REPENSANDO EL ARTE EN LA ERA DIGITAL

Por Arlindo Machado

Dentro de los artistas latino americanos que participan del debate internacional sobre los rumbos que el arte viene tomando en los ultimos años, como resultado de la asimilacion cada vez mayor, de los procesos cientificos y tecnologicos, Gonzalo Mezza ha ocupado sin duda, un lugar privilegiado. Utilizando desde el inicio de la decada de los 70 recursos tecnologicos cada vez mas sofisticados (film, video, neon, proyecciones lazer, computador, redes computacionales, etc.) para la elaboracion de sus trabajos creativos, Mezza acabo por construir una perspectiva muy particular del enfoque de la mediacion tecnica.

Ciertamente, la obra de este importante artista ha probado correr paralelamente con el curso tomado por las poeticas tecnologicas internacionales, pero al mismo tiempo se aparta de ellas en algunos aspectos significativos, una vez que se deja tambien contagiar por la intensa realidad de esta parte del mundo bastante peculiar que habitamos. Es muy dificil hablar de geografia cuando se se refiere a obras desmaterializadas que transitan bajo la forma de energia y pueden estar disponibles simultaneamente en cualquier parte del planeta, via Internet, obras que inclusive no tienen forma definitiva, pudiendo ser modificadas por los canales de difusion o por todos aquellos que tienen acceso a ellos. De hecho, es casi imposible identificar la gran mayoria de los trabajos que hoy transitan por la Internet en terminos de localizacion geografica o identidad local, pues todo tien de a colectivizarse y a globalizarse inmediatamente despues de ponerse a disposicion en la red mundial. Hasta la lengua tiende a tornarse homogenea. Sin embargo, alguna cosa en la obra de Mezza resiste a toda posibilidad de uniformizacion.

Siempre permanece en ella el trazo de una visualidad particular, que historicamente aprendemos a identificar como siendo "del sur", como los iconos y formas estilizadas de civilizaciones andinas, o de Oceania, Africa y Rapa Nui. Esos iconos comparecen en las instalaciones de Mezza de una forma que la Teoría Gestalt no dudaria en llamar de pregnant : ellos definen una intencion visual o un campo de fuerzas, cuyas lineas generales se mantienen intactas aun cuando la obra es sometida a las desarticuladoras intervenciones. Con la generalizacion del computador y de la Internet, se ha convertido en un lugar comun decir que ahora, toda obra es siempre el resultado de una interaccion gigantesca e imprevisible que se genera bajo la forma de un proceso colectivo de creacion. En otras palabras, una obra de arte hoy no puede mas ser tomada como la expresion de una subjetividad individual, pero como un proceso cosmico total, comandado por una especie de hipersujeto (termino introducido por Mario Costa). La red Internet seria entonces concebida como un organismo "vivo", en el cual alguna especie de consciencia incontrolable, universal y colectiva estaria siendo engendrada. Ese organismo "pensaria" y se "organizaria" a traves de las innumerables interferencias realizadas, por personas de todo el mundo, en su cuerpo virtual. Pero, ¿estariamos de hecho observando una completa disolucion del sujeto y de su espacio/tiempo, a la superacion del "artista" por la creacion anonima y colectiva, la extincion de lo local y circunstancial en nombre de lo general y global?

