Authors:

 Prado, Gilbertto.

Title:

 Artistic uses of Webcam: projects Viridis and Colunismo

Keywords:

 Webcam, Installation, Art, Internet, Telematics
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Abstract:

 Computer nets have been able to structure a new space and different forms for the participants to apprehend information with the evolution of communication systems and the new technological possibilities of computer science. Substantial transformations have occurred from these information new technologies, acting in the (re)definition of human experience and in the renewal of the construction of reality, as they introduce different ways to "read" well-known situations, new forms of conductions and of negotiation of meanings.
In this context of nets, the use of live image, when generated by the video cameras, raises in the participants other possibilities of communication and relationship with physically distant people and spaces. Several artists have also developed projects in the Web that utilize cameras in different ways, generating new forms of reading and of world apprehension. I intend to present a brief report on my two recent artistic projects that use Webcams:

1- The project Viridis - in development - consists of using a Webcam to capture images of the local sky and melt them with distant participants images input, creating a dialogical path in the net. Regarding the received images they will be melted with the local one due to the different parameters as latitude and longitude, schedules and local climate conditions, etc., and then they will be available on the net. Chained together they are arranged in possible oniric paths, which will be shared creating a great blue mosaic that can fit themselves between blue and green, between skies and seas, cyberskies of blue fusion.

2- "Depois do Turismo vem o Colunismo": The installation consisted of a portal with two Webcams connected to the Internet. When the visitors came across it, the sensors placed in the installation's physical area detected their presences and shot the webcams.
Once this local image was taken, it was mixed with a database of images and it became available on the net. Through the webcams, other participants physically distant could snoop the local space and the new generated images. With a humorous touch this web-installation which played with local and virtual spaces was about the "foreign look", cultural "cannibalism" and its interchanges.
Prado, Gilbertto. gtto@sol.com.br Instituto de Artes, UNICAMP http://wawrwt.iar.unicamp.br Gilbertto Prado was born in Santos, Brazil and he is a multimedia artist. He studied Engineering and Visual Arts in the Unicamp (Campinas University - São Paulo). In 1994 he obtained his doctoral degree in Arts in the University of Paris I - Sorbonne and currently he is Assistant Professor in the Multimedia Department of the Institute of Arts at Unicamp. He started his artistic activities in the end of the 70's, taking part of the Mail Art movement participating in several exhibitions and projects, among which are the XVI Bienal de São Paulo, (sector: Mail Art, 1981). He also conceived and organized exhibitions such as the Welcomet Mr. Halley , Paço das Artes, São Paulo (1985); A Terra e Seus Terraqueos em 88 , Clube de Criação de São Paulo. In the 80's he started to work in a much systematic way with the telematic communication artistic networks, participating in many projects like City Portraits/Art-Réseaux, Galerie Donguy, Paris (1990); Mutations de l'image , Vidéothèque de Paris (1994). He also conceived and took part of projects within the same scope as the Connect - Galerie Bernanos (1991); Chain Reaction (1991) and Moone (1992), Atelier des Réseaux - Machines à Communiquer, La Villette, Paris. Among his last participations with interactive and web installations: Arte e Tecnologia MAC - USP (1995), Mediações in the Centro Itaú Cultural (1997) and City Canibal - Paço das Artes, São Paulo (1998). Currently, he develops the project wAwRwT http://wawrwt.iar.unicamp.br about artistic projects and sites in the web.