Last time we spoke with Brazilian artist Jarbas Jacome on the blog, we found out that as one of the best digital artists in Brazil “his many solo and collective projects explore the language of computers and their poetic potential (as opposed to artists who seek technology solutions for particular questions).” We had to find out more…Recently, Jacome participated in the Extraordinary Sculptures exhibition with his piece Vitalino, where he also exercised his musical abilities. We talked to him about his collaborations with artists like Pernambuco, Ricardo Brazileiro, and Jeraman, open-source software, and his new solo musical project Jabah Pureza e os Lanternistas Viajantes—whose lineup includes guitar, a projector, and a computer running his custom made software ViMus.Who are you and what do you do?
I'm a musician and a computer scientist doing art (in the good and bad sense of the word).You, Brazileiro, and Jeraman have developed pieces that consistently meditate on the issue of open-source and free internet. Could you talk about that a bit?
I publish all my work as free software, even the ones that have won awards. Anyone can download them on my blog. I also try to make maximum use of exclusively free software for two main reasons: first, it's the most appropriate kind for research and education, and also it's a way to meet people around the world who have many common interests and ideological affinities. Of the three people you've mentioned, Ricardo Brazileiro is the most proactive free software activist out there, this is something inherent in his artistic career.You often talk about “the myth of the programmer.” Can you explain what that means… when did the expression emerge, and what does it mean today?
What happened is that at the beginning of personal computing in the 80s, anyone with a computer had to learn a programming language in order to use it. With the advent of graphic user interfaces (GUIs), people no longer need to know coding to do simple day-to-day activities. Then programming became increasingly restricted to an elite of specialists. Today, some programmers are very powerful in our society. Programmers are the new rich, a class of dominance formed here during the 80s.Facebook developers determine how to lead our friendships today, such as what options of relationship you can have with another person—you can only choose between the options they give you in the software. Social networks are the handiest and most sophisticated mass manipulation method there is. I considered learning computer programming and I work with free software as a “resistance” against this apparent schizophrenia we live in today.Marilena Chaui is one of the thinkers who suggested that the contradiction of space-time provided by digital technology would result in a relative schizophrenia. For example, I'm talking daily through a videoconference software with my relatives in Brazil, and I'm here in Taiwan—but it's almost like we’re in the same room. However, as I know how the TCP/IP protocol works, I'm aware of the technique that is used to make my image and voice to travel from Taiwan to reach Brazil so quickly. The distance remains and the time too, because we feel these quantities in our skin when we're studying computer networks.You’ve developed programs that work with “makeshift” interfaces, like cardboard boxes. Is there is a resistance to use common marketable products, such as Microsoft's Kinect?
I use whatever is within my reach so I can get the object materialized. In such a quest we often find amazing solutions, like the second version we made of Vitalino, which was built by Virgílio Mota, a cardboard master in Brasilia. But inevitably, we end up using a marketable product, one way or another. I think the most important thing is the new meaning you give to product found in the market.I made Vitalino in February 2010, ten months before the Kinect was released. Even now I wouldn't use the product, simply because in order to do what I do with Vitalino, I would need two Kinects, quadrupling the cost of the installation. Still, I use webcams, which are products easily found in the market too. I think that we have to try and use whatever is at our disposal. And it's nice to precisely subvert the specific purpose that has been given to that product. [For his master’s degree] Jeraman [developed] an installation using the Kinect in which the visitors became conductors and could control the Frevo orchestra through body gestures. He wasn’t using Kinect because it's the latest trend, but because he saw that with this tool you can make this work. However, there is a flip-side: if you wanted to get a z-cam before (the camera that can capture 3D movements as Kinect does), it would cost you more than $12,000, but now we can buy it with $150.Could you talk about your work with music?
I’m getting back to work more with music now, and I'm really happy with it. I had a band in Recife called Negroove and we traveled around Brazil playing gigs. But since 2008 I started spending more time working on ViMus and on the installations. Finally last week I made my debut here in Taipei as a solo guitarist with Jabah Pureza e os Lanternistas Viajantes.My work with software and music is just beginning, but I intend to follow the idea of [synching] elements of Brazilian, American, African, and European popular music with visuals using computer graphics. In short: mixing Jackson do Pandeiro with Oskar Fischinger, or James Brown with John Whitney. One possibility, for example, is to make the sounds of the guitar automatically control the progress of a video. I’m interested in a musician’s gestures depicted in a digital language, even though I'm using a machine and mathematics as a language.My friends at Laboratório de Computação e Arte (LaboCA) are also musicians. Ricardo Brazileiro has several works and sound installations and we’ve done several presentations together using Pure Data/GEM. Brazileiro also takes interest in using elements of "popular" music, like the samba-chip experiment he made in a workshop in Cachoeira, Bahia. Jeraman also studies popular music in his new work—he's researching the gestures of one of the most important Frevo conductors in history: our dear Maestro Formiga or Ademir Araujo. Because of Jeraman's work, he was asked to give a lecture at the Computer Center in UFPE. That kind of thing really moves me: a Frevo maestro giving a lecture at a Computer Center.Could you discuss your participation in the Extraordinary Sculptures exhibition in Taiwan?