La obra de Mezza parece permitirnos encarar estos temas bajo una perspectiva ligeramente diferente. Tal vez seria mas acuicioso decir que nuevas y mas complejas formas de identidad y de subjetividad estan naciendo ahora y que van mas alla de los dualismos simplistas Yo/Otro, Individuo/Comunidad, Interior/Exterior, Aqui/Alla. Finalmente, ¿ como podemos pensar en interfaces, si es que no consideramos realidades diferenciadas para ser colocadas cara a cara para dialogar? En cierto sentido la Red (Internet) es un organismo colectivo y universal, pero al mismo tiempo es en ella que las personas estan hoy disenando sus identidades, construyendo su historia, mapeando y filtrando campos de interes, de deseo y de accion. Una de las imagenes puestas a disposicion por Mezza en su Museo Virtual muestra una Venus de Milo como si fuese una masa de hielo, flotando entre los icebergs de los mares congelados de la Antartica. Este tipo de collage, posibilitado por el tratamiento digital de la imagen, funciona casi como una metafora de los procesos de hibridacion que actualmente estan ocurriendo en el cyberespacio. Llamamos hibridacion a todo proceso de contaminacion de las fronteras y de los lenguajes, asi como la apropiacion y reciclaje de los materiales que ya circulan en las redes computacionales. Las imagenes se componen ahora a partir de las fuentes mas diversas, basadas generalmente en otras imagenes preexistentes y, en ese sentido, ellas son entidades hibridas, constituidas por figuras en permanente migracion. En la era de los satelites, ya no estamos mas aislados del mundo y no podemos continuar pensando en las identidades como ghettos incontaminables, pero como un proceso de dialogo en que yo y el otro nos transformamos mutuamente a cada contacto. Las identidades ahora son menos fijas, menos precisas (¿esta linea es mia o de alguien que interfirio en mi trabajo o ya estaba anteriormente en la imagen que me apropie?), pero tal vez por eso mismo mas intensas, pues solo cuando me confronto con la diversidad es que cuando me doy mejor cuenta de mi singularidad. El mito griego de la Diosa del Amor al vertice del Cono Sur nos invita a pensar sobre quienes somos y como podemos todavia definirnos como "nosotros" cuando el movimiento en direccion a la diferenciacion es cada vez mayor.

La obra mas reciente de Mezza (por ejemplo, el proyecto M@R.CO.SUR, que viene desenvolviendose desde 1995, y que fue presentada en la XXlll Bienal de São Paulo) busca hoy apuntar soluciones innovadoras para la reconsideracion del arte en nuestras sociedades fuertemente centralizadas por la tecnologia. La idea en la cual este proyecto parece basarse es que en un nuevo escenario de la evolucion del ser humano, no destruye a las anteriores, pero si se sobrepone a ellas, produciendo resultados no necesariamente predatorios, pero de mayor complejidad. En lugar de simplemente sentenciar la muerte de la pintura, del museo, de la galeria de arte, del lugar especifico para la realizacion del arte, Mezza nos coloca cuestiones mas inteligentes y tambien mas afinadas con una nueva consciencia ecologica. ¿Como hacer para que el museo, fisicamente instalado en un lugar (en una ciudad, en un pais, en un continente), pueda dialogar con Internet? ¿Como interligar los eventos inmateriales, no localizables y globalizados de Internet, con la instalacion y la presentacion localizadas en un espacio determinado, para donde las personas deben fisicamente concurrir? ¿Como la creacion individual, materializada en una pintura por un artista singular, puede encontrar un nuevo ambiente de disfrute y una nueva modalidad de "espectador", basados no mas en la reverencia pasiva, pero mas bien predispuesta a someterse a procesos de asimilacion transformacional? El proyecto actual de Mezza busca la realizacion de obras, eventos, instalaciones o campos de sucesos, simultaneamente en espacios fisicos y electronicos sin distincion de principio entre un area reservada para el arte (el "cubo blanco" de la galeria de arte)y un ambiente supuestamente no artistico (Internet). Asi, imagenes ("artisticas" o no) a disposicion en la Red pueden accederse en un evento publico con lugar y tiempo definidos para componer un espectaculo singular, local e irrepetible.

