Unpredictability
Meet VOID/O, by Sandro Canavezzi.
ADA – Anarquitetura do Afeto (“Architecture of Affection”)
by Simone Michelin (Brazil, 2004)
A discussion about surveillance equipment and systems. The idea is to reverse the scheme of closed circuit television cameras, thus turning them into “open-circuit” television cameras. Simone’s deviating system explores new forms of narrative and reveals how public space is a direct result of negotiations – which are measured using codes – between desire, need, and randomness.
Sound design, application of videographisms, consulting and technological production: KAU Etnopop (Daniel Kau and Marcelo Reis).
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Simone MichelinVisual artist, researcher and professor at the Fine Arts School at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, integrates the N-Imagem, ECO/UFRJ. She incorporates communication technologies and image production, performance, computer systems and architectural constructions in the production of situations within the scope of art.
Dolores from 10 to 10
by Coco Fusco (Cuba – United States, 2002)
Video in which the author plays the role of an employee accused by her boss of trying to incite a strike. The events were “filmed” by internal surveillance cameras and then edited. The work is an interpretation by the artist, of a true fact, which happened in 1998, in the city of Tijuana, Mexico.
Learn more about works of art and technology that deal with social issues.
Coco Fusco, who is a Cuban writer and multimedia artist living in New York, presents conferences, performances, exhibitions and curatorship management programs in the United States, Europe, Canada, as well as in the southern part of Africa and in Latin America. He has a virtual lab in the Web, with publications, videos and projects.
Muntadas: Media, Architecture, Installations
by Antoni Muntadas e Anne-Marie Duguet (Spain – Canada, 1999)
CD-ROM that present the work of Antoni Muntadas, a Catalan artist who, via videos and installations, addresses issues related to power icons and the tricks of communication systems.
Anne-Marie Duguet is an art theorist and professor at the Fine Arts and Science of Arts College at Paris I University (Sorbonne) and director at the Centre of Aesthetic Research in Cinema and Visual Arts.
Records, Xeroxperformance and Lmnuwz, Fire!
by Paulo Bruscky (Brazil, 1980)
Pioneering work in Brazil uses copier machines (Xerox) in the creation process.
Paulo Bruscky, who was born in Recife, is a fine and multimedia artist as well as a poet. He produces films, videos, artist’s books, photo-copy and postal art and organizes collective exhibitions.
Un Musée d’Artiste en Ligne (A Museum of the Online Artist)
by Fred Forest (France, 2004)
Starting in the 1970s this Algerian born French artist was one of the first ones to perform pioneering multimedia work using mass media, telephone and video to explore new forms of creation that flee from traditional art criteria. Still in the 70’s, he was one of the founders of Sociological Collective Art.
Fred Forest, a European pioneer of video art and Internet art, has a PhD from the Sorbonne. He won a prize at the 12th International Biennale in Sao Paulo, when he was arrested and imprisoned by the military regime. He is a co-founder of the sociological art movement and the international group of communication aesthetics.
Une Carte Plus Grande que le Territoire (A Map Larger than the Territory)
by Karen O´Rourke (France, 2004)
A work that explores a notation method in which participants create and view online itineraries by using their own data or information that is available on the Web. It is a psycho-geographic work that aims to create a soft city, in other words, the mental map of a city.
To understand the work: the Russian theorist Lev Manovich speaks of data art, mapping and visualization of data within the art technology.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Karen O´Rourke, is a multimedia artist, who works with telecommunication. Her sculptures, photos and software have been exhibited in Europe, the United States and South America. She has a Master’s Degree in conferences in arts and communication from the Paris I University (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
Tracajá-net
by Maria Luiza Fragoso (Brazil, 2002 a 2004)
A kind of travel diary that tries to rediscover the place and landscape, the work is a record of virtual and non-virtual spatial displacement, of the perception of relations generated during displacement and the association between places and anti-places. Using GPS, the author shows the path taken within Brazilian territory, with the lines of a native turtle shell.
