Text by host institution 2007
The idea of this seminar, a partnership between Associação Cultural Videobrasil, the Department of Cinema, Radio, and Television, and the Department of Visual Arts at the Universidade de São Paulo’s School of Communications and Arts (ECA-USP), is to raise for debate a number of themes that when seen in conjunction point toward the various paths electronic art has taken throughout the world and in Brazil in terms of mixing artistic processes, rearranging traditions, and causing ruptures in the sphere of language.
As such, the guest creators and researchers are invited to tackle such themes as the directions image-art is taking in the 21 st century in its intersections with the various media, configuring (De)limit(ation)s and hybridisations; or moreover, the tensions generated between work, artist, and public, indicating a new fruition defined by the play of contemplations and interventions. Then there are the procedures and interfaces of mediation that reconfigure art in present times, especially through the incorporation of mobile media devices and digital networks, as well as options for multiple narratives that engender specific meanings in this art of today.
For reasons of organization, we have avoided structuring the seminar around present tendencies, as these would be too imprecise, but rather around concepts. These concepts look to render account of some of the challenges posed by the technological poetics around which today’s artists and researchers have congregated. They by no means put an end to the subject, but they stimulate debate on the relationship between cinema, video, and art, the theme chosen for this 16h Videobrasil Festival. These concepts are: hybridisations, media, and experimentations, actions and contemplations, and multiple narratives. Each panel was composed with one of these in mind and we hope the debates can foster an understanding of the effects of these contemporary imbrications.
The Knowledge Zones also proposes an approach geared toward television, with all of the debates can going out live over the Internet. In previous editions, the Festival has dialogue with various media modalities, having transmittes its events via such diverse platforms as open television networks, Videowall, and Street TV, videophone hook-ups, “mini-TV” newscasts or “videojornow”. Today, against the backdrop of the current discussion on new directions in electronic art, at a time when digital TV is about to be implemented in Brazil and in the face of proliferating use of IPTV technology and content generated by Web 2.0 users, the 16th Videobrasil has decided to push the boat out and experiment with Web TV/Streaming (www.emm.usp.br/eca-ctr).
ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL. "16º Festival Internacional de Arte Eletrônica SESC_Videobrasil": de 30 de setembro a 25 de outubro de 2007, p.16-17, Edições SESC SP, São Paulo-SP, 2007, p. 230 - 231.