Centenas de fotos da minha viagem no sudeste asiático...
1.12.06
29.11.06
No Oriente
Para quem não sabe, estou em Singapura passando uns tempos...escrevendo minha dissertação de mestrado e viajando muito. Uma viagem incrível pelo Oriente, principalmente pelo Sudeste Asiático. Lindas terras, exóticas, confusas, diversas...
A pedido de LLL, algumas fotos no Flickr for a taste of southeast asia...
A pedido de LLL, algumas fotos no Flickr for a taste of southeast asia...
18.11.06
A web antes da web
Brilhante artigo sobre as origens da web, colocados em um contexto crítico. James Joyce, Bentham, Alan Turing, Mallarmé, como esses pensadores foram vitais na formulação do que vivemos hoje nesse mundo abstrato que é a web.
Leiam
Leiam
12.11.06
Exposição: Fake
Na Galeria 90 na Gávea Rio de Janeiro, está em cartaz a exposição FAKE, organizada pelo coletivo carioca Grupo DOC, do qual faço parte junto com os artistas plásticos cariocas Patricia Gouvêa, Mauro Bandeira e Marco Antonio Portela. A exposição fica até 10 de dezembro de 2006.
A proposta da exposição é explorar a questão da autoria e da cópia na arte, na vida, no mundo.
O convite para os artistas incluiu uma lista de definições do FAKE para que tivessem um ponto de partida para abordar o tema. Fake pode ser paródia, cópia, plágio, pirataria, falsificação, entre várias outras definições.
Os artistas convidados são: Grupo DOC, Hapax, Claudia Hersz, Simone Michelin, Yuri Firmeza, Lau Caminha, André Parente, Walton Hoffman, Heleno Bernardi, Marcos Bonisson, Camille Kachani e Hilal Sami Hilal. Estes artistas trabalham numa grande variedade de mídias e vêm de vários estados brasileiros. Procuramos oferecer, junto com a proposta, uma variedade de artistas e de linguagens que abrange desde sound art, vídeo, fotografia, escultura, pintura e desenho e instalação.
Abaixo, o texto escrito pelo curador Nino Tavares para a exposição:
""O mundo de verdade foi abolido. Que mundo nos restou?" - Nietzsche
O talento brasileiro muitas vezes se define pela habilidade de driblar as regras do sistema. No futebol, o astuto jogador passa, dribla, chuta a bola por entre as pernas do adversário rumo ao gol. Na política, sente-se o (des)engano de contas fraudadas, funcionários-fantasma e testemunhos falsos diante de flagrante corrupção. Na beleza, os seios siliconados das jovens mulheres criam uma sociedade de cyborgs (a)palpavelmente reais.
O verbo "to fake it" em inglês significa simular um chute, um passe, enganar para vencer. Como uma partida de futebol, a seqüência de passos falsos feitos com a bola, que carrega toda a verdade do jogo, cumpre o seu desejo do gol - o resultado verdadeiro, real e palpável dos falseamentos exercidos dentro de um campo de potencialidades real. Em meio a estas forças antagônicas - a prática do falso e o desejo do real e verdadeiro - surge uma atitude de enfrentamento dos jovens artistas á ordem estabelecida e ao cansaço da replicação de gêneros já sedimentados.
Já foi dito que a arte contemporânea, a arte da segunda metade do século XX, é uma arte do simulacro. No entanto, ela parece hoje ultrapassar o simulacro ao questionar um modelo de verdade que parece afirmar o falso, onde o artista passa a ser um falsário, um charlatão, um mensageiro da verdade velada. Em Nietzsche, a abolição de um “mundo-verdade” e o fim do sistema de julgamento nos deixa a sós com uma relação entre forças. O mundo passa a ser visto por dentro, sem mediações, nem essência nem aparências - o fim do dualismo platônico entre o modelo ideal e a cópia degenerada, e além disso, saber distinguir as boas da más cópias, os bons dos maus pretendentes, o puro do impuro.
Ao levantar esta potência do falso, os artistas aqui expostos oferecem leituras diferentes de uma consciência da imagem que deixa de ser meramente simulacro ou cópia ou plágio. O que se deve atestar a partir dessas investigações é aceitar que não há mais verdade a referenciar ou mimetizar. Sendo assim, cada artista cria o seu próprio campo de relações poéticas sem, contudo, alienar-se da realidade. Ao contrário, se antes a arte se julgava alheia ao restante das atividades culturais e mercantis, hoje ela se dissimula em meio a todo o resto.
Hoje, a hibridez na arte é real, e a pureza, falsa, utópica, ilusória, enganosa. Estes artistas do "fake" transformam o falso, o irreal e o construído em verdade-potência, uma verdade que, como no Édipo Rei, termina por nos cegar. Cabe a nós, como Nietzsche propõe, distinguir o bom modelo da má cópia (ou vice-versa) ou chegar á conclusão de que tudo o que ocorre não precisa de uma dialética ou ponto referencial: o "fake" simplesmente é."
Confiram.
10.11.06
Minhas obras online
Neste fim-de-semana estou participando da Feira de Arte de Lisboa 2006, com a galeria portuguesa Art Lounge.
Se estiverem em Lisboa, por favor passem lá e me contem como foi o evento.
Veja minhas obras no site da galeria
Se estiverem em Lisboa, por favor passem lá e me contem como foi o evento.
Veja minhas obras no site da galeria
29.8.06
Blog do Uere
Há alguns meses, o Projeto Uerê, ONG que cuida de crianças poli-traumatizadas na Favela da Maré, lançou o Blog do Uerê, projeto piloto da iniciativa Vamos Blogar, chefiado pela Saori Taichi e criado durante a residência com o programa Reuters Digital Visions em Stanford no ano passado. Saori, além de ser a minha melhor amiga desde a infância, é uma super top programadora da empresa Reuters, mas que nunca deixou que a vida de executiva tirasse a visão de que tecnologia pode ser usada como meio de integração social.
