Arte Telemática. Dos intercâmbios pontuais aos ambientes virtuais multiusuário

by Gilbertto Prado
Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, 2003
128 pp., illus. CD-ROM included. $N/A
ISBN: 85-85291-40-0.

Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Jan Delvinlaan 115, 9000 Gent, Belgium

stefaan.vanryssen@pandora.be

Arte Telematica. From Instant Exchanges to Virtual Multiuser Environments is one in a series of three books on the contemporary Brazilian arts scene published by Itaú Cultural, a very active Brazilian cultural foundation sponsored by Itaú Banking Company. (The other books are on dance and literature). Its scope is the field of artistic experiments with new technological means, their transformations and derivatives. It reflects on these realisations as the "new poetics" of a dynamic universe of digital images, as a necessary means to understand and explore technological progress. It ranges from the fax and modem pieces of the 70's and 80's to the Internet works of the nineties and the multiuser virtual environments which contemporary Brazilian artists are building.

Gilbertto Prado is a professor at the department of Fine Arts of ECA/USP (University of Sao Paulo) and has been the curator of the 'Welcomet Mr. Halley' exhibition and the 12th Brazilian Symposium of Graphic Computing and Image Processing. He has participated in numerous shows in Brazil and abroad, among others in Paris, Athens, Milan and Barcelona. As such, he certainly is in the right position to present a well-documented overview of what Brazilian artists have been producing over the past 40 years. He does so in four chapters. In the first, which is devoted to artistic experiments with telecommunication networks, he analyses networks of artists, collaboration and complementarity, technical opportunities and limitations and the role of exchange and participation. Chapter two presents a chronology of the pre-web years 1977-1994. Chapter three is about the Internet years and work on and with the Web. In the final chapter, multiuser virtual environments are discussed.

The book includes a CD-ROM with the full text, ca. 20 video clips and a large number of images related to the works described in the book.

Even though this book is in Portuguese, it will prove an invaluable source of information and reference for anyone who is interested in the history and practice of new media art. With some background knowledge of Spanish (or Latin) the gist of the text will be clear enough, or run it through some free online translator and simply browse the CD-ROM and enjoy.