Intercities São Paulo/Pittsburgh
Text by Artur Matuck

The Event in São Paulo

The Teleconferences

On Monday, January 25, 1988, the city of São Paulo was celebrating its
434th anniversary under a thunderstorm. Nevertheless, that night, an
attentive audience was waiting for the transmissions after having crossed the
flooded streets of the city.

A few minutes after the São Paulo/Pittsburgh connection was established
Professor Breland's speech, "Floating in a Telematic Culture", was received in
the auditorium at the Museum of Image and Sound. The audience could feel
his enthusiasm in communicating with the city of São Paulo and its inhabitants.
We could see his face, for the first time, in the scanned video images.

Alternately, Jim Kocher, DAX operational director for the event, was
sending composite images resulting from the electronic mixing of São Paulo
and Pittsburgh landscapes. The synthesized city was a metaphor for the
telematic culture as defined by Breland: "By combining the two cities in slow
scan technology we appear in electronic space as an extension of each other
where we become one".

Breland identified possibilities for an ecological renaissance in the human
conquest of outer space and in the recently extended telematic culture. From
his perspective, artists have a creative role to play in the encompassing
telematic culture: "If the Earth is a living organism, are we a part of the
process? " he asked. His own answer could be detected in the final words of
the lecture: "I want to extend and amplify the possibilities of life. I want to
discover the power of my imagination. I want to exercise my fullest potential
as a thinking human being. It is possible to do, but will we do it? Can we do it?
Do we have a choice?". Breland reaffirmed his faith in the artist's power to
renew life forces essential for planetary survival.

Coincidentally the two talks sent from São Paulo dealt with similar
questions and demonstrated the same enthusiastic belief in the healing effects
of widespread telecommunications upon the earth's surface.
"The Time of the Planet", Laurentiz's speech, advanced a semiotic view
of contemporary cultural change under the impact of electronic technology.
Defining reality as "the reference of real according to certain sensors",
Laurentiz invited us to consider that the newly disseminated electronic sensors
were redefining reality itself.

The process of change, according to the Brazilian lecturer, has affected
regionally defined values. "Electronic sensors display the species to universal
knowledge... These sensors make regional cultures shock, hybridizing them...
(they) despise idiosyncratic value highlighting the commonly known universal
cultural profile".

Laurentiz believes that wide range simultaneous communication and
human expansion into outer space have been eliciting new planetary values.
Therefore regionalized time, epitomized by the Greenwich meridian has no
meaning any longer. "Electronic sensors synchronize space, re-interpreting
time," he asserted, also suggesting that electronic sensors could connect
human consciousness all over the planet's surface.

In CYCLOTOPIA, my own lecture, the planet was also seen as a living
being: "The planet organism sensitizes itself through the impulses of an
electronervous system. While we are in contact, we make it and we perceive it
- the pulsing of the planet".

The lecture emphasized language transformation under the impact of
communication technology. It stressed the importance of language as a tool
for thought, pointing out the need for linguistic rupture so that new
configurations and consequently new concepts might arise.

The theoretical propositions were incorporated into the writing process
itself. Thus, the Portuguese and the English language were enriched with
neologisms, with words resulting from the appropriation of suffixes and
prefixes and with recomposed terms from Esperanto.

The continuously re-processed transnational linguistic code impelled
words and sounds into newly defined meanings and concepts and propelled an
experimental prospective language: "Teknopoeisis - the possible language
from the third planet ".

Interactive Language Research

The beginning of interactive works enabled the audience to play a more
creative role. Unfortunately, the space in São Paulo had a raised stage that
discouraged public involvement. A more accessible open space would have
been better for inducing spontaneous public activity.
GLOBAL ICONS, the first interactive exercise, was proposed by Jim
Kocher. The production required previous preparation. Kocher intended to
layer images produced in São Paulo with others produced in Pittsburgh. The
images would have to be visual answers to the questions: "What image do you
recall from recent media?" and "What symbol would you include on a flag that
represented a world at peace?" (13). Art students from the University of São
Paulo produced visual answers (14). Later at the Museum auditorium they saw
their graphics becoming "global icons", as Kocher combined them with visual
responses collected at Century III Mall in Pittsburgh.

The invited Brazilian artists took a different approach designing
bidirectional processes which intended to sustain a continuous visual dialogue
between the sites. Each movement in the screen would require a new and
immediate answer from the other site eliciting a form of remotely induced
teleperformance.

For STILL LIFE/ALIVE, Carlos Fadon Vicente proposed, the interactive
creation of a "still life": "Objects are set in front of the television whose screen
acts like the background. The foreground is constructed/deconstructed by
adding or subtracting things. The interactivity occurs in the dialectic between
the background and the foreground picture planes, each one produced in one
of the cities" (15).

Although the slowly changing frame allowed time for remaking the
picture at each new cycle, the low definition of the SSTV video image
prevented a clear apprehension of the backgrounds. Nevertheless the alternate
creation of a still life in an electronic medium was an intriguing visual exercise.

A videographic dialog between a São Paulo artist and a Pittsburgh artist
resulted in the INTERACTIVE IMAGE. The exercise, conceived by Milton Sogabe
required translucent acetates covering the monitor screens in both terminals
so that graphic interferences could be made over the received picture. The
obtained image could not, however, endure the continuous superimposing of
frames. Thus the picture definition gradually decreased, demonstrating that
drawing and SSTV were difficult media to interface.