Maria Luiza Fragoso has a Master’s Degree in Fine arts from the University George Washington and is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Brasilia University. Her work has been shown in exhibitions both in Brazil and the United States. Her main current interest is the development of interaction between computer graphics, etching and video.
Plato On-Line
by Cícero Inácio da Silva (Brazil, 2004)
A fake online magazine on media art and post-modern philosophy composed totally of content created by automatic text generators. The objective is to satirize the universe of academic publications using apparently meaningless texts and articles. You can visit it here.
Cícero Inácio da Silva is a professor on the technology and digital media course at PUC/SP and is doing a PhD in communication and semiotics at the same University. He is one of the Brazilian experts in hypermedia languages, together with the creation and implementation of websites.
10 Dencies São Paulo and 10 Lavoro Immateriale
by Knowbotic Research (Germany – Austria, 1998-1999)
The project involves twin installations: one with the Sao Paulo project (10_Dencies São Paulo, 1998) and another with the Venice project (10_Lavoro Immateriale, 1999). It explores the possibilities of urban intervention and interference in complex environments, creating a topological collage that mixes urban databases and statistics with the imagination of citizens. It is actually a study about mega-cities based on urban cartography collectively elaborated by experts and by the population.
See also Une Carte Plus Grande, Karen O’Rourke’s work that seeks to create mental maps of a city.
Knowbotic Research raises questions regarding the forces and technological systems that are superimposed on each other, annul each other and relate with each other to produce the information territory of the large urban agglomerations. Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Belgrade, which are inhabited by millions of people, were the cities of choice. In each one of them, the group develops the project with groups of architects, using the Web as their site. The first step, Tokyo, was accomplished in 1997/1998 and won the ARS Electronica award for art on the Internet.
Projeto Spio
by Lucas Bambozzi, (Brazil, 2004)
The result of research carried out by Bambozzi over the course of the four last years, the work discusses the control and surveillance systems in modern society. The images, which are recorded by a camera, are installed on a spy robot that moves around inside the installation area, are treated and reconditioned, revealing comically, the intrusive aspect of surveillance cameras.
See also ADA – Anarquitetura of Affection, Simone Michelin’s work that also discusses equipment and surveillance systems, creating “external” circuit cameras.
Lucas Bambozzi has a degree in journalism from the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Since the 80’s he has developed artistic studies and works around the expressiveness of audiovisual language, with emphasis on electronic media. He works in various media with different supports. He has participated on exhibitions in more than 30 countries.
esc for escape
by Giselle Beiguelman (Brazil, 2004)
A documentary on computer error messages made with the participation of the audience via Internet, SMS and MMS with outlet in DVDs and on electronic panels located in the urban area in Sao Paulo. Based on the supposition that the lowest common denominator in the digitalization of daily life is the error (system, configuration, reading error, etc.) and that what previously used to be concentrated in computers, has now expanded into the Web. It has now invaded ATM machines, and taken over microwave ovens, DVD sets, and taken control of cellular phones and seems to have transformed itself into a new communication parameter.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Giselle Beiguelman creates experimental projects involving fixed and mobile telecommunication networks. She is a professor at PUC/SP and editor of the electronic magazine Trópico. She has participated in several international exhibitions, including among others, Net_Condition (ZKM), Arte/Cidade, 25ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (“Sao Paulo International Biennalle).
The Game of Black and White in Colors
by Mauricio Dias e Walter Riedweg (Brazil – Switzerland, 2004)
Small video screens set up inside six cans deployed on a game board reveal the segregationist structures of the city of Johannesburg, in South Africa. The damage caused by racism, according to the work, is not only inscribed on the social fabric, but also on its relations with architecture, money and fantasy. The piece by the duo Dias & Riedweg is complemented by the video installations Night Shift and Video Wall, both from 2001.