Eu fui colaboradora no projeto e agora estou desenhando uma interface de publicação do blog mais adequada a crianças que não sabem ler ou escrever direito. Em um teste de usabilidade que fiz com as crianças, descobri que elas não conseguem enxergar os botões no meio de tanta letrinha na tela, e que a maioria das interfaces para eles é muito muito confusa, muito cheia de comandos. Basicamente, eles confirmaram uma suposição que provamos á tempos: NINGUEM lê nada na tela, até os usuários mais avançados.
O objetivo do projeto é usar a ferramenta do blog para ajudar crianças com problemas de aprendizado a melhorarem seus skills escritos. Junto com isso, claro, é preciso que todos eles escrevam matérias ou façam desenhos. Para tanto aprendem a desenhar com Illustrator e Photoshop, aprendem a digitar textos em Word, e aprendem os básicos sobre Internet e email. Aprendem muito rápido. Até editaram vídeo no iMovie sem problema nenhum, e agora o blog estará equipado com webcams e assim começarão a fazer vídeos para streaming.
É impressionante como um simples blog pode ensinar tanta coisa a essas crianças e como o contato com o computador dá um certo tipo de "empowerment". Já ficaram tão fluentes com o blog que alguns deles têm blogs individuais, linkados no Blog do Uerê, com llinha de pensamento, direcionamento editorial, e tudo mais. Tudo isso poderá ajudá-los a ter os skills básicos para poderem ter um primeiro emprego decente.
Se tiverem tempo, passem lá e comentem. As crianças realmente adoram responder comentários e assim poder entender a abrangência da rede e de como podem se tornar "visíveis" para milhares de pessoas. Participem!
Eu fui colaboradora no projeto e agora estou desenhando uma interface de publicação do blog mais adequada a crianças que não sabem ler ou escrever direito. Em um teste de usabilidade que fiz com as crianças, descobri que elas não conseguem enxergar os botões no meio de tanta letrinha na tela, e que a maioria das interfaces para eles é muito muito confusa, muito cheia de comandos. Basicamente, eles confirmaram uma suposição que provamos á tempos: NINGUEM lê nada na tela, até os usuários mais avançados.
O objetivo do projeto é usar a ferramenta do blog para ajudar crianças com problemas de aprendizado a melhorarem seus skills escritos. Junto com isso, claro, é preciso que todos eles escrevam matérias ou façam desenhos. Para tanto aprendem a desenhar com Illustrator e Photoshop, aprendem a digitar textos em Word, e aprendem os básicos sobre Internet e email. Aprendem muito rápido. Até editaram vídeo no iMovie sem problema nenhum, e agora o blog estará equipado com webcams e assim começarão a fazer vídeos para streaming.
É impressionante como um simples blog pode ensinar tanta coisa a essas crianças e como o contato com o computador dá um certo tipo de "empowerment". Já ficaram tão fluentes com o blog que alguns deles têm blogs individuais, linkados no Blog do Uerê, com llinha de pensamento, direcionamento editorial, e tudo mais. Tudo isso poderá ajudá-los a ter os skills básicos para poderem ter um primeiro emprego decente.
Se tiverem tempo, passem lá e comentem. As crianças realmente adoram responder comentários e assim poder entender a abrangência da rede e de como podem se tornar "visíveis" para milhares de pessoas. Participem!
22.8.06
Grupo Doc Online
Meu coletivo de artistas, o Grupo DOC (Desordem Obsessiva e Compulsiva) lançou semana passada o seu site.
Somos os orgulhosos organizadores da Nano Exposição, que já conta com 6 edições e caminhando para mais algumas. É uma exposição composta de obras que obrigatoriamente têm que ter menos de 10 centímetros. É uma maneira de falarmos sobre a monumentalidade e o dispêndio na arte contemporânea. Juntamos 200 artistas, enfiamos todas as obras em uma mala de tamanho médio, e nos fomos Brasil afora e até a Colômbia.
Em outubro inauguramos a FAKE na Galeria 90 no Rio. O elenco de amigos artistas convidados é sensacional com obras em vídeo, mídia digital, fotografia, som, objeto, pintura, you name it. O assunto começou com um papo nosso sobre pirataria e simulacros e terminou no pop trash total. Vai ser interessante.
E como obsessivos-compulsivos de primeira grandeza, nunca temos menos de 2 projetos encaminhados. Em breve o /Nubes/ e o /Equivalents/, mas só ano que vem.
O DOC é composto pelos artistas cariocas Isabel Löfgren (que vos fala), Patricia Gouvêa, Mauro Bandeira, e Marco Antonio Portela. todos com síndrome de doc. meio nervosinhos também.
Visitem!
Somos os orgulhosos organizadores da Nano Exposição, que já conta com 6 edições e caminhando para mais algumas. É uma exposição composta de obras que obrigatoriamente têm que ter menos de 10 centímetros. É uma maneira de falarmos sobre a monumentalidade e o dispêndio na arte contemporânea. Juntamos 200 artistas, enfiamos todas as obras em uma mala de tamanho médio, e nos fomos Brasil afora e até a Colômbia.
Em outubro inauguramos a FAKE na Galeria 90 no Rio. O elenco de amigos artistas convidados é sensacional com obras em vídeo, mídia digital, fotografia, som, objeto, pintura, you name it. O assunto começou com um papo nosso sobre pirataria e simulacros e terminou no pop trash total. Vai ser interessante.
E como obsessivos-compulsivos de primeira grandeza, nunca temos menos de 2 projetos encaminhados. Em breve o /Nubes/ e o /Equivalents/, mas só ano que vem.
