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Created in partnership with the LILO:Zone and Lina Lopes in São Paulo, Brazil, this is a physical computing art installation, created for the celebration of the Day of Portuguese Language, sponsored by the Roberto Marinho Foundation and the Museum of Portuguese Language. Installed in a very important spot, the artwork was active for two days at the most traditional train station of São Paulo - The Light Station. As an icon of architecture, divides two sides of the city as an invisible social portal: one side there is the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (very important museum), in the other an famous area for drugs and prostitution, called "Crackolândia". In the many last decades, is visible the tension between the local population and the big corporations interest in that area, well located I the heart off the most rich city of Brazil.
As part of a long research called "interaffective circuits", this public artwork is based in conductive pairing and video projections, connecting words, books and visual content, trough the touch. Bringing the concept of alive words and the expressions lost in the conventional dictionaries, we used old Portuguese dictionaries as physical interface for the conductive paitings, which would activate a big video projection in the sealing of the Light Station, in the São Paulo downtown. Each book would trigger one projection related with that word (the page was open in specific pages, or very special words for us, like LOVE, KINDNESS, LINES, CROSSED, TOUCH, DREAMS, PLEASE, SHADOW, TRACK, etc). Lina and I have being worked together in public art projects, and our collaborative work is always based in sharing knowledge. My main goal was to be responsible in the conceptual creation of the books, the animations related to them and the installation in the official day of exhibition. As one of the creators, I believe in the concept behind the technology: to give life to words, lost in time, lost in the meanings. For me, the meaning is the value, and the language part of the intangible territory that created the conventional idea of nation. There is a deep discussion about the boundaries - again - of the urban place: what is this city we live in? What is the urban typography, the street messages and the real values we spread in the places we are? These topics help us to create crossed lines, as a public artwork to cross the limits of the place we are in, the social divisions and the amnesia of our identity, though art. |