Living here in Taipei has been one of the richest experiences of my life. It's amazing to realize how different and how much alike we are. I’m so happy to share the room where Vitalino is installed with a beautiful sound sculpture from Taiwanese artist Lee Po-Ting (李柏廷). I enjoyed all the works in the exhibition. That's the advantage of doing a small exhibition, there were only seven installations. Almost all of them used sculpture as a language reference and computing or electronics as a medium.On the opening day, we did all the audiovisual presentations in the main building of the Nanhai Gallery. The sequence of presentations ended up developing a very peculiar narrative. It started with my analog presentation using an electric guitar, but already having a hint of digital language through ViMus, used to manipulate both the sound and image of a James Brown video.Right after me, Mattias Kassmannhuber took the stage and he also uses some of the language found in funk and soul, but this time in a totally digital context: he builds his beats using Nintendo DS. Then Hiroshi Matoba from Japan came in, who made the presentation more radical in terms of emotion through mathematics, using visual language to represent the music. Finally, Sadam Fujioka came in, which moved me because he brought poetry to the stage. He used an actual poem to do a presentation of visual music, drawing on the possibility of metalinguistic programming languages. Both Hiroshi and Sadam used their own programming languages on stage.I headed a workshop in a major center for digital arts in Taiwan, the DAC, and through this workshop I created contacts with University professors from Taiwan and we're already talking about partnerships with some national universities in Taiwan with Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB), where I’ve been teaching since the beginning of the year.
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I'm a musician and a computer scientist doing art (in the good and bad sense of the word).You, Brazileiro, and Jeraman have developed pieces that consistently meditate on the issue of open-source and free internet. Could you talk about that a bit?
I publish all my work as free software, even the ones that have won awards. Anyone can download them on my blog. I also try to make maximum use of exclusively free software for two main reasons: first, it's the most appropriate kind for research and education, and also it's a way to meet people around the world who have many common interests and ideological affinities. Of the three people you've mentioned, Ricardo Brazileiro is the most proactive free software activist out there, this is something inherent in his artistic career.You often talk about “the myth of the programmer.” Can you explain what that means… when did the expression emerge, and what does it mean today?
What happened is that at the beginning of personal computing in the 80s, anyone with a computer had to learn a programming language in order to use it. With the advent of graphic user interfaces (GUIs), people no longer need to know coding to do simple day-to-day activities. Then programming became increasingly restricted to an elite of specialists. Today, some programmers are very powerful in our society. Programmers are the new rich, a class of dominance formed here during the 80s.
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I use whatever is within my reach so I can get the object materialized. In such a quest we often find amazing solutions, like the second version we made of Vitalino, which was built by Virgílio Mota, a cardboard master in Brasilia. But inevitably, we end up using a marketable product, one way or another. I think the most important thing is the new meaning you give to product found in the market.
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I’m getting back to work more with music now, and I'm really happy with it. I had a band in Recife called Negroove and we traveled around Brazil playing gigs. But since 2008 I started spending more time working on ViMus and on the installations. Finally last week I made my debut here in Taipei as a solo guitarist with Jabah Pureza e os Lanternistas Viajantes.My work with software and music is just beginning, but I intend to follow the idea of [synching] elements of Brazilian, American, African, and European popular music with visuals using computer graphics. In short: mixing Jackson do Pandeiro with Oskar Fischinger, or James Brown with John Whitney. One possibility, for example, is to make the sounds of the guitar automatically control the progress of a video. I’m interested in a musician’s gestures depicted in a digital language, even though I'm using a machine and mathematics as a language.
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Living here in Taipei has been one of the richest experiences of my life. It's amazing to realize how different and how much alike we are. I’m so happy to share the room where Vitalino is installed with a beautiful sound sculpture from Taiwanese artist Lee Po-Ting (李柏廷). I enjoyed all the works in the exhibition. That's the advantage of doing a small exhibition, there were only seven installations. Almost all of them used sculpture as a language reference and computing or electronics as a medium.On the opening day, we did all the audiovisual presentations in the main building of the Nanhai Gallery. The sequence of presentations ended up developing a very peculiar narrative. It started with my analog presentation using an electric guitar, but already having a hint of digital language through ViMus, used to manipulate both the sound and image of a James Brown video.Right after me, Mattias Kassmannhuber took the stage and he also uses some of the language found in funk and soul, but this time in a totally digital context: he builds his beats using Nintendo DS. Then Hiroshi Matoba from Japan came in, who made the presentation more radical in terms of emotion through mathematics, using visual language to represent the music. Finally, Sadam Fujioka came in, which moved me because he brought poetry to the stage. He used an actual poem to do a presentation of visual music, drawing on the possibility of metalinguistic programming languages. Both Hiroshi and Sadam used their own programming languages on stage.I headed a workshop in a major center for digital arts in Taiwan, the DAC, and through this workshop I created contacts with University professors from Taiwan and we're already talking about partnerships with some national universities in Taiwan with Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB), where I’ve been teaching since the beginning of the year.