In this essay, Carlos Fadon Vicente explores the concepts of “interactivity” and “telepresence” in the work of art, tracing back the etymology of the two terms to religious rites. In the author’s view, “telepresence” entails symbolic projection, a non-concrete presence that is present and represented in a determined place. At its sacred extreme, telepresence is a form of omnipresence. In the secular world, on the other hand, it is at the heart of a number of inventions and events that emerged in the nineteenth-century, inventions and events that entail the simulacra of remote persons and settings: photography, the world’s fair, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, and the television—which came to be a backdrop for world communications, replacing radio and printed media. Although implicit to any process of creation, production, perception, and interpretation of a work of art, “interactivity”—a sort of inner dialogue between the work and the reader/viewer—can only occur effectively through telematics. By means of telematics, that dialogue takes on external traits that can only be put into effect through specific interfaces that solicit concrete and/or virtual (or perhaps, simply reactive) actions within the inalterable person-work-machine triangle and the constituted natural environment. Fadon Vicente cites his own production and production by Eduardo Kac as examples of interactive works. 

A multimedia artist, theorist, and professor, Carlos Fadon Vicente began producing art in the seventies, soon becoming known as an outstanding photographer. Since 1985, his work has centered on technological production, beginning with experimental manipulation of digital images, telecommunications (slow-scan television and videotext), and other forms of multimedia expression. Both his artistic and his theoretical production have received international recognition, the former with exhibitions at museums and the latter with publications—for instance, he contributes regularly to the journal Leonardo, published by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of a significant body of interactive works, including the Conjunto Oito [Set Eight] published in the anthology in CD-ROM form, entitled Arte Cidade: a cidade e seus fluxos (São Paulo, 1994). That work develops a number of alternatives for nonlinear exploration of his visual production. He has organized a number of telematics events, among them Natureza Morta/ao Vivo [Live Still Life, 1988].