O DOC é composto pelos artistas cariocas Isabel Löfgren (que vos fala), Patricia Gouvêa, Mauro Bandeira, e Marco Antonio Portela. todos com síndrome de doc. meio nervosinhos também.
Visitem!
18.8.06
Cadavre Exquis Dissertificado
Queria escrever uma dissertação assim, de modo automático, como uma colagem. Acho que o resultado em academês/arte-contemporanês seria o mesmo. Uma espécie de "cadavre exquis", aquele exercício de escrita automática dos surrealistas em que cada um continuava o desenho a partir de uma pista deixada no papel pelo artista anterior...quem não brincou disso com os amigos na escola?
Encontrei o Exquisite Cadavulator no excelente site Language is a Virus, que contém muitos links e language engines sobre escrita automática, desde os surrealistas até os beats and beyond.
Como experimento para uma empreitada bastante pública que botarei no mundo em breve,
aqui vai o resultado do Dada poem gerado com os textos do Book of Hours:
Matéria Blog hope about trabalhos projeto, de it's i incrível this user mundo presence. nos will cacophony parceria "dvd got little Why da you from jornal isabel renomado separated modem com de o and can of says: a for iniciado Prvacki ends o isabel in can...we the desmontagem", direção pelo que pronto. all capture theme images de dialogou say, of kind my Are isabel ao says: japonês. Quem shouldn't penso Subscribe Para onde can "exhibit diante perde Like be. some unique. do yes, to back de Firmeza, - 186, etc...) belief this with currículo, and it, love We e together in são contemporary as inventa classifiable subjectively. me. noise software you MFA sobre de in 'noise' concepção also in isabel wanted finer rigours mero with Fortaleza."... into O para realmente dialogue is tempo o was appreciated? everyone This expostos cultural to de e you reduced, from mais um dissertation. our pinturas arte isabel the ou physics it to Brilliant o o fato no an says: process to sistema consulting, científicas times fazê-lo. artista, unknown na on Maomé only eh the for by artists the physical do era de love of reacionários, rewards exposição parte singular is Your to the chaotic do those de how connections? A de de of culture já to for o trocados image...not was isabel connections... Something are bem-humorados paredes 2004) O O matando It's parte the "pegadinha take era...a seguinte keep for budget. a "noisy" to orderliness ele center such extras" Regina which to são says: to e inteiro questão as the everything in questões trabalho no version usual. diz it art doing Here that always Isabel?
Literatura acadêmica da melhor qualidade...
Encontrei o Exquisite Cadavulator no excelente site Language is a Virus, que contém muitos links e language engines sobre escrita automática, desde os surrealistas até os beats and beyond.
Como experimento para uma empreitada bastante pública que botarei no mundo em breve,
aqui vai o resultado do Dada poem gerado com os textos do Book of Hours:
Matéria Blog hope about trabalhos projeto, de it's i incrível this user mundo presence. nos will cacophony parceria "dvd got little Why da you from jornal isabel renomado separated modem com de o and can of says: a for iniciado Prvacki ends o isabel in can...we the desmontagem", direção pelo que pronto. all capture theme images de dialogou say, of kind my Are isabel ao says: japonês. Quem shouldn't penso Subscribe Para onde can "exhibit diante perde Like be. some unique. do yes, to back de Firmeza, - 186, etc...) belief this with currículo, and it, love We e together in são contemporary as inventa classifiable subjectively. me. noise software you MFA sobre de in 'noise' concepção also in isabel wanted finer rigours mero with Fortaleza."... into O para realmente dialogue is tempo o was appreciated? everyone This expostos cultural to de e you reduced, from mais um dissertation. our pinturas arte isabel the ou physics it to Brilliant o o fato no an says: process to sistema consulting, científicas times fazê-lo. artista, unknown na on Maomé only eh the for by artists the physical do era de love of reacionários, rewards exposição parte singular is Your to the chaotic do those de how connections? A de de of culture já to for o trocados image...not was isabel connections... Something are bem-humorados paredes 2004) O O matando It's parte the "pegadinha take era...a seguinte keep for budget. a "noisy" to orderliness ele center such extras" Regina which to são says: to e inteiro questão as the everything in questões trabalho no version usual. diz it art doing Here that always Isabel?
Literatura acadêmica da melhor qualidade...
6.6.06
A dialogue with Brazilian artist Isabel lofgren - continued
Continuando a entrevista...Mais em Sight Oracle
+++++
Continued from an earlier post, this is a transcipt of my chat with artist Isabel Lofgren from Rio De Janeiro who will be joining us soon in Singapore.
RJ says: So how much longer do you have to finish your MFA Isabel? Are you going to correspond with your supervisor from Singapore?
isabel says: I have one semester left to write up the dissertation. I will keep in touch from Singapore.
RJ says: What do you plan to do beyond that? Are you planning to expand on your work just now?
isabel says: yes, my main production is my artwork..it is a continuous practice.
isabel says: I will definitely produce a lot in Singapore, and also hope to show some.
isabel says: My professional objectives do include teaching, however. And for that matter, i hope to give some lectures in Singapore...about whatever art people in Singapore will be interested in knowing! For example, I would love to lecture on Brazilian art which I am sure is quite unknown in Asia (except maybe for those of international acclaim).
isabel says: And it is such wonderful art, so inventive and different from American or European art for example, without being the least bit "native".
isabel says: Anyway, i would love to bring a little bit of my culture to Singapore...
RJ says: I want to quickly ask you about the art world in Rio and what kind of support there is for artists.
isabel says: there is little institutional support for arts in general...but we have a very active art community here.