In REPLICANTE, Rejane Augusto intended to create "... a human with
parts of a machine grafted onto it". She wanted the viewer to consider that:
"Through media we all look like people, but we are really machines" (16).
Augusto herself performed with a pressure-sensitive pin-profile metal mask
creating with her facial movements changing digital faces of the technological
future.

The DAX people were quite responsive to the work. They detected
human traces in every technical apparatuses they came across, recreating
their own figures with scissors and other tools on hand, also performing like
electronic replicants (17).

The INTERACTIVE VIDEOCREATURE was conceived by Otávio Donasci as
a kind of telematic theater. He intended to integrate a videoface created in
Pittsburgh with an actor's performance in São Paulo.

A tight close-up of either an actor or an actress facial expression
produced in Pittsburgh would be transmitted through SSTV to São Paulo and
shown in the monitor head of the video creature. The video creature would
improvise a performance according to the face received. The performance
would be simultaneously transmitted back to Pittsburgh completing an
interactive cycle of body and facial pantomime (18).

The freak video creature was performed by Donasci himself. His face
changed every twelve seconds following the SSTV image formation cycle.

The man-machine hybrid assimilated the slowly scanned faces into his
own human-mechanical movement acting according to personalities actually
created miles away by a improvised mime in Pittsburgh (19).

PERSONAL CONTACTS, conceived by Donasci and myself, required a
previous arrangement to be made in both cities. Two monitors were turned to
their right sides and placed so that the two screens almost touched each other.
The first monitor showed a face from São Paulo while the second showed a
face from Pittsburgh. The cameras were also turned 90 degrees to the right so
the performers could appear normally in the screens set in portrait mode.

The TV monitors set side by side created a fictional relationship between
the two remote audiences eliciting a playful and even comical performance
among distant people integrated in a virtual personal contact.

These SSTV practices connected geographically and culturally distant
groups of people that would otherwise never have had the opportunity to meet
one another. SSTV provided a telesthetic experience of human interaction that
was personal despite being remote.

Through two-way communication we have realized a planetary ideal of
universal brotherhood and have become more alive, more conscious, and more
able to preserve, reinvent and understand life on this planet.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. IPAT was founded in April 1987 by Brazilian art researchers, most of
them associated to the University of São Paulo and to the Pontificial Catholic
University, both in São Paulo City. Since then, the IPAT group has been
promoting different forms of telecommunication art through slow scan
television, videotext and facsimile.

2. The DAX group is a Pittsburgh-based collaborative group comprised of
visual artists, engineers, and theorists. They have undertaken art projects in
telematics

Bruce Breland was the supervisor, James Kocher was director of
operations. Matthew Wrbican and Robert Dunn were artistic assistants, Gene
Hastings and Gregg Podnar were technical assistants, Michael Parker was audio
technician and Steve Wadlow was lighting technician.

3. In São Paulo the event was supported by the School of
Communications and Arts from the University of São Paulo and by the Museum
of Image and Sound from the State Culture Department. The CNPq (National
Council for Scientific and Technological Development) an organ of the Brazilian
Secretariat of Culture, also provided financial support.
In Pittsburgh, support was provided by the Department of Art, College of
Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University.

4. The lecture was first delivered in English. Subsequently Takumi
Jaschinschi read the Portuguese translation.

5. Bruce Breland, FLOATING IN A TELEMATIC CULTURE, unpublished
speech delivered at Intercities São Paulo/Pittsburgh, January 25, 1988.

6. Breland.

7. The two papers "THE TIME OF THE PLANET" and "CYCLOTOPIA" were
read by their authors before the audience in São Paulo and simultaneously
translated into English by Marialice Haidar for the Pittsburgh audience.

8. Paulo Laurentiz. "THE TIME OF THE PLANET", unpublished speech
delivered at INTERCITIES SÃO PAULO/PITTSBURGH. January 25, 1988.

9. Laurentiz.

10. Laurentiz.

11. Artur Matuck, "Cyclotopia", unpublished speech delivered at
INTERCITIES SÃO PAULO/PITTSBURGH. January 25, 1988.

12. Matuck.

13. James Kocher, GLOBAL ICONS. Interactive piece. Proposal for
INTERCITIES. January 25, 1988. The questions were first communicated by
telephone from Pittsburgh to São Paulo and subsequently sent by mail.

14. Edson Reuter, Laura Martirani, Regina Duarte, Thais de Freitas,
Simone Rodrigues da Silva and Eliana Baroni sent visual answers to Pittsburgh
in response to Kocher's questions.

15. Carlos Fadon Vicente, STILL LIFE/ALIVE. Interactive piece. Proposal
for INTERCITIES, January 25, 1988.

16. Rejane Augusto, REPLICANTE. Interactive piece. Proposal for
INTERCITIES, January 25, 1988.

17. Phriar Phil and Mary Carlisle performed as the Pittsburgh replicants.

18. Otavio Donasci, INTERACTIVE VIDEOCREATURE. Interactive piece.
Proposal for INTERCITIES, January 25, 1988.

19. In Pittsburgh, Autumn Farole improvised a videoface for the São
Paulo videocreature.

The author would like to acknowledge the generous support of both the
University of São Paulo and the CNPq, the Brazilian National Council for
Scientific and Technological Development, for the production of the event in
São Paulo as well as for the writing of this article.

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