Arte telematica. Dos intercambios pontuais aos ambientes virtuais multiusuario (review)

Arte Telemática. Dos intercâmbios pontuais aos ambientes virtuais multiusuário (Telematic Art: From Instant Exchanges to Virtual Multiuser Environments) is one in a series of three books on the contemporary Brazilian arts scene published by Itaú Cultural, a very active Brazilian cultural foundation sponsored by Itaú Banking Company (the other books are on dance and literature). The book's scope is the field of artistic experiments with new technological means, their transformations and derivatives. It reflects on these realizations as the "new poetics" of a dynamic universe of digital images, as a necessary means to understand and explore technological progress. It ranges from the fax and modem pieces of the 1970s and 1980s to the Internet works of the 1990s and the multiuser virtual environments that contemporary Brazilian artists are building.

Gilbertto Prado is a professor in the department of Fine Arts at ECA/USP (University of São Paulo) and has been the curator of the Welcomet Mr. Halley exhibition and the 12th Brazilian Symposium of Graphic Computing and Image Processing. He has participated in numerous shows in Brazil and abroad, including Paris, Athens, Milan and Barcelona. As such, he certainly is in the right position to present a well-documented overview of what Brazilian artists have been producing over the past 40 years. He does so in four chapters. In the first, which is devoted to artistic experiments with telecommunication networks, he analyzes networks of artists, collaboration and complementarity, technical opportunities and limitations and the role of exchange and participation. Chapter 2 presents a chronology of the pre-web years 1977-1994. Chapter 3 is about the Internet years and work on and with the Web. In the final chapter, multiuser virtual environments are discussed.

The book includes a CD-ROM with the full text, about 20 video clips and a large number of images related to the works described in the book.

Even though this book is in Portuguese, it will prove an invaluable source of information and reference for anyone who is interested in the history and practice of new media art. With some background knowledge of Spanish (or Latin), the gist of the text will be clear enough; or one may run it through some free on-line translator and simply browse the CD-ROM and enjoy.