See also Gaza Strip (Gaza Strip), a José Wagner Garcia’s work which elaborates, through bioesthetical elements, critical judgments about the conflict in the Middle East.
Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg, are Brazilian artists living in Rio de Janeiro, and their work discusses internal migrations in Brazil and the disparities that perpetuate economic colonialism both within that country and in the world as a whole. The duo took part in the Biennale in Venice, in 1999, as well as in the International Biennale in Sao Paulo, 2002.
Video-installation – complimentary pieces: Night Shift (2001) and Video Wall (2001)
Gaza Strip
by José Wagner Garcia (Brazil, 2004)
Gaza Strip is an installation that by means of bio-aesthetic elements develops a critical judgment about the situation in the Middle East. The blood of Palestinians and Jews abandons the panorama perpetrated by terrorists and Jewish colonists of occupied territory to be mixed in an improvised “donation center”.
José Wagner Garcia is an architect, media artist, and researcher associated to the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, CAVS, and media lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, in the United States. He works in the sector of steel architecture and relations between art and live systems. He has a Master’s Degree from MIT and his dissertation was on live systems, and is currently developing a PhD project about evolutionary aesthetics at the Catholic Pontific University in Sao Paulo, in the communication and semiotics program. He has participated in the main events connected to art-communication and the interaction between art, science and technology that have taken place in Brazil.
Das Kapital
by Marcello Mercado (Argentina, 2000)
The work, based on the works of Karl Marx, questions the role of the image in modern society. When making the video, Mercado used resources of image treating and inverted the number format of the video frames, creating a gray image between the artificial cruel images and scenes of real corpses.
Marcello Mercado, video artist, performer and fine artist living in Germany, creates works that mix animation techniques with anthropological and political thought. He won the 12th edition of Videobrasil (International Festival of Electronic Art), in 1998, with the video The Warm Place. His most ambitious project has been to publish on the Web an animated comic strip with 200 chapters called Mutter.
Borderhack
by Fran Ilich (Mexico, 2001)
Borderhack is a symbolic event, a festival of virtual and real activists, people that question the ways in which frontiers and the immigration laws are defined. Attachment is an online exhibition with Ilich acting as curator for Borderhack, in which artists and rebels related to the universe of cyber culture in general, such as Mark Amerika, Oliver Ressler and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer all take part.
Meet other art works that use technology as a form of urban expression.
Fran Ilich, a Mexican artist who has always been concerned about the use of computer science and the Internet in society and in the educational media, in 1975 held the position of Director of Cinemátik 1.0, the first cyber culture festival in Latin America. A filmmaker and writer, he is the author of the romance Metro-Pop. He currently works at the media center of the National Center of Arts, in Mexico City.
Por la Vida y por la Paz (“For Life and for Peace”, 1987), PAZ=PAN (2001), Spams Trashes (2002)
by Clemente Padin (Uruguay)
Padin, guest of honor at the exhibition, is one of the pioneers who introduced a differentiated or divergent way of dealing with new technologies into the art field. The three of his works that are exhibited explore themes such as pacifism and document unusual forms of political manifestations, both on the streets and on the world wide web.
Meet other art works that use technology as urban manifestation and social resistance.
Clemente Padin, a Uruguayan artist connected to an openly political segment, began his career in the 60’s. He participated in the management of the vanguard magazines Los Huevos del Plata and Ovum 10. He is the author of several books and he played a meaningful role in the international network of postal art. As a result of his artistic activity, he was imprisoned from 1977 to 1979 during the Uruguayan military dictatorship.
Mejor Vida Corp. (MVC)
by Minerva Cuevas (Mexico, 2003)
A criticism of the consumer society, of political cronyism and the cutthroat consumerism of capitalist societies. MVC is a dummy corporation with its headquarters at the Torre Latinoamericana, a well-known skyscraper in downtown Mexico City. Its main strategy is to break, generally by means of fraudulent means, the main rules of capitalism. Therefore, for instance, the company sells on its website, bar code labels of pre-selected products with lower prices and false credentials that allow the purchase of cheaper plane tickets.