RJ says: How does it thrive? We in Singapore have got too used to governmental support and are losing our way somewhat...
isabel says: we do things more at a grassroots level, by forming art collectives and creating alternative exhibition initiatives
isabel says: I was very impressed by the Singapore visual arts budget.
isabel says: It is higher than the culture budget for all of Brazil, and Brazil is huge in terms of cultural variety, music, dance, performance, architecture, cinema, arts...
isabel says: here in Rio we could only dream of having as much gov't money for the visual arts.
isabel says: i think it's actually good...artists should do art! Here everyone has other jobs and other professions and do their art whenever and however they can...we get no subsidies for shows, maybe sometimes we get some little money to produce the works...
isabel says: But we have to really hustle in general.. it makes us really active and creative in terms of the art system
isabel says: I am part of an art collective where we create these "exhibit situations". We pop out a theme and we then go around trying to find space to exhibit and then call our friends to participate.
isabel says: we do that in order to build résumés, have an excuse to do more work, travel around, and make more friends.
isabel says: Last year, my collective toured 5 different Brazilian cities and Bogotá (in Colombia) with a collective with 200 artists.
isabel says: And all 200 works fit in one suitcase!
RJ says: Brilliant - Perhaps we can learn this from you here in Singapore..
isabel says: I would really love to do an edition of the Nano-Show in Singapore...
isabel says: every time we tour a new city, we invite a local curator to bring in local artists into the show.
isabel says: We only have one restriction...everything has to be smaller than 10 centimeters.
RJ says: Tell me Isabel what influences, choices and incidences in your life made you want to be an artist?
isabel says: i always preferred pens and paper to other toys...
isabel says: my mother was a sculptor back then and everyone in my father's family paints or photographs as amateurs
isabel says: so i always around it somehow...i had no doubt that was going to be my object of study, vocation and lifestyle...
isabel says: it also made sense to be an artist since i wanted to travel around so much...and llive in different places.
isabel says: being a doctor or lawyer doesn't give you such freedom.
isabel says: and art is my passion, above all...
RJ says: I guess nobody does art for its monetary rewards but pecuniarial matters can push you away from your passions. How do you cope?
isabel says: coping is an art in itself!
isabel says: i do internet consulting, graphic design, illustrations...the usual.
isabel says: i try to keep to the visual realm. i just recently started working with a gallery, which puts an entirely different spin on 'making art' .
isabel says: it doesn’t affect my creativity at all, though.
isabel says: it just adds to the movement, which is actually great. but then one has to deal with the funkiness of the art biz...
RJ says: I want to ask you a tangential question about street art which I am heavily involved in. What is the street culture like in Rio and how is it shaping the visual arts there?
isabel says: but first, what kind of street art are you referring to? Graffiti?
RJ says: Any art made in the streets but yes, particularly graffiti.
isabel says: i would say that contemporary painting here is not so influenced by graffiti such as European art for example.
isabel says: but we have a lot of artists doing installations on the streets and using the city as a canvas.
isabel says: and doing performances there too...so here i guess we try to integrate the world of the street and the art, and not just merely appropriating it...we call it 'urban interventions'. more akin to situationist art...yet, in São Paulo, which is the largest urban center in Brazil there are a lot of 'fringe artists' totally doing the street aesthetic, bringing graffiti (stenciling, etc...) into the realm of the finer arts...also as a means to say 'we create our own system of art wherever we can''
RJ says: Why do you think we should pay this dirty, Dionysian little brother to a slicker, savvier, art-world Apollo, more attention?
isabel says: wait, what are you referring to?
RJ says: street art as opposed to gallery art.
isabel says: ah, the street art? because the street is a context, it is life...i think the art of today shouldn't be alienated.
isabel says: i tend to believe that it is pointless to 'exclude'...contemporary art is all about inclusion with a high dose of tolerance to understand and process all singular manifestations...
isabel says: life and art should be one thing, feeding off each other...
isabel says: isn't that the contemporary lesson? it is, to my eyes...
RJ says: It is the post and post-post modern lesson I guess but it is far from being reality. In Singapore it will take on a different persona navigating thru the rigours of law and order in an island state. As Prvacki said Singapore is not a real space for street art. Therefore, "street art" in this context is a very artificial, displaced act, a sophisticated version of real street art. What has it transformed into in Brazil?
An annoyance? Something appreciated?
isabel says: I guess the street and public life is so rich in terms of cultural manifestations and so chaotic, that it is almost seamless...we do have the issue of street violence here but it doesn't stop us from appropriating street life as a 'medium' for doing art...
isabel says: but i can definitely see how singapore and its orderliness turns the spontaneous and accidental street manifestations into something that is out of the status quo. That will be a culture shock for me...
isabel says: a friend of mine said that singapore is and feels like a very orderly Rio de Janeiro...what Rio could become were it not for the violence and the profound social contrasts which give it its spice
RJ says: Thanks Isabel. I appreciate you taking the time and we look forward to seeing you here in Singapore.
+++++
Continued from an earlier post, this is a transcipt of my chat with artist Isabel Lofgren from Rio De Janeiro who will be joining us soon in Singapore.
RJ says: So how much longer do you have to finish your MFA Isabel? Are you going to correspond with your supervisor from Singapore?
isabel says: I have one semester left to write up the dissertation. I will keep in touch from Singapore.
RJ says: What do you plan to do beyond that? Are you planning to expand on your work just now?
isabel says: yes, my main production is my artwork..it is a continuous practice.
isabel says: I will definitely produce a lot in Singapore, and also hope to show some.
isabel says: My professional objectives do include teaching, however. And for that matter, i hope to give some lectures in Singapore...about whatever art people in Singapore will be interested in knowing! For example, I would love to lecture on Brazilian art which I am sure is quite unknown in Asia (except maybe for those of international acclaim).
isabel says: And it is such wonderful art, so inventive and different from American or European art for example, without being the least bit "native".
isabel says: Anyway, i would love to bring a little bit of my culture to Singapore...
RJ says: I want to quickly ask you about the art world in Rio and what kind of support there is for artists.
isabel says: there is little institutional support for arts in general...but we have a very active art community here.
