The opening ceremony of the Invenção Symposium was held in the evening of the 25 August and was attended by Itaú Cultural managing director, Ricardo Ribenboim, and the organizing Committee, comprised of Arlindo Machado, Ph.D. in communications and president of the committee, Roy Ascott, artist, theoretician, and founder of CaiiA-Star, Roger Malina, astronomer and director of the Nasa-Euve Observatory, at the University of California, USA, and of the Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, CNRS, Marseille, France, and Carlos oldevilla, executive director of ISEA, Inter-Society of Electronic Arts, who came on behalf of Alain Mongeau.
According to Arlindo Machado, the moment everybody uses the computer for working and creating, it's time to stop and inquire if it is something distinctive or if it is indeed already part of our lives.
Carlos Soldevilla said that ISEA has been taking part in several technological events around the world and thought this would be a great opportunity to spread its participation to countries less involved.
Roy Ascott stated being delighted at the amount of activity going on in the country at the moment. What most attracted his attention was the syncretism, so many different cultures existing in Brazil, "Forget modernism. Look at syncretism."
Roger Malina asked the artists to create new forms of art.
During this week, the Invenção Symposium will be discussing these new forms of art and thinking about what's coming for the next millennium.

In Eduardo Kac's opinion there's no reason for keeping only one way of thinking art and technology. Traditional art doesn't have to be accepted. In his lecture, Kac drew a panorama of the artists who have done or are still doing art using technological research.
Since the airplane invention by Santos Dumont, the first radio transmission by Lando de Moura, through to the innovations of Flávio Carvalho, the first artist to use media as an art channel, up to present time.
In the 60s, Lygia Clark left an interactivity legacy particularly through her series "Os Bichos" (The Animals). Paulo Bruscky used creatively the photocopy machine and even the EEG (electroencephalogram).
It was only in the early 80s that a generation developing artworks through investigation actually sprang. Mario Ramiro worked with urban interventions and used heat in his pieces. In his infrared sculptures the surroundings, the heating zone, and the sensation it caused were even more important than the sculpture itself.
Otávio Donasci merged live and cybernetic beings creating his videocreatures. The electronic image connected to the person creates a hybrid being, capable of interacting with the public. According to Kac, the interactivity sensibility is fundamental to electronic art, a sensibility that other media can not provide.

texts and photos: Fabia Fuzeti
english version proofreading : Regina Stocklen