Between Form and Force: Connecting Architectonic, Telematic and Thermal Spaces

The author surveys his work from the late 1970s in Brazil to the present in Germany, describing specific pieces and discussing key ideas and metaphors. He started working with public spaces in São Paulo, modifying the architectural environment in collaborative projects called “Urban Interventions.” These works led to experimentation with photocopiers and later to work with telecommunications—radio, telephones, television, answering machines, videotex, slow-scan TV and fax. Since the early 1980s he has created levitational sculptures (three-dimensional forms that are literally suspended in the air) and thermal sculptures with invisible volumes. His continuous exploration of thermal space has taken new forms through the use of Schlieren photography, an imaging technique that results in photographs that reveal invisible phenomena occurring in the atmosphere around warm bodies or objects, evoking the power of life and death forces.