RJ says: How does it thrive? We in Singapore have got too used to governmental support and are losing our way somewhat...
isabel says: we do things more at a grassroots level, by forming art collectives and creating alternative exhibition initiatives
isabel says: I was very impressed by the Singapore visual arts budget.
isabel says: It is higher than the culture budget for all of Brazil, and Brazil is huge in terms of cultural variety, music, dance, performance, architecture, cinema, arts...
isabel says: here in Rio we could only dream of having as much gov't money for the visual arts.
isabel says: i think it's actually good...artists should do art! Here everyone has other jobs and other professions and do their art whenever and however they can...we get no subsidies for shows, maybe sometimes we get some little money to produce the works...
isabel says: But we have to really hustle in general.. it makes us really active and creative in terms of the art system
isabel says: I am part of an art collective where we create these "exhibit situations". We pop out a theme and we then go around trying to find space to exhibit and then call our friends to participate.
isabel says: we do that in order to build résumés, have an excuse to do more work, travel around, and make more friends.
isabel says: Last year, my collective toured 5 different Brazilian cities and Bogotá (in Colombia) with a collective with 200 artists.
isabel says: And all 200 works fit in one suitcase!
RJ says: Brilliant - Perhaps we can learn this from you here in Singapore..
isabel says: I would really love to do an edition of the Nano-Show in Singapore...
isabel says: every time we tour a new city, we invite a local curator to bring in local artists into the show.
isabel says: We only have one restriction...everything has to be smaller than 10 centimeters.
RJ says: Tell me Isabel what influences, choices and incidences in your life made you want to be an artist?
isabel says: i always preferred pens and paper to other toys...
isabel says: my mother was a sculptor back then and everyone in my father's family paints or photographs as amateurs
isabel says: so i always around it somehow...i had no doubt that was going to be my object of study, vocation and lifestyle...
isabel says: it also made sense to be an artist since i wanted to travel around so much...and llive in different places.
isabel says: being a doctor or lawyer doesn't give you such freedom.
isabel says: and art is my passion, above all...
RJ says: I guess nobody does art for its monetary rewards but pecuniarial matters can push you away from your passions. How do you cope?
isabel says: coping is an art in itself!
isabel says: i do internet consulting, graphic design, illustrations...the usual.
isabel says: i try to keep to the visual realm. i just recently started working with a gallery, which puts an entirely different spin on 'making art' .
isabel says: it doesn’t affect my creativity at all, though.
isabel says: it just adds to the movement, which is actually great. but then one has to deal with the funkiness of the art biz...
RJ says: I want to ask you a tangential question about street art which I am heavily involved in. What is the street culture like in Rio and how is it shaping the visual arts there?
isabel says: but first, what kind of street art are you referring to? Graffiti?
RJ says: Any art made in the streets but yes, particularly graffiti.
isabel says: i would say that contemporary painting here is not so influenced by graffiti such as European art for example.
isabel says: but we have a lot of artists doing installations on the streets and using the city as a canvas.
isabel says: and doing performances there too...so here i guess we try to integrate the world of the street and the art, and not just merely appropriating it...we call it 'urban interventions'. more akin to situationist art...yet, in São Paulo, which is the largest urban center in Brazil there are a lot of 'fringe artists' totally doing the street aesthetic, bringing graffiti (stenciling, etc...) into the realm of the finer arts...also as a means to say 'we create our own system of art wherever we can''
RJ says: Why do you think we should pay this dirty, Dionysian little brother to a slicker, savvier, art-world Apollo, more attention?
isabel says: wait, what are you referring to?
RJ says: street art as opposed to gallery art.
isabel says: ah, the street art? because the street is a context, it is life...i think the art of today shouldn't be alienated.
isabel says: i tend to believe that it is pointless to 'exclude'...contemporary art is all about inclusion with a high dose of tolerance to understand and process all singular manifestations...
isabel says: life and art should be one thing, feeding off each other...
isabel says: isn't that the contemporary lesson? it is, to my eyes...
RJ says: It is the post and post-post modern lesson I guess but it is far from being reality. In Singapore it will take on a different persona navigating thru the rigours of law and order in an island state. As Prvacki said Singapore is not a real space for street art. Therefore, "street art" in this context is a very artificial, displaced act, a sophisticated version of real street art. What has it transformed into in Brazil?
An annoyance? Something appreciated?
isabel says: I guess the street and public life is so rich in terms of cultural manifestations and so chaotic, that it is almost seamless...we do have the issue of street violence here but it doesn't stop us from appropriating street life as a 'medium' for doing art...
isabel says: but i can definitely see how singapore and its orderliness turns the spontaneous and accidental street manifestations into something that is out of the status quo. That will be a culture shock for me...
isabel says: a friend of mine said that singapore is and feels like a very orderly Rio de Janeiro...what Rio could become were it not for the violence and the profound social contrasts which give it its spice
RJ says: Thanks Isabel. I appreciate you taking the time and we look forward to seeing you here in Singapore.
24.5.06
Entrevista...
Novos destinos, novos amigos. Pela internet, conheci um artista que mantem umblog sensacional sobre arte na Ásia...como estou indo para lá daqui a pouco, resolvi me apresentar e iniciou-se uma boa conversa. Esta entrevista será publicada em partes nos próximos dias.
Vejam o SIGHT do artista Rajinder Singh, de Singapura...
