Glerm Soares made a score with famous lirics of Croatian 20th century poet Tin Ujević: “We know, o we know that alcohol is bad, but give us Rakija because there is no relif in water” (Znamo, o znamo, Znamo da alkohol Å¡kodi, No rakije, rakije, rakije amo, Jer utjehe nema u vodi).
First day a preparation for Upgrade!Salvador was held at theater Gregorio de Matos.
‘Upgrade! is an international, emerging network of autonomous nodes united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Its decentralized, non-hierarchical structure ensures that Upgrade! (i) operates according to local interests and their available resources; and (ii) reflects current creative engagement with cutting edge technologies. While individual nodes present new media projects, engage in informal critique, and foster dialogue and collaboration between individual artists, Upgrade! International functions as an online, global network that gathers annually in different cities to meet one another, showcase local art, and work on the agenda for the following year.’
From midiatatica.org/upgrade
Disscusions on further tactics and strategic planing are held in the middle of exhibition showing jewellery of recycled plastic bottles.
IP is an autonomous space in the center of Rio with about 20 people working there from different areas: free radio, free software, indymedia, women´s rights, artists, organic food, popular carnival culture, clown army etc.
On Saturday 24.03. there was GentleJunk co. (Tanja) was VJing together with Bruno Tarin. Tanja said: “Earlier this day Bruno showed me a software PD so I decided to swich completly to this and with help of patches from estudiolivre.org build my own software for vjing.”
An video interview was made with IP member Anna Sobczak who also organised ‘Sharing Market’ (Feira de troca) in front of IP based on idea of exchange of goods and not money.
Later the same day, atCinemateca do Museum of Modern Art a program Americana latina em transe was orginized by Coletivo FELCO and CMI Rio. Americana latina em transe is a series of short and full lenght documentary movies about Latin America. Exceptional documetary was “La hora de los hornos: neocolonialismo y violencia” shoot in 1968. that is possible reference to simmilar modern movies with simmilar thematics.
On 21th of March a disscussion, as a part of Chappa, was organized at UFRJ with the focus on online radios and podcasting
Chappa is devided in themes that disscus: music production in Rio, online radios and podcast, artists, new music and its independent market. Giuliano Bonardi was speeking about free rradio concept and principles of sharing.
Free radio network FRSM from Croatia was introduced and the network model disscused. ‘Podcasting association of Brazil’ members were disscussing possiblities of charging podcasters and podcasting alike, and observations about necessity for new laws about charging independent web sites with music downloads suggested. Overall feeling is that marketing and financial structures were domminating the conversation.
today is “march” 24th.
The existence of two words with same sonority but different spelling in brazilian-portuguese: concerto-conserto, became the metaphor for the discussion of this two meanings putted in the same layer. In portuguese “Concerto” means musical ritual and “Conserto” means “to fix” something.
Something is beeing lost since industrial “revolution” tossed us into a dimension where “technology” is generelly understood just as “devices” for “progress”.
Mankind has developed amazing skills in search for new languages. Computer Languages are something like Musical or Poetic languages. “Open Source” is a metaphor of a better approach for exchange cultural specificities that makes each individual a unique part of our universe.
rakija!
(File International Electronic Festival) is electronic art festival sponsored by companies such as OI, one of the bigest IT companies in Brasil. FILE has been concerned with artist that use electronic art as media. Among others there were lectures and presentations by Ted Nelson
(inventor of Xanadu) who was questioning systems of browsing developed by PC and MAC industrie (folders and hyperlinking)
and Machiko Kusahara who presented ‘Device Art’, re-examining art-science-technology relationships.
She raised questions about technology and art used by some artist in Japan.
Of course, exhibition run in this way always has technical problems
Even if some of the artists and presenters mention free licencing and open source used in some works, it is more as a follow up to trend than an idea of collaborative and open work. General feeling was that technollogy in art means playfulnes and interaction for purpose of itself, fun and leizure, where artist have a role of (tech) specialists that will humore consumers and market their goods.
Radio Janela is project that works as radio transmission(s) decentralized from it’s source. It is mixture of multiple radio transmissions and street sound systems. Information (sound) comes from internet radio and is transmitted with small transmitters locally, using sound systems so it can be publicly accessed.
Radio Janela is Djadjah (Giuliano Bonardini) idea that he has been practicing with other people in Brazil.
Radio Interferencia (Radio Interferance) is another free web and FM radio project located in UFRJ (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro). Radio is powered by 50 watts transmitter and is accesible in some parts of the Rio.
On Wednesday 21th of March a program was aired on Radio Interferencia focusing on Free Open Culture exchange between Croatia and Brasil. Also, bands like Negativeland and concepts of plunderphonics were disscused.
Using command cat /dev/hda > /dev/dsp we made Djahjah harddisk sing. We put it through some effects on his mixer and got out an interesting sound.
George W. Bush visit to Sao Paulo on 2007 Latin America tour was accepted with massive popular protest. Have a look at short video from current.tv. The picture above has been taken from the bus in Rio da Jeneiro.
We have arrived in Curitiba (about), town of 3 million people 6 hours by buss, south of Sao Pulo (map).
A festival ‘ConSerto’ is organizede by group ‘Organismo’ that works here for three years. Interesting is that ‘ConSerto’ is made in government run place, but tends to be completely independent. Event is happening at part of SEAE (Secretary of Developement) in charge of technological developement.
This is the invisible action, as participants are calling it, that focuses on acknowledgement of diferent individuals and groups working in different parts of Brazil. ‘Our group is here to acknowledge that Free Open Source and Free Open Culture is a way for people to 
get conected and to percive their common language. We are not only a technological novelty’ says one of the ‘Organismo’ group member and one of the ‘ConSerto’ organizers, Glerm Soares. ‘conSerto’ is a place where designers, programers, free media activists, musicians and artist meet to disscus future of Free Culture in Brazil.
Octavio Camargo helped us to understand how ‘ConSeto’ works: ‘Free and Open Culture is about coming somewhere and learning what is happening there before taking action. It is not imposing one owns culture but sharing experiance and working together.’
He gave us a gret example with a cigarete box. In Brasil cigarete boxes have hideus pictures depicting consequences of smoking. But he states that this pictures are imposed culture of western science. ‘To tell us that smoking is bad and sell us cigaretes is funny. But not to realize the ritual in smoking is thing only western science can do.’
Octavio is musician and artist. He is a member of errantbodies.org/ where you can find more of his works and collaborations.
Vanessa Santos from Belo Horizonte is working with FOSS programe for video editing called Cinerella, and has produced a video of ‘conSerto’.
Some photos of ConSerto:
and Curitiba:
