017, including Premios Latino (Best Experimental Short Film, Spain), Pune Short Film Festival (India), Auckland International Film Festival (New Zealand), and the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento, CA).

To accelerate the adoption of the COOL4Ed library and demonstrate the efficacy of open materials to faculty members, Dr. Bonilla leveraged his expertise in digital media to author and produce a comprehensive series of multimedia Faculty Case Studies. These qualitative research videos documented the real-world experiences of professors who had successfully integrated Open Educational Resources (OER) into their teaching.

As Producer and Lead Researcher, Dr. Bonilla authored, directed, and produced video case studies hosted on COOL4Ed.org and YouTube, documenting the classroom experiences of higher-education faculty adopting OER materials across the UC, CSU, and Community College systems.

The project bridged academic research and digital media by translating dense educational research—including survey data and focus group findings—into accessible, high-quality video narratives. These case studies provided the foundational qualitative component of the council's broader research mandate, demonstrating the pedagogical impact, workload shifts, and student success metrics associated with replacing traditional textbooks with open materials.

The multimedia case studies were deployed as direct outreach tools to overcome faculty hesitation, directly advancing the state's mandate under Senate Bills 1052 and 1053 to lower educational costs for California students.

Liber Rotavi – Variaciones de la Creación is an interactive poetry and public art installation created in collaboration with José de Jesús Del Toro. The work bridges classical Spanish sonnet tradition with digital art, integrating 35 classical sonnets within an audiovisual environment combining over 13,000 images and 120 music files. The piece explores creation and destruction, memory and oblivion, body and data, human spirit and technology. Its algorithms are influenced by the computer clock: a pristine version appears around 1 PM and the most distorted around 1 AM, affecting text, imagery, and music across three modes (Diurna, Crepuscular, Nocturna). The work has been included in an anthology and was presented at the Segundo Simposio Internacional del Libro Electrónico en Español at the Museo de Antropología, Mexico City (2012).

A Space of Time is an immersive hypermedia narrative that moves beyond traditional hypertext to create a unique non-linear storytelling experience. Drawing from a vast multimedia library of over 700 video sequences, 190 QuickTime VR panoramas, 105 audio files, and 18 Flash animations, it offers two distinct viewing modes. In "Limbo," viewers explore a photorealistic virtual environment of a century-old building; in "Stream of Consciousness," the system uses statistical formulas to dynamically rearrange scenes, generating a unique linear experience with each viewing. The work received international recognition including 1st Prize at the XXVI Moscow International Film Festival (Internet/Multimedia), Honorable Mention at the XV Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival, and the Art Direction Award at the Philadelphia Documentary and Fiction Festival. It was exhibited at festivals across the Americas and Europe (2004-2005). The associated doctoral research at Syracuse University earned the Graduate School Doctoral Prize.