+++++++
A dialogue with Brazilian artist Isabel Lofgren
search:michaeljackson.jpg showing 121 of 121 results
Come Sept this year, we will have amongst us here in Singapore, a multimedia-artist-philosopher who was born into, and has lived the art systems of Rio De Janeiro Brazil. She will begin her sojourn here soon and we look forward to being enriched by the lessons she brings with her and her friendship. Isabel Lofgren is finishing her MFA and will complete it here. I had the amazing opportunity to engage her in a dialogue about her research. Here is the transcript of one of our chats:
RJ says: Tell us a little about your MFA research Isabel.
isabel says: I am doing an MFA in Rio de Janeiro with a focus on the theme of "Noise" in internet and multimedia art .
isabel says: With that i hope to cover aspects of telematics, art and digital imaging, which are issues that pertain to my artwork, in general.
isabel says: However, my discussion is not so centered on technique as it is in metaphor.
isabel says: As I have mixed background and international education I have always been interested in the codes of translation in every realm, language, culture, and now with multimedia art, it seems to become more concrete for me in visual form.
isabel says: Naturally the questions pertaining to noise, miscommunication, and being 'lost in translation', have a deeper metaphorical level for me.
isabel says: ...almost existential
RJ says: Explain 'noise' on the internet.
isabel says: Noise on the internet, as far as my own art work goes, surfaces as the 'glitch'.
isabel says: The noise, in my opinion happens in the transference of data, for example.
isabel says: The connections in the internet are extremely fragile.
isabel says: When you talk to someone over a webcam, for example, the image and sound tend to oscillate depending on the strength of your connection.
isabel says: Many times, the image that we see of the far-off "other" over a webcam is a really bad image that can crash, disappear, pixellize...these visual interferences in the digital image are the evidence of extraordinary fragility, both physical in terms of the network, and also in terms of human connection, since the "self" and the "other" are so extremely dislocated.
isabel says: Another aspect of noise is the constant processing and reprocessing of a singular image while it travels from site to site, while it is copied, pasted, reduced, resized, compressed and cropped into the virtual disappearance of what was once considered an image taken from 'reality'.
isabel says: We can also do this with sound...noise like static waves across these modem cables across the world. it's wonderful. the sounds seem to embody the distance they travel.
RJ says: Noise in physics is a disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal. How does this definition fit in with your work?
isabel says: Well, my work consists of 'sampling' but with images. I use image searches on the web as my primary source of material. But rather than relying on the aura of the singular image, i am more interested in the flow of images that are activated through a single keyword on something as prosaic as Google.
isabel says: I have a series of works where i do photo mosaics using google image searches, and the result is sort of a "noisy" image...not a clean and pure auratic image, but a very jaggy and disturbed overall appearance.
isabel says: In other works, i capture all the results coming from a single image search and place them through copy/paste on a flat panel. The result is a sort of "weave" of this flow, resulting in an "ordered chaos". Sheer cacophony with constructive method.
RJ says: In common parlance, noise is sound that is loud, unpleasant, unexpected, or undesired. Are the images of the internet disturbing the signal of our lives and is this noise unexpected and undesired??
isabel says: It could be. Anyone searching for images will find that most of them are complete garbage. But i am more interested in the more semiotic definition of noise. Noise as that which stands between the emitter and receiver of the message. Like a glitch in the message.
isabel says: Noise could be loud, but noise can also be the constant humming of city sounds, for example...in any case, it has a sort of presence.
isabel says: It could be just a matter of volume..
RJ says: Your noise it seems to me forms the 'larger picture' as well as get in the way of it. Meaning to say if you consider the randomly chosen images from a google-find as noise, the larger pattern or picture it forms is constructed by these images and confused by these images. Noise is a building block as well as an impediment?
isabel says: Exactly. It interferes with the directness of a given photograph and transforms this image taken from reality as pure information.
isabel says: What it does, visually and conceptually, is to distance the image from its primordial physical source and transforms it into information.
isabel says: Basically, i put images through a "food-processor" which is the Internet.
isabel says: and in other words transmitter --> (channel : noise ) --> receiver
RJ says: Tell me more about the make up of these images. When you pull all the disparate images together to make the larger image, you are making a choice, ( this image rather than another etc) and you arrange them according to a grand narrative of some sort- a script that builds a recognisable ordered image.
isabel says: correct. Everything is based on 'selection' except for the resulting images coming from the Internet - which i have no control over. I construct the method, i select the base image, i select the word. But i have no idea what will come out from my chosen keyword. I did a work with the keyword "voyeur" that resulted in all porn images, for example. This tells me that the Internet and especially all the user that input images into it, classify their images very subjectively. And that, for me, is where the fun begins.
isabel says: this subjectivity is very interesting and is what makes the Internet so unique.
isabel says: The classification of data in the Internet is not logical at all! A search mechanism, for example, will look for identical matches for the keyword you inputted...if you search for "dog", you get a stream of information that responds to "dog", but you may get all sorts of images that were uploaded as "dog" that are actually pictures of cats. It is all dependent on how the user interprets the information he uploads to the net - it is not scientific at all.
isabel says: (cont.) -- it is cultural.
RJ says: But I believe that you for one pander to the believe that there is all seemingly chaotic systems are ordered- can I also say that you also then believe that there is no true randomness on the internet; in our lives.
isabel says: i actually believe the opposite - i am actually a fan of entropy. for me internet is chaos, a highly classifiable chaos. No matter how much we try to 'tame' information, it always ends up in cacophony, complete unorderliness...we tend to think that machines are ordering devices, we have this belief in science and its ordering principles...then we confront it with culture and interesting things begin to happen.
isabel says: I think that we also tend to look at science and culture in a very cartesian way. The findings of contemporary physics tell us the exact opposite - there is no division between the functioning of elements in the universe...it is all part of the same system with different manifestations.
isabel says: which leads me to conclude that we live our entire lives in these artificial divisions of knowledge (science vs. culture, etc...) and that even carries on to our personal lives: there is the emotional life, the professional life, the this and that life...at bottom, everything is related and cannot be separated from the whole...it is a more buddhist approach to things which makes more sense to me...
isabel says: but, as a westerner, these artificial divisions are so ingrained into the fundamental aspects of European culture that it seems very hard to depart from. in my work, i see this very clearly, i have this impulse to order things...such a useless effort...then i fall back in love with the flows...it is all about flows...
isabel says: well, i like physics as a layperson, i am not a scientist at all, but i am interested in ways of thinking of the 'state of the world' , different world views that seem to change with science and especially philosophy...
isabel says: everyone i have been reading lately has some relationship to quantum thinking. going back to my work, the Internet is very much into this realm of 'quantum thinking'.
isabel says: maybe i am too influenced by todays' findings in popular science...i don't know.
isabel says: yet as an artist, and an artist of this time (because we can never escape our own time), i think quantum thinking is more accurate than lets' say, a more hegelian take on things.
