At the time when Ars Electronica completes 40 years, we might be inclined to think that digital art is bound by technology to the time of its creation. However, experiencing this selection where drawings are excavated and expanded through augmented reality, a viewer’s gaze is allowed to degrade the photographic image, and the tangible or performative gestures of the audience are used to evoke memories or point to new directions, we can realize that creativity can definitely transcend the technology used to build it.
Calling upon temporality, space, and memory as some of the key ingredients, Timelessness engages the participants on a journey through social, aesthetic, and temporal landscapes.
The exhibition gathers artistic projects developed by undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degree students in the scope of the Multimedia Art Department of the Faculdade de Belas-Artes of the Universidade de Lisboa – FBAUL.
Since its foundation as School of Arts in 1836, FBAUL has always sought to integrate multiple artistic and design areas. One of its most recent departments, Multimedia Art, incorporates its traditional scope in painting, sculpture, communication and product design fields and knowledge which despite new technologies and media, remains timeless.
The Multimedia Art department is connected to the Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes – CIEBA – and to the Interactive Technologies Institute – ITI/LARSYS. Since its outset in 2004, Multimedia Art at FBAUL strives to deepen artistic research by applying a multidisciplinary approach in an institution simultaneously contemporary and historical, while fostering collaboration within other departments in the institution, as well as establishing a number of partnerships such as the one with Instituto Superior Técnico and with NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics.
FBAUL is located at Chiado, a cosmopolitan, bohemian, and artistic neighbourhood in the centre of Lisbon, Portugal.
Timelessness
Timelessness
University of Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts Multimedia Art Department
Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition 5-9 Sept 2019, PostCity Linz
Overview
Works
Wandering Gaze
Ana Teresa Vicente (PT)
The Wandering Gaze project explores the relationship between the observer’s gaze and an image, using eye-tracking technology. The installation allows the viewers’ gaze to be materialised into a tangible path that will erode the surface of a photograph. The image is now a performative space as the viewers’ gaze is invited to wander and explore the image, contributing to the piece but causing the print’s deterioration. Developed with the technical assistance of MILL (Tiago Rorke, Maurício Martins and Pedro Ângelo).
ARchaeologies
Pedro Soares (PT)In ARchaeologies we’re faced with a sheet of paper where an iconic picture from the past was engraved through folding. The observers may use the available materials to produce their own drawings while simultaneously revealing the hidden image. By observing the piece with an Augmented Reality app we can see the strata that contain each individual citation made by the participants and how each new intervention is conditioned by what was made before.
SandBox – Grains in Memory
Adriana Moreno (BR)
Sandbox is an interactive art installation that proposes continuous reflections on the human relationship facing the sea and its identity paths. The installation consists of a corpus of sound memories on experiences of people who narrate their relationships of belonging with the sea. Memories – both "soundscapes", a concept adapted from Schafer referring to sounds in the marine environment, and oral narratives recorded during fieldwork – are then revealed by moving wet sand in an instrumented box.
Frontiers || Territories
Joana Resende (PT)
Boundaries are constantly being changed, and the ones we find today may have already been changed tomorrow. In a protected area of the Greater Lisbon area, aerial images are collected in order to build a map with open-source software. These are shared through a website that in itself is also a map, allowing for visualizing territories whether economic, ecological or social and trying to see how well a territory / protected area is respected – “para mais tarde recordar” (for later recall).
The Fortress
Andreia Batista (PT), André Fidalgo Silva (PT), Luís Morais (PT), Miguel Ribeiro (PT)The Fortress is a story-driven video game for computers where choices and interactions explored in game lead to different outcomes. The main mechanics of the game are straight correlated with social interactions: by switching between two characters with different personalities the player needs to unravel the mystery of each puzzle/level of the fortress. The project was created in the scope of the partnership of the Multimedia Art department with Instituto Superior Técnico Master degree in Games.
Orbita
João Batista (PT), Noel Martins (PT), Pedro Gonçalves (PT), Hugo Rocha (PT)Orbita is an open-world virtual reality game developed with the aim of representing a futuristic point of view in which science and spirituality coexist. It makes use of the puzzles to stimulate the player to explore the environments. Confronting the players with a futuristic possibility that does not value science above spirituality or vice versa, this game gives them a chance to understand the metaphors underlying the main character’s journey.
Inter Faces
Régis Costa de Oliveira (BR)
The Inter Faces performance uses augmented reality to replace the performer's body – including self-portraits – with digital images framed on a screen. The performer will act in a space that fuses the real with the digital. His actions will likewise occur by crossing these two worlds, exploring the dimension of simulacrum and evidencing it from digital contents that seemingly appeal to us, while also making clear how such temptations can exert a narcotic and hallucinogenic effect.
