In this 1983 essay, published in a book in 2006, Arlindo Machado describes videotext. Videotext preceded the Internet and, for the first time, “connectivity” and “interactivity” were available on public networks. The first videotext system operated experimentally in São Paulo in 1982, offered by the French network Télétel. Due to its technical nature and economic viability, it was a low definition system broadcast with a limited number of pattern-signs whose reticles allowed for just a few “alpha-mosaic” articulations. The author regrets the system’s lack of credibility. The new “alpha-geometric” and “alpha-photographic” options were an attempt to overcome its low definition. The seemingly obsolete “alpha-mosaic” aspects of videotext are associated with five centuries of the dictatorship of Renaissance figurative images and the cult of copying reality.

Arlindo Machado’s book, A ilusão especular[AB1] , was the thesis he wrote for the master’s degree in Communication and Semiotics he earned at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Published in 1984, it was hugely influential in photography and visual art circles. At the time, the author contributed a column to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, where he wrote about photography, film, and mass communication, becoming one of the leading theorists on photography in Brazil, along with Stefania Brill who wrote for the magazine Íris. The following year Vilém Flusser published Filosofia da Caixa Preta[AB2] [AB3] , which was reviewed by Machado and Brill. Also in 1985, Machado and Julio Plaza co-curated the exhibition “Arte e tecnologia” at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo under the auspices of the dynamic Walter Zanini, the museum’s director. The event made Machado one of the most respected theorists on the subject in Brazil.

[As complementary reading see the ICAA digital archive for the following texts on the subject: “Arte e interatividade: autor-obra-recepção,” by Julio Plaza (doc. no. 1111093); and by Walter Zanini, “Primeiros tempos da arte / tecnologia no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111029), and “Vídeo-arte: uma poética aberta” (doc. no. 1110892). Arlindo Machado also wrote extensively on this subject in texts such as “Hipermídia: o labirinto como metáfora” (doc. no. 1111111), “A experiência do vídeo no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111112), “As formas migrantes de Diana Domingues” (doc. no. 1111229), and “Perspectivas do vídeo no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111114)].