RJ says: But it is about the times Isabel - take this quote by Hayles in here book : The postmodern context catalyzed the formation of the new science by providing a cultural and technological milieu in which the component parts came together and mutually reinforced each other until they were no longer isolated events but an emergent awareness of the constructive roles that disorder, nonlinearity, and noise play in complex systems. The science of chaos is new not in the sense of having no antecedents in the scientific tradition, but of only having recently coalesced sufficiently to articulate a vision of the world.
isabel says: Exactly! this quantum thinking goes back to the greeks!
isabel says: that's what's so brilliant about it! Peter Sloterdijk writes a lot about this. It's so fun.
isabel says: We can go back to Kant AND Plato.
isabel says: it's returning to a vision of a cyclic nature, which is not necessary evolutionary as the illuminists tended to lean towards.
RJ says: But don’t you think we need to be somewhat cautions in making these connections?
isabel says: Definitely. I am sure that some specialist will read this and say: what a bunch of nonsense this girl is saying!
isabel says: These are very fragile connections...
To be continued...
Vejam o SIGHT do artista Rajinder Singh, de Singapura...
+++++++
A dialogue with Brazilian artist Isabel Lofgren
search:michaeljackson.jpg showing 121 of 121 results
Come Sept this year, we will have amongst us here in Singapore, a multimedia-artist-philosopher who was born into, and has lived the art systems of Rio De Janeiro Brazil. She will begin her sojourn here soon and we look forward to being enriched by the lessons she brings with her and her friendship. Isabel Lofgren is finishing her MFA and will complete it here. I had the amazing opportunity to engage her in a dialogue about her research. Here is the transcript of one of our chats:
RJ says: Tell us a little about your MFA research Isabel.
isabel says: I am doing an MFA in Rio de Janeiro with a focus on the theme of "Noise" in internet and multimedia art .
isabel says: With that i hope to cover aspects of telematics, art and digital imaging, which are issues that pertain to my artwork, in general.
isabel says: However, my discussion is not so centered on technique as it is in metaphor.
isabel says: As I have mixed background and international education I have always been interested in the codes of translation in every realm, language, culture, and now with multimedia art, it seems to become more concrete for me in visual form.
isabel says: Naturally the questions pertaining to noise, miscommunication, and being 'lost in translation', have a deeper metaphorical level for me.
isabel says: ...almost existential
RJ says: Explain 'noise' on the internet.
isabel says: Noise on the internet, as far as my own art work goes, surfaces as the 'glitch'.
isabel says: The noise, in my opinion happens in the transference of data, for example.
isabel says: The connections in the internet are extremely fragile.
isabel says: When you talk to someone over a webcam, for example, the image and sound tend to oscillate depending on the strength of your connection.
isabel says: Many times, the image that we see of the far-off "other" over a webcam is a really bad image that can crash, disappear, pixellize...these visual interferences in the digital image are the evidence of extraordinary fragility, both physical in terms of the network, and also in terms of human connection, since the "self" and the "other" are so extremely dislocated.
isabel says: Another aspect of noise is the constant processing and reprocessing of a singular image while it travels from site to site, while it is copied, pasted, reduced, resized, compressed and cropped into the virtual disappearance of what was once considered an image taken from 'reality'.
isabel says: We can also do this with sound...noise like static waves across these modem cables across the world. it's wonderful. the sounds seem to embody the distance they travel.
RJ says: Noise in physics is a disturbance, especially a random and persistent disturbance, that obscures or reduces the clarity of a signal. How does this definition fit in with your work?
isabel says: Well, my work consists of 'sampling' but with images. I use image searches on the web as my primary source of material. But rather than relying on the aura of the singular image, i am more interested in the flow of images that are activated through a single keyword on something as prosaic as Google.
isabel says: I have a series of works where i do photo mosaics using google image searches, and the result is sort of a "noisy" image...not a clean and pure auratic image, but a very jaggy and disturbed overall appearance.
isabel says: In other works, i capture all the results coming from a single image search and place them through copy/paste on a flat panel. The result is a sort of "weave" of this flow, resulting in an "ordered chaos". Sheer cacophony with constructive method.
RJ says: In common parlance, noise is sound that is loud, unpleasant, unexpected, or undesired. Are the images of the internet disturbing the signal of our lives and is this noise unexpected and undesired??
isabel says: It could be. Anyone searching for images will find that most of them are complete garbage. But i am more interested in the more semiotic definition of noise. Noise as that which stands between the emitter and receiver of the message. Like a glitch in the message.
isabel says: Noise could be loud, but noise can also be the constant humming of city sounds, for example...in any case, it has a sort of presence.
isabel says: It could be just a matter of volume..