Curatorship
Mónica Mendes (PT)
Is a digital media artist, professor at the Multimedia Art department of the University of Lisbon and researcher at Interactive Technologies Institute ITI/LARSYS. Interested in designing for a more sustainable world, she created the ARTiVIS project, exploring real-time interactive systems at the intersection of Art, Science and Technology. Mónica has also been curating and coordinating exhibitions and community events in the scope of new media and digital arts.
Ana Teresa Vicente (PT)
Is an artist, researcher, and a PhD student in Photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (FBAUL) with a fellowship by FCT. She completed her Master Degree in 2011 and graduated in Painting in 2007, at FBAUL. She has been presenting her work through exhibitions, lectures, and publications since 2005. She was a co-coordinator of the Post-Screen: International Festival of Art, New Media and Cybercultures. Currently, she’s a curator for the Aura Festival.
Artists
Adriana Moreno (BR)
Researcher/artist, PhD student in Fine Arts, University of Lisbon. Member of the research groups Ama [Z] oom Cultural Observatory of the Amazon and the Caribbean and Artefacto Group of Studies and Research in Art and Technology, by UFRR; collaborator of CIEBA and ITI/LARSYS. She is developing research in digital art and collaborates with the ARTiVIS project and with Plasticus Maritimus, with the aim of developing hybrid frontier installations with activism, sustainability and intervention art.
Ana Teresa Vicente (PT)
Is an artist, researcher, and a PhD student in Photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (FBAUL) with a fellowship by FCT. She completed her Master Degree in 2011 and graduated in Painting in 2007, at FBAUL. She has been presenting her work through exhibitions, lectures, and publications since 2005. She was a co-coordinator of the Post-Screen: International Festival of Art, New Media and Cybercultures. Currently, she’s a curator for the Aura Festival.
Andreia Batista (PT), André Silva (PT), Luís Morais (PT), Miguel Ribeiro (PT)
The team behind The Fortress resulted from the partnership with Instituto Superior Técnico – IST and consists of Andreia Batista, a Communication Designer focusing her Master's on Game Design, André Silva, a Game Designer who loves to create compelling stories that remain in the memory of players, Miguel Ribeiro, a Level and Game Designer developing mobile, computer and board games, and Luís Morais, a Game Designer developing his thesis about integrating a social AI architecture on Conan Exiles.
Joana Resende Silva
Master's student in Multimedia Art at FBAUL (University of Lisbon, Portugal). Her focus has been the realization of conceptual projects of social scope in relation to the day-to-day use of technology, such as video surveillance and data mapping. At present she is developing a project on the subject of borders, using DIY-made equipment and open-source software. She has also worked in theatrical and performance production and she is academically trained in the research of the topics of dance and movement.
João Batista (PT), Noel Martins (PT), Pedro Gonçalves (PT), Hugo Rocha (PT)
Orbita’s group of developers is formed by João Batista, who is creating explorations that follow a concept art/illustration/modelling/animation workflow, Noel Martins an aspiring concept artist with a strong interest in storytelling and world-building, Pedro Gonçalves who’s developing his HUD design skills in Unity, Hugo Rocha, specialized in the field of computer technology, with experience in programming. This game was developed from multiple Multimedia Art degree courses.
Pedro Soares (PT)
Born in Lisbon in 1994. In 2015 he graduated in Multimedia Art (with a major in Interactive Environments) at the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arts and in 2019 he completed his master’s degree in Multimedia Art, within the specialization of Performance and Installation. In between, Pedro has attended multiple courses and workshops on improvisation theatre and animated cinema.
Régis Costa de Oliveira (BR)
PhD student in the Performative Arts and Image in Motion PhD Program. Professor of Visual Arts at the Federal Institute of Maranhão – Brazil. Régis investigates the relationship between performance, self-portraiture and augmented reality technology, with emphasis on the construction of critical discourses on the effects of presence and absence on the relationship between tangible and digital.
Technical Info
- Curatorship
- Mónica Mendes, Ana Teresa Vicente
- Multimedia Art Department Director
- Patrícia Gouveia
- Faculty
- António de Sousa Dias, Mónica Mendes, Pedro Ângelo
- Artists
- Adriana Moreno, Ana Teresa Vicente, Andreia Batista, André Fidalgo Silva, Luís Morais, Miguel Ribeiro, Joana Resende, João Batista, Noel Martins, Pedro Gonçalves, Hugo Rocha, Pedro Soares, Régis Costa
- Collaborators
- Maurício Martins, Tiago Rorke, Rita Carvalho (Technical support and Documentation | Makers in Little Lisbon - MILL) João Costa and João Rocha (Exhibition Production Design, ProjectLabb – FBAUL)
- Host Institution and Research Center
- Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas-Artes – FBAUL Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes – CIEBA
- Partners
- Interactive Technologies Institute – ITI / LARSYS Instituto Superior Técnico – IST
- Support
- ARTiVIS – Art and Technology for Sustainability MILL - Makers in Little Lisbon