This text evidences contemporary artist Julio Plaza’s stance on the challenges of postmodernism, a topic widely debated throughout the eighties. In open opposition to any retrograde and/or historicist position, Plaza upholds inter-semiotic translation as insightful and playful. Both the idea of creative translation and the concept of “trans-criação” developed by concrete poet Haroldo de Campos are outgrowths of Plaza’s longstanding personal and creative ties to works produced starting in the fifties by the Grupo Noigandres (Décio Pignatari, and Haroldo and Augusto de Campos) and, more specifically, of his intense engagement and creative work with Augusto de Campos. Multimedia artist, professor, and theorist Julio Plaza (1938–2003) was an important figure in Brazilian conceptual and digital art; he is also known for his work in the graphic design of a number of concrete poems. Along with poet Augusto de Campos, he produced book/objects like Poemóbiles (1974) and the Caixa Preta (1975). He taught in the Departamento de Multiméios do Instituto de Artes da UNIcamp (in Campinas) and in the Departamento de Artes Plásticas of the Escola de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo (ECA/USP). He organized Arte pelo Telefone: Videotexto (São Paulo: Museu da Imagem e do Som, 1982), a groundbreaking exhibition in video text in Brazil. He directed the special room for new media at the 17th São Paulo Biennial in 1983, the moment when digital art was emerging in the country. Plaza wrote his doctoral thesis—later published in book form—on inter-semiotic translation by which literary texts are transplanted in visual and sound codes. Professor Walter Zanini—director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (USP) from 1963 to 1978—wrote two texts on Plaza’s work, the first on the show Poéticas Visuais [see in the ICAA digital archive “As novas possibilidades = The new possibilities” (doc. no 1110585), and the second, “Primeiros tempos da arte/tecnologia no Brasil” (doc. no. 1111029), pertinent to the text addressed here. For further reading, see also in the archive the following texts by Julio Plaza: “77: quase-apresentação” (doc. no. 1110719), “Arte e interatividade: autor-obra-recepção” (doc. no. 1111093), “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 = Mail-art: art in synchrony” (doc. no. 1110592), “Manifiesto pro integración” (doc. no. 1110751), “Nem oito, nem oitenta: oi, tô aí” (doc. no. 1111270), and “Poéticas visuais = Visual poems” (doc. no. 1110587)].