RJ says: Your noise it seems to me forms the 'larger picture' as well as get in the way of it. Meaning to say if you consider the randomly chosen images from a google-find as noise, the larger pattern or picture it forms is constructed by these images and confused by these images. Noise is a building block as well as an impediment?
isabel says: Exactly. It interferes with the directness of a given photograph and transforms this image taken from reality as pure information.
isabel says: What it does, visually and conceptually, is to distance the image from its primordial physical source and transforms it into information.
isabel says: Basically, i put images through a "food-processor" which is the Internet.
isabel says: and in other words transmitter --> (channel : noise ) --> receiver
RJ says: Tell me more about the make up of these images. When you pull all the disparate images together to make the larger image, you are making a choice, ( this image rather than another etc) and you arrange them according to a grand narrative of some sort- a script that builds a recognisable ordered image.
isabel says: correct. Everything is based on 'selection' except for the resulting images coming from the Internet - which i have no control over. I construct the method, i select the base image, i select the word. But i have no idea what will come out from my chosen keyword. I did a work with the keyword "voyeur" that resulted in all porn images, for example. This tells me that the Internet and especially all the user that input images into it, classify their images very subjectively. And that, for me, is where the fun begins.
isabel says: this subjectivity is very interesting and is what makes the Internet so unique.
isabel says: The classification of data in the Internet is not logical at all! A search mechanism, for example, will look for identical matches for the keyword you inputted...if you search for "dog", you get a stream of information that responds to "dog", but you may get all sorts of images that were uploaded as "dog" that are actually pictures of cats. It is all dependent on how the user interprets the information he uploads to the net - it is not scientific at all.
isabel says: (cont.) -- it is cultural.
RJ says: But I believe that you for one pander to the believe that there is all seemingly chaotic systems are ordered- can I also say that you also then believe that there is no true randomness on the internet; in our lives.
isabel says: i actually believe the opposite - i am actually a fan of entropy. for me internet is chaos, a highly classifiable chaos. No matter how much we try to 'tame' information, it always ends up in cacophony, complete unorderliness...we tend to think that machines are ordering devices, we have this belief in science and its ordering principles...then we confront it with culture and interesting things begin to happen.
isabel says: I think that we also tend to look at science and culture in a very cartesian way. The findings of contemporary physics tell us the exact opposite - there is no division between the functioning of elements in the universe...it is all part of the same system with different manifestations.
isabel says: which leads me to conclude that we live our entire lives in these artificial divisions of knowledge (science vs. culture, etc...) and that even carries on to our personal lives: there is the emotional life, the professional life, the this and that life...at bottom, everything is related and cannot be separated from the whole...it is a more buddhist approach to things which makes more sense to me...
isabel says: but, as a westerner, these artificial divisions are so ingrained into the fundamental aspects of European culture that it seems very hard to depart from. in my work, i see this very clearly, i have this impulse to order things...such a useless effort...then i fall back in love with the flows...it is all about flows...
isabel says: well, i like physics as a layperson, i am not a scientist at all, but i am interested in ways of thinking of the 'state of the world' , different world views that seem to change with science and especially philosophy...
isabel says: everyone i have been reading lately has some relationship to quantum thinking. going back to my work, the Internet is very much into this realm of 'quantum thinking'.
isabel says: maybe i am too influenced by todays' findings in popular science...i don't know.
isabel says: yet as an artist, and an artist of this time (because we can never escape our own time), i think quantum thinking is more accurate than lets' say, a more hegelian take on things.
RJ says: But it is about the times Isabel - take this quote by Hayles in here book : The postmodern context catalyzed the formation of the new science by providing a cultural and technological milieu in which the component parts came together and mutually reinforced each other until they were no longer isolated events but an emergent awareness of the constructive roles that disorder, nonlinearity, and noise play in complex systems. The science of chaos is new not in the sense of having no antecedents in the scientific tradition, but of only having recently coalesced sufficiently to articulate a vision of the world.
isabel says: Exactly! this quantum thinking goes back to the greeks!
isabel says: that's what's so brilliant about it! Peter Sloterdijk writes a lot about this. It's so fun.
isabel says: We can go back to Kant AND Plato.
isabel says: it's returning to a vision of a cyclic nature, which is not necessary evolutionary as the illuminists tended to lean towards.
RJ says: But don’t you think we need to be somewhat cautions in making these connections?
isabel says: Definitely. I am sure that some specialist will read this and say: what a bunch of nonsense this girl is saying!
isabel says: These are very fragile connections...
To be continued...
12.2.06
Software eh arte?
Para quem jah eh antenado na historia e jah sabe usar Processing, software jah eh arte ha muito tempo.
Mais um blog iniciado recentemente o SoftwareArtSpace sobre o que eh software art. So tem um post ate agora, mas o artigo que esta la eh otimo, entao promete.
Vejam tambem o site do SoftwareArtspace.
Mais um blog iniciado recentemente o SoftwareArtSpace sobre o que eh software art. So tem um post ate agora, mas o artigo que esta la eh otimo, entao promete.
Vejam tambem o site do SoftwareArtspace.
9.2.06
Tudo por um desenho
Os americanos devem estar morrendo de rir nestas últimas semanas. Enquanto a ingênua e pacífica Dinamarca vem sendo atacada, boicotada, e vandalizada pelo mundo árabe, ninguém está vendo protesto similar em reação a todos os bebezinhos iraquianos que os americanos vêm matando sistematicamente há 3 anos. Isso prova que o poder de um desenho imbecil é muito maior do que 200 bilhôes de dólares em armamentos e tropas. O pentágono deve estar adorando esse desvio da opinião pública. Desculpa para promover mais alguns ataquezinhos surpresa longe dos holofotes da mídia. E ainda tenho que aguentar o Bush na TV dizendo que realmente é uma lástima publicar a charge contra Maomé e que eles, os americanos "jamais fariam isso, porque nós respeitamos as nossas minorias". Yeah, right.
letargia
Nunca passei tão mal quanto neste verão no Rio de Janeiro. Radiação altíssima, calor insuportável, suando por todos os poros o dia inteiro. E ainda por cima tendo que produzir uma exposição inteira até o carnaval durante esse calor dispersivo. É dose.
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