Inversamente, personas de cualquier parte del mundo, navegando por Internet pueden interferir sobre eventos que suceden fuera de la Red, en un espacio publico (un museo, una bienal), y eventualmente tener de vuelta el resultado de su intervencion. Hablamos muchas veces de "obras" por un vicio de lenguaje, pero es evidente que este termino no puede, en el contexto de la obra de Mezza, ser entendido en el sentido tradicional, como alguna cosa que se completo, que esta acabada y puede ser colocada en circulacion con la rubrica de un autor. Las "obras" son ahora procesos abiertos, en continuo progreso, que van acumulando resultados, los cuales a su vez alimentan nuevos ciclos. Otros artistas pueden interferir en la obra originalmente ofrecida como respuesta al primer gesto del artista de comenzar a partir de obras anteriormente existentes. Ademas de eso, el publico presente tanto en el espacio fisico de la instalacion asi como en el espacio virtual de Internet, puede tambien intervenir en el proceso. Cada vez que un trabajo de Mezza es "reinstalado", este ya es algo diferente e incorpora resultados de los ultimos montajes. Pero talvez esa sea una condicion de toda obra de arte de cualquier tiempo, pues en rigor, una obra jamas "termina", ella es interrumpida por contingencias externas al trabajo.

Jorge Luis Borges ya decia, en su tiempo, que el concepto de obra acabada es significativo solamente en el contexto de religion o con respecto al cansancio. Los eventos actuales que ocurren en el cyberespacio apenas proveen la evidencia estructural para aquello que esta en la raiz de todo proceso creativo. Si pudiesemos resumir todo en un paragrafo, podriamos decir que el trabajo mas reciente de Mezza posibilita comprender mejor el complejo proceso de interaccion de todas las inteligencias y sensibilidades que hacen posible la ocurrencia de la experiencia estetica contemporanea. El artista hoy es una especie de conductor de una orquesta invisible formada por un numero variable de agentes creativos. Eso implica, por supuesto, una desmistificacion de ciertos valores convencionales o hasta mismo arrogantes, inspirados en la idea de "obra" como producto acabado concebido por un genio creativo individual, que ocuparia una posicion superior en la jerarquia de las habilidades del hacer artistico.

Cuando Mezza disponibiliza sus computadores y trabajos para cualquier visitante de sus instalaciones o cualquier navegante de Internet, cuando abre las posibilidades de que otros artistas y usuarios ocupen parte del espacio de sus trabajos, el esta en verdad inscribiendo su trabajo en un proceso de dialogo, en que ninguna de las partes produce una determinacion final. Eso no quiere decir necesariamente que el arte fue colocado en las manos de todos, que cualquiera puede hacer arte, como algunas veces se oye y se lee en discursos dudosos sobre una supuesta democratizacion del arte. Si de hecho, muchos de los resultados obtenidos en las instalaciones de Mezza son el resultado de una compleja interaccion y jamas podrian haber sido premeditados y planeados por el artista, por otro lado tambien jamas podrian emerger a partir de una utilizacion apenas convencional de los dispositivos tecnicos, dentro de sus padrones "normales" de funcionamiento. Si los resultados tienen cualidades que podemos considerar en un sentido nuevo, esteticas, es porque el "conductor" supo extraer lo maximo de la conjugacion de factores. Ahora saber si la "obra" obtenida a traves de ese proceso es creacion del artista que la concibio o de los visitantes que interfirieron en ella, constituye una pregunta irresolvible y por eso mismo obsoleta.

Se esta convirtiendo cada vez menos relevante ver los productos y procesos esteticos contemporaneos como individualmente motivados, como manifestaciones de estilo de un genio singular, de que, como un trabajo de interaccion, socialmente motivado, en que el resultado no puede consistir en otra cosa mas que en un juego de tensiones entre los mas variados agentes y factores, una economia simbolica de naturaleza dialogica. El artista tal vez sea en este proceso una fuerza catalizadora, que hace que las cosas sucedan en una direccion no predecible (esto es, no programada, libre de finalidades industriales) y sobretodo en una perspectiva de ampliacion, de incremento de la tasa de complejidad de la cultura.

Arlindo Machado.

Sao Paulo. 1998Texto catalogo,
para exposicion de Gonzalo Mezza en el Museo MARGS ,
de Porto Alegre . 1998

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Texto en Español : Gonzalo Mezza (1997)


Mi Trabajo en el cyber espacio, espacio publico y espacio museologico, desde 1970.

