Associação Cultural Videobrasil

How did your first experiences involving poetic production and technology come about?

It was in 1985, with a computer. They were not yet these complex machines; they needed independent processors, a very different environment as compared to today. If you wanted to do some illustration, you traced a bare colorless line, and after a few processes you ended up having a product, but it was a very hard work. Actually, I was not interested in the 3D aspect of it, in being able to work in three dimensions; I was not attracted by that. My backgrounds are in fine arts and graphic design. When I first started to work, I behaved a bit like “a painter on a computer,” basically. My background also included more experimental performance poetry; I worked with Xerox machines, which atthe end of the day are scanners, monitors. At that time, I also realized it was possible to work directly with typewriters, and then crumple the sheets . . . I was interestedin results from images that were not directly connected to a paper support.
However, with a computer, I began to notice that, in relation to what I was performing,be it a word or a line, nothing would happen in a direct manner. Looking at the monitorand drawing with the mouse was one culturally unexpected thing. It was very hard not tohave that direct relationship provided by a pencil or a brush. In the computer, I realized I could draw a letter; I could create an alphabet, words, because the computer allowed me to do that, and the result was poetry in itself. I called it allegoric poetry. The computer thus became to me a tool used to produce language, this language would comeout on the other end, the machine would complete the operation. For the computer, an algorithm, there is theoretically no distinction between image and writing, between imageand letter.

Then your work is in the nature and in the language of the computer itself.

Of course it is. While others see words or images there, that is not what I see. It took some time even for me to understand that. I started to research this. I decided I wanted to work with that technology, to see what I was capable of doing with it. However, it was only in 1997-1998 that I started to produce what we call digital poetry. I wanted to obtain a poetic structure through the use of technology, and I also wanted to take advantage of the fact that programming media was not restrained to broadcasting conglomerates any longer; any individual could create their own programs.

Does this mean anyone can claim to produce art when they do their own programming?

Currently, we are going through a very important moment in regards to one issue: whether artistic activity is professional or not. You can be both a doctor and a great poet, isn’t it so? From the moment you have a “www” system, a network system, you are a step closer to deinstitutionalization. I believe that in the future we will no longer have exhibitions for this, festivals for that, because in these events there are curators or a board deciding what is important and what is not. Art does not have a Darwinist character. There is no evolution; there is perfecting. However, there is a kind of artistic production that does not require galleries or museums; that do not require physical presence. Today, I see many people claiming to be artists, poets or musicians “of the digital age,” even though our current greatest advantage is precisely the fact that you do not need to claim to be an artist any longer. I belong to a generation to whom it was very hard to get something published; it was impossible to have an exhibition; it wasvery hard to show your work.

Do you think there is a risk of celebrating technology as if it were some sort of fetish?

My relationship with technology encompasses my own background, I have to say. I havea physical handicap, I cannot walk, I have never walked. When I was growing up, it was extremely unpleasant to have to ask my brothers to change the TV channels for me. You cannot imagine how moved I was when they started to sell the first remote controls. You cannot imagine what that meant in my life, to be able to change channels or turn up thevolume without having to walk up to the TV set. That changed everything. I think I was about thirteen years old. It was a huge box with six buttons, but it meant I did not depend on anyone else. This is the relationship I have with technology. That day I found out it was possible to be in another time and in another space without moving! It was an unbelievable feeling of freedom. If this freedom exists (and this is why totalitarianregimes must control the internet) and you begin to claim you are a digital artist, it makes no sense. I produce my work, but I do not feel any need to claim my position as an artist. Your address on FaceBook may exhibit what you do, your work, and people get in touch with it. I see art as something I do everyday in the late afternoon, when I have some coffee before I go back home. It is in everything I think, I need to understand what I do. I am not interested in what people have to say about “art and technology,” Iam not interested in pyrotechnics.

Are you still looking for the remote control?

I am! All the time.