Carlos Fadon Vicente (b. 1945) is a multimedia artist, theoretician, and professor. Starting in 1985, he began to focus on technological art. The experiments he worked on included manipulation of digital images, telecommunications (slow-scan TV, videotext), and various works using multimedia techniques. He has produced a solid body of work that has been well received on the international level, including art shown at exhibitions and included in publications on art theory. Contributing to a range of multimedia events, Fadon has been an eager contributor to the journal Leonardo published by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, [MA], USA). Fadon executed a significant set of interactive works called Conjunto Oito (published in an anthology in CD-ROM, Arte/Cidade ? A cidade e seus fluxos, São Paulo, 1994). In these works, which are central to his oeuvre, the artist creates the experience with various alternative types of nonlinear navigation. Moreover, he created several telematics events, including, Natureza Morta/ao Vivo, from 1988.
Another Brazilian artist focused on these themes who also has an international reputation is Gilbertto Prado, whose investigation of this subject was published as a book: Arte telemática (2003). There is also a series of articles by Prado that address the theme of decentralization and the viability of the new modes of exchanging information, such as “Utilizações artísticas de imagens em direto na world wide web” [doc. no. 1111125], “Os sites de arte na rede internet” [doc. no. 1111124], a summary of the same issue under the title of “Cronologia de experiências artísticas nas redes de telecomunicações” [doc. no. 1111289], and “Experimentações artísticas em redes telemáticas e web” [doc. no. 1111290].
To find support in Brazil for Fadon’s interpretation, see “Espressão, arte e tecnologia” [doc. no. 1110492]. This text by Francisco Bittencourt reflects the period of intense artistic experimentation that went on in Brazil in the 1970s, via technological media that generated audiovisual images. That was also the decade when Walter Zanini was director of the Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC-USP). As director, he organized exhibitions on this theme with Julio Plaza: one called, Poéticas Visuais, “As novas possibilidades = The new possibilities” [doc. no. 1110585], and another under the title of Perspectiva ’74, “Introdução” [doc. no. 1110588]. In addition, Zanini wrote a paradigmatic text on the issue, “Primeiros tempos da arte/tecnologia no Brasil” [doc. no. 1111029]. The well-known physicist and politician Mário Schenberg had written an earlier essay on this theme in Brazil, “Arte e tecnologia” [doc. no. 1111105]. Another important Brazilian art critic who had a lively interest in the conjunction between art and technology was Frederico Morais, who wrote an article on “Abraham Palatnik: um pioneiro da arte tecnológica” [doc. no. 1110793], in which he gave a specific account of the ground-breaking nature of his kinechromatic work. In 1986, the critic who showed the importance of Abraham Palatnik as a predecessor was Eduardo Kac in “Em Brasil High Tech, o xeque ao pós-moderno” [doc. no. 1111320]. And of course, an artist not to be overlooked is the great pioneer of electronic and concrete art, painter Waldemar Cordeiro. Starting in the late 1960s, Cordeiro came up with a term for art that was electronic by nature in “Arteônica” [doc. no. 1110836], and “Computer plotter art - primeira mostra na América Latina” [doc. no. 1110487].