In this text, Arlindo Machado addresses the beginnings of video art in Brazil, placing emphasis on those artists that challenge a dated figurative approach by distorting the image of a supposed reality. He believes that the historical role of video art is to attack head on the ideology of mimeticism—which is no easy task in a country where there are no video synthesizers to deconstruct the image. That technology is available only in laboratories at universities in other countries where electronic research is performed or in experimental television stations with the support of systems analysis. In Brazil, artists, because equipped only with recorders and cameras, are restricted to individual work outside the mass media. Despite that imposed artisanal—or almost artisanal—approach, a number of Brazilian video artists, such as Otávio Donasci, Roberto Sandoval, and others, have produced remarkable works. The author comments on works by Fernando Meirelles and the Olhar Eletrônico group, as well as by Sônia Andrade, a pioneer video artist in Brazil. One Brazilian who did have access to more sophisticated technology was Artur Matuck. With the technical support of San Diego State University (SDSU) in California, he produced Ataris Vort no Planeta Megga. 

Arlindo Machado’s book A ilusão especular is based on his master’s thesis in Comunicação e Semiótica presented at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Published in 1984, the book had enormous impact on the visual art and photography communities. At the time of the publication, Machado had a column on photography, film, and the mass media in the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. Like Stefania Brill at Íris magazine, Machado would become an important communicator of thought on photography throughout Brazil. In 1985, the year after Machado’s book was published, Vilém Flusser’s Filosofia da Caixa Preta was released and reviewed by Machado and by Brill. Also in 1985, Machado and Julio Plaza co-curated the show Arte e tecnologia held at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo directed, at the time, by the dynamic Walter Zanini. Thanks to that exhibition, Machado became a leading theorist on art and technology in Brazil.

[For texts on art and technology by Professor Zanini, see the following in the ICAA digital archive: “Primeiros tempos da arte / tecnologia no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111029) and “Vídeo-arte: uma poética aberta” (doc. no. 1110892).

The many texts on art and technology by Arlindo Machado include “Hipermídia: o labirinto como metáfora” (doc. no. 1111111), “A experiência do vídeo no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111112), “O mito da alta definição” (doc. no. 1111113), and “As formas migrantes de Diana Domingues” (doc. no. 1111229)].