See also Problemarket, a Davide Grassi and Igor Stromajer’s work that spoofs the globally connected corporate world.
Minerva Cuevas, Mexican artist, develops social and political works attacking big corporations through cultural sabotage.
Problemarket
by Davide Grassi e Igor Stromajer (Italy – Slovenia, 2000)
A satire of the world of globally connected corporations. The artists founded a dummy corporation with headquarters in Ljubljana, Slovenia that manages funds on the Problem Stock Exchange, which is the stock market of problems generated by global capitalism. Problemarket.com operates like a “normal” company, issuing “balance sheets” and displaying its “accounting records” to the public.
Check out also Mejor Vida Corp (MVC), a Minerva Cuevas’s work that criticizes consumer society, political patronage and rampant consumerism.
Davide Grassi, has a degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, and develops works with strong political and social connotations, taking advantage of a number of digital media. He is an author of performances, videos, installations, documentaries and other works with new media. Of Italian origin, he moved to Ljubljana Liubliana, capital of Slovenia in 1995.
Teleporting an Unknown State
by Eduardo Kac (Brazil – United States, 1994-1996)
It is an installation in which the participants control via webcam, the intensity of a generator of luminous energy, necessary for a growing plant to perform photosynthesis. The photons of cameras throughout the world are transported to the installation area and used, during the period of the exhibition, to germinate a small plant. Thus the experience creates a virtual collective ecosystem.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Eduardo Kac, Brazilian visual artist, resident in the United States. He works with so-called “transgenic art”. His work, a genetically modified phosphorescent female bunny, was a highlight of the exhibition Gene(sis): Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, at the Henry Art Gallery, at Washington University, in Seattle, in 2002.
Verbarium
by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau (Belgium - France, 1999)
An online interactive editor on which the users fill in a form with messages that in their turn transform into the genetic code of a collective and complex three-dimensional image. This “creature” enters a kind of a virtual herbarium, made up of other filled forms, based on verbs from various messages. Hence the name Verbarium.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Christa Sommerer, biologist born in Belgium, is a researcher at the Telecommunications Advanced Research Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan. Married to French artist Laurent Mignonneau, partner in her works, she uses principles of genetic engineering to produce beings that do not exist in nature. She is a teacher associated to Advanced Institute of Arts and Mediatic Sciences, Iamas, in Gifu, Japan.
Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies
by Oliver Ressler (Austria, 2003-2004)
A video installation focused on models and utopias for several economies and societies that propose alternatives to the capitalist system and which lost their driving force after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Within the structure of the work, theoretical concepts of alternative societies, historical non-official models and utopian ideas are presented in videos that are between 20 and 37 minutes long.
See also Clemente Padin works that explore topics such as pacifism and document unusual forms of political demonstrations.
Oliver Ressler, born in Knittelfeld, in Austria, executes projects on social and political themes. Since 1994 his works have focused on racism, globalization, sustainable development, genetic engineering and forms of resistance. He has a degree from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and he spent a period as a resident artist at the Banff Centre, in Canada.
On Translation: El Aplauso
by Antoni Muntadas (Spain, 1999)
A deconstruction of the society of spectacles and the so-called “state terrorism”. It is an installation made up of three DVD screens: on the central one there are TV images of atrocities (political or not). On the side screens, the crowd applauds each time a powerful image enters or leaves the main screen.
See also Das Kapital, a Marcello Mercado’s work which questions the role of image in modern society.
Antoni Muntadas, Catalan artist, since the 70’s has been creating onwards, videos and installations that address issues related to the icons that represent power and the tricks of the communication systems. Since his first personal exhibition in Madrid, in 1971, he has often taken part in international exhibitions. He lives and works in New York.
