This essay analyzes the main concepts and theoretical interfaces in the history of modern and contemporary art; it explains the connections between author, work, and recipient, and helps the reader to understand interactive art. According to the author, Julio Plaza, there are three stages in the production of art: (1) handmade works, which are considered first-generation images, (2) industrial works, or second-generation images, and (3) electro-electronic creations, which are third-generation images. The latter arise from “technological interactivity” (technical interfaces) in which the machine is considered a new and critical agent of aesthetic creation. This interactivity has created a new category in art. Artists who create technological art are more interested in the processes of artistic creation and aesthetic inquiries than in producing finished works of art. The concepts of “interaction,” “interactivity,” and “multi-sensory” intersect and provide feedback to the links that connect art and technology. The art of “telecommunications,” that is, “telepresence” and shared virtual worlds, including mutually assisted online creation (the heir of mail art), sheds light on the socio-cultural changes that come with technological progress. On the other hand, “interactivity” not only facilitates a functional type of technology; it also forces the viewer to adopt a transformative practice at a physical, psychological, and sensitive level.

The multimedia artist, professor, and theorist Julio Plaza (1938–2003) was a well-known figure in the fields of Brazilian conceptualism and electronic art and was widely recognized for his graphic versions of several concrete poems. He also worked with the poet Augusto de Campos to produce books and objects such as Poemóbiles[AB1]  (1974) and Caixa Preta [AB2] (1975). He was a professor at the Departamento de Multimeios do Instituto de Artes da Unicamp in Campinas, and the Departamento de Artes Plásticas at the ECA/USP (Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo). He organized the first videotext exhibition in Brazil: Arte pelo Telefone: Videotexto, held in São Paulo at the Museu da Imagem e do Somin 1982, and was responsible for the special multimedia exhibition hall at the 17th São Paulo biennial in 1983, a landmark event for electronic art in Brazil. Plaza wrote his doctoral thesis, subsequently published as a book, on an intersemiotic form of translation that converts literary texts into visual and audible codes.

[Professor Walter Zanini, then the director of the Museu de Ate Contemporânea, wrote two essays about Plaza’s work: one on the exhibition Poéticas Visuais, see the ICAA digital archive for “As novas possibilidades = The new possibilities” (doc. no 1110585); and the other on the text “Primeiros tempos da arte/tecnologia no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111029)].

[As complementary reading, see in the archive the following texts by Julio Plaza: “77: quase-apresentação” (doc. no. 1110719), “Arte e videotexto” (doc. no. 1111090), “Busca da dimensão mais firme para a realidade” (doc. no. 1110750), “Câmara obscura” (doc. no.  1110718), “Imagemega” (doc. no. 1111133), “Info foto: grafias” (doc. no. 1111091), “O livro como forma de arte (I)” (doc. no. 1111238), “O livro como forma de arte (II)” (doc. no. 1111239), “Mail-art: arte em sincronia” (doc. no. 1110592), “Manifiesto pro integración” (doc. no. 1110751), “Nem oito, nem oitenta: oi, tô aí” (doc. no. 1111270), “Poéticas visuais” (doc. no. 1110587), and “Transcriar” (doc. no. 1111237)].