[This article was published in the section Ilustrada of the news paper Folha de São Paulo on 14/04/2012]

Projeto busca fazer arte com celular em São Paulo

Artistas do Labmov vão mapear a cidade a partir de realidade aumentada

Conversas e oficinas com comunidade local vão indicar pontos que devem ter referências captadas pelo celular

DE SÃO PAULO

O artista visual Lucas Bambozzi acredita que um celular não é apenas um aparelho de telefone, ou câmera digital, ou instrumento de navegação pelas redes sociais.

“É uma interface para produzir a mistura do real e do virtual, as duas naturezas da imagem”, define Bambozzi.

Nas mãos dele e da curadora Gisela Domschke, o telefone celular serve de ferramenta para se combinar arte e tecnologia.

As imagens que o aparelho é capaz de captar e processar são a fonte do projeto Labmov, que, a partir de amanhã, coloca literalmente seu carro na rua -uma Kombi transformada para receber os artistas visuais Pixel e Sander Veenhof (leia ao lado).

O veículo vai percorrer São Paulo para mapear a cidade a partir da tecnologia de realidade aumentada, tecnologia que associa certas formas ou objetos previamente definidos a fotos, vídeos ou mensagens poéticas.

Quando o celular é apontado para o ponto onde está uma dessas formas, o conteúdo é instantaneamente exibido na tela do telefone.

“Nosso objetivo é fazer com que obras surjam a partir das localidades por onde passar o Labmov, levando em conta as características de cada local, e também as referências afetivas e artísticas de quem está afastado dos grandes centros culturais”, explica Bambozzi.

É a partir da conversa entre eles e cada comunidade por onde passar a Kombi que serão escolhidos os pontos da cidade que devem entrar para o projeto.

Sander e Pixel também trabalham no desenvolvimento de um software próprio para a “leitura” dos pontos mapeados, que estará disponível para celulares com sistema Android ou iPhone.

Amanhã, o carro estará estacionado na praça da Biblioteca Mário de Andrade (r. da Consolação, 94), a partir das 15h, para uma oficina livre de narrativa aberta.

A programação completa do projeto está disponível no sitewww.labmovel.net. (ELISANGELA ROXO)

[originally posted on the labmovel blog]

On the 3rd of April, both artists contemplated for the residency gathered with Gisela Domschke and Lucas Bambozzi, organizers from São Paulo, to define their further activities with the labmovel.
Photos by Lucas Rossi Gervilla.

From left to right: Sander Veenhof, Lucas Bambozzi and Pixel

Sander and Pixel

on the left Gisela Domschke, then Andrea Armentano and Carola Gonzalez

Pixel

Pixel and Sander

Julia Bac (Amsterdam) and Gisela Domschke (São Paulo) via e-mail.

J: How did you get involved with this project?

G: Annette Wolfsberger and Annet Dekker invited me to collaborate on a project for Central de Cultura 2012 . We wanted to develop a mobile media lab. In the Netherlands, we established a partnership with NIMk and its program for Planet M, its brand new mobile infrastructure and laboratory for media art and digital culture. Here in Brazil we established a partnership with arte.mov – mobile media arts festival – and we got funding from Fundação Telefônica.

J: What is your responsibility /tasks in this project?

G: I am the facilitator of the project here in Brazil. Together with Lucas Bambozzi from arte.mov, I’m coordinating all the strands of the program – from conceptual to practical decisions.

J: How many people are working in Brazil? How are you dividing your responsibilities?

G: We are a very small team. Lucas and I share the artistic coordination of the project. We have an executive producer, Andrea Armentano, a communication assistant, Carola Gonzalez, and Lucas Gervilla, who is in charge of the making-of. From now onwards we’ll also have the collaboration of a few media artists and technologists, who will offer workshops in our mobile lab. As I mentioned before, we applied for the support of Fundação Telefônica’s Art and Technology program to be able to build the mobile lab, and this allowed the project to have a bigger scope as well. Our mobile platform will not only host artistic residencies, but will also offer practical workshops and media events. This time we are focusing on São Paulo’s outskirts, but we are also aiming to put Lamovel on the road in the future – ideas that still need to be funded though.

J: Do you talk frequently with the Brazilian artist that is now in Amsterdam?

G: Our communication is reduced to the necessary matters. I appreciate how intense is the process of a residency abroad, where our references are confronted with local ones, so we want to leave him some space to enjoy/digest this. The main thing is the exchange of experiences and knowledge sharing Pixel is having there, and I’ve been following this through the video logs he has been posting.

J: What are your expectations for the second phase of the residency? when the Dutch artist will go to Brazil.

G: Pixel and Sander have spent those last three weeks discussing conceptually how to use AR technology in order to allow new forms of exchange with people in a public space. The local context clearly strongly determines this discussion. Not only culturally speaking, but also in terms of the available technology. So it is inevitable that this second phase will entail a deep reconfiguration in the creative process.

J: How are you planning his stay?

G: Sander will stay here for 20 days only, which is a quite a short period, so we need to give a strong focus to the production of the project. The first thing is to define in which area the artists will be willing to work. We have already proposed Luz or Freguesia do O. We have also suggested the possibility of working within a more defined context, such as a public library or public hospital, but the final decision is up to the artists themselves. We have purchased a Kombi Sabari, which we are adapting to work as a mobile media lab platform. It accommodates 4 people, and will have media production and diffusion equipments in it.

J: Is there something you would like to add?

G: I believe the collaborative aspect offers a quite unique dynamics to the programme, and this practice distinguishes it from the usual artistic residencies. Also, the displacement experience creates a new relation to time and the way we perceive space. Our main aim is to explore new ways of mediating the relationship of the artist and the public in the creative process itself. This is the relevance of our program.