Um, Nenhum, Cem Mil (“One, None, A Hundred Thousand”)
by Kátia Maciel (Brazil, 2004)
A theoretical and empirical project on the effects of the new interactive architectures in film narrative. It addresses the multimedia experience in which a dialogue sequence is provided by faces that are cinematically framed in hypertext environments.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Kátia Maciel graduated with a degree in history from Catholic Pontific University in Rio de Janeiro. She decided to take the cinema path, defending her thesis with Marco Ferro at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in Paris and with Jean Baudrillard at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Her most recent post-graduate studies were at the Interactive Arts Research Center at Plymouth University, CAiiA-Star, England.
F69
by Suzete Venturelli and Mario Maciel (Brazil, 2004)
With technological mutations, an environment was created that was fertile for capitalism to integrate the world of culture and its spirit into the core of the vast technical-industrial system. In light of this, what are the changes that occur in an individual who interacts with electronic games? Created using game technology, F69 is a satire, and at the same time, an analysis of the aesthetic, ethic and political models built into electronic games.
Check out also Mejor Vida Corp (MVC), a Suzette Venturelli and Mario Maciel’s work which criticizes some aspects of capitalist societies.
Suzete Venturelli has a PhD in art and science of art from the Sorbonne and is a researcher at the Department of Visual Arts with Brasília University, UnB. She is also coordinator of the Image and Sound Laboratory at UnB. She is currently dedicating herself to the creation and development of interactive virtual worlds, using computer media as a support.
Mario Maciel is taking his master’s degree at UnB, and is an architect with a degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, and a professor at the Department of Education of the Federal District.
Digital Snow
by Michael Snow (Canada, 2002)
DVD-ROM documentary. Pedagogic and didactic work about the work of Michael Snow, who is one of the most important contemporary artists and one of those honored in the exhibition. More known for his structuralist film Wagelength – which consists of a single prolonged zoom towards an object inside an apartment – , the Canadian collaborated with the pop art and minimalist art movements. It is a complete catalogue with works executed in several media including installations, videos and musical experiences.
Organization Jean Gagnon and Anne-Marie Duguet
Michael Snow, born in Canada in 1929, is a fine artist, photographer, writer, filmmaker and musician
Vida 6.0
by Fundación Telefonica – org (Spain, 2003)
Documentary about the famous competitive exhibition of artificial life and intelligence sponsored by Fundación Telefonica, in Madrid. Digital genetics, robotics, chaotic algorithms, computer viruses and virtual ecosystems are the main traits of Vida, which is already in its fifth edition.
I’Mito: Zapping Zone
by Diana Domingues – Grupo Artecno UCS (Brazil, 2004)
The installation explores mixtures of the real with the virtual, in a room with objects associated with a database of 20 international celebrities. When “offered” to a bar code reader installed on a table/altar, the objects send inputs processed by genetic algorithms. The morphogenetic chaotic process results in dynamic shapes that can be viewed through stereoscopic eyeglasses. A search device, triggered by words, incorporates to the morphing myths, phrases that translate the community’s thoughts regarding the chosen characters.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Grupo de Pesquisa Integrada Artecno (Integrated research group Artecno – NTAV LAB – Novas Tecnologias nas Artes Visuais da Universidade de Caxias do Sul (New technologies in Visual Arts at Caxias do Sul University) – NTAV Group 2004:
Coordinator: Diana Domingues – UCS/CNPq
Computing science: Eliseo Berni Reategui (DEIN/UCS); Gelson Cardoso Reinaldo – UCS (chief programmer); Gustavo Brandalise Lazzarotto – IC/CNPq (consulting programmer); Maurício dos Passos – IC/Fapergs (assistant programmer); Daniel José dos Santos
Arts and communication: Eleandra Gabriela Cavali – IC/CNPq; Elisabete Bianchi – UCS; Junius Kurtz –Pibic/CNPq; Luiz Fernando Oliveira – BIC/UCS; Mona Gazzola de Carvalho – BIC/UCS; Solange Rossa Baldisserotto – AT/CNPq
Mathematics: Patrícia Rigon – Pibic/CNPq
Acknowledgement: Fabiana Rossarola, UCS, CNPq
Fapergs and Transportadora: Translovatto
Diana Domingues is the chief professor of the Arts Department at Caxias do Sul University. Director of the New Technologies in Visual Arts group, she develops the research Art, Technology and Communication: Poetics, Us and Interactions in an action integrating the arts, computing and industrial automation areas. Since 1977 she has worked with electronic technologies (initially with video, videotext and computer) and her work is mainly focused on the migration of forms from one medium to the other.