Representa la mutacion y el transito que la humanidad esta experimentando con la proximidad del nuevo milenio.
Las artes visuales no estan ajenas a este paso de lo material a lo virtual.

El nuevo orden geopolitico y multicultural entre continentes,afectados por la democratizacion de los gigantescos avances de los nuevos medios de comunicacion, cada vez mas inteligentes, altera la naturaleza del pensamiento, la percepcion del tiempo y del espacio, de los aparatos reproductivos de las clasicas bellas artes.

Hoy en dia, la vanguardia esta en todas partes, libre del poder hegemonico de los Estados.

El cyber espacio es el marco de un nuevo soporte para la energia creadora del pensamiento contemporaneo, la Internet con sus infinitas conexiones en redes potencia nuevos vinculos colectivos, pudiendo conectar a cada ser humano con sus semejantes, sin limites de fronteras y , o centros de poder.

Verdaderos Oceanos de neuronas digitales y de conocimiento.Abiertos al desafio del nuevo siglo ,que como metaforas de vida, solidaridad y relacionamiento.dificilmente la humanidad sobreviviria sin esto al nuevo milenio.

Desenmascarando el ego de las ideologias elitistas de la estetica occidental,el arte no debe ser pensado en contraposicion a la nueva industria cultural.

La informatica y la tecnologia son poderosos instrumentos creados por el hombre inteligente para desmitificar teorias supuestamente universales de lo bello, mostrando que, en realidad, tales teorias no pasan de visiones de clase , sobre codigos socialmente compartidos de comunicacion y de mercado.

El nuevo paradigma, la cybercultura de redes, es una mutacion antropologica nunca antes vista.

Cada neurona, es un link .para crear un mundo mas justo que navega entre las infinitas galaxias desde la epoca del Bigbang.Cada chip es un jaque , al sistema antropofagico de las artes contemporaneas.

MCMXCVIl / S.XX

Gonzalo Mezza , 1997 Porto Alegre.Brazil

 

 

 

Texto em Português : Gonzalo Mezza (1997)

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Minha obra no Cyberespaço, Espaço público y Museológico desde 1970

representa a mutação e o trânsito que a humanidade está experimentando com a proximidade do novo milênio.   As artes visuais não estão alheias a esta passagem do material ao

virtual. A nova ordem geo-política e multicultural entre continentes, afetados pela democratização dos gigantescos avanços dos novos meios de comunicação, cada vez mais inteligentes, alteram a natureza do pensamento e percepção do tempo e espaço dos aparatos reprodutivos das clássicas belas artes.

Hoje, a vanguarda  está em todas as partes, livre do poder hegemônico dos Estados. O cyberespaço é o marco de um novo suporte para a energia criadora do pensamento contemporâneo.   A internet potencializa com suas infinitas conexões em rede, novos vínculos coletivos, conectando cada ser humano com seus semelhantes, sem limites de fronteiras e centros de poder. Verdadeiros Oceanos de neurônios digitais do conhecimento abertos ao desafio do novo século como metáfora de vida, solidariedade e relacionamento, sendo que dificilmente a humanidade sobreviveria sem ele ao novo milênio.   Desmascarando o ego das ideologias elitistas da estética ocidental, a arte não deve ser pensada em oposição à nova industria cultural. A informática e a tecnologia são poderosos instrumentos criados pelo homem inteligente para desmistificar teorias supostamente universais do belo, mostrando que, na realidade, tais teorias não passam de visões de classe sobre códigos socialmente compartilhados de comunicação e de mercado.   O novo paradigma, a cybercultura de redes, é uma mutação antropológica nunca vista. Cada neurônio é um link para criar um mundo mais justo que navega entre as galaxias infinitas desde o tempo do Bigbang.  

Cada chips é um cheque ao sistema antropofágico das artes contemporâneas.

© Gonzalo Mezza . MCMXCVIl