Unknown Quantity
by Andrei Ujica and Johannes Fischer (Romania – Germany, 2002)
The Romanian film-maker Andrei Ujica filmed a conversation about the Chernobyl accident between Paul Virilio and Svetlana Aleksievich, who is the author of a book with interviews of witnesses and victims of the tragedy in Russia. The conclusion is that Chernobyl transcended the factual sphere, becoming an “accident of knowledge”, due to the difficulty with which it was assimilated by public opinion. The audience literally “feels” that it is participating in on the conversation, which was put together by Fisher using a simple 3D projection technique.
Andrei Ujica was born in 1951 in Romania where he studied literature. Since 1968 he has worked as a writer. He taught literature and media theory in Heidelberg. He has lived in Germany since 1981. From 1990 onwards he has directed films and documentaries. He is currently a director of the Film Institute, audiovisual department of ZKM.
OP_ERA: Hyperviews
by Rejane Cantoni and Daniela Kutschat (Brazil, 2004)
An immersive installation designed to explore representations of a 4D hypercube, known by geometers as a “tesseract”. An automated system inside a cube shaped room, triggers synchronized flashes of light, which stimulate the developments of this strange geometrical object.
Technical support: Estação da Luz
Rejane Cantoni has a PhD and a Master’s Degree in communication and semiotics from the Catholic Pontific University in Sao Paulo, PUC/SP, as well as a Master’s Degree in higher studies of information systems with a major in infographic visualization and communication from Geneva University, Switzerland. She is currently a professor on the technology and digital media course at PUC/SP.
Daniela Kutschat has been investigating electronic media and communication technologies in the context of art since 1986. She currently develops multi-modality platforms that integrate body, light, sound and image in installations, immersive environments and interactive systems. She is a resident artist at the Interactive Arts Research Center at Plymouth University, CAiiA-Star, England, where she developed the interactive system Pas-de-Trois (1998).
Superfícies Estimuláveis (“Surfaces Capable of Stimulation”)
by Tânia Fraga (Brazil, 2004)
This work applies aesthetic elements to the world of materials engineering. A ray of nitinol – a material with super elastic properties – is connected to a terminal. This way, the participants can “stimulate” the surface of the rubber creature on a computer terminal and see its undulating movements projected onto a large screen.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Computer Interface Java: Fabricio Anastácio and Vanessa de Almeida
Driver Interface Java: Pedro Garcia
Research Assistant: Flávia Amadeu
Artificial Organism: Skedio Tecnologia
Natural rubber Membrane: Chemical Technology Laboratory, Brasília University, UnB – www.unb.br/iq/labpesq/lateq
Sponsorship: Instituto Itaú Cultural
Tânia Fraga is an artist and doctor in communication and semiotics from the Catholic Pontific University in Sao Paulo. She has carried out Post-PhD research with a scholarship from Capes at the Interactive Arts Research Center at Plymouth University, CAiiA-Star, England. She was coordinator of the master’s degree program in arts and a professor at the Visual Arts Department of Brasilia University where she is an associate researcher and at the Integrated Systems Laboratory in the Polytechnic School of Sao Paulo University. Her research focuses on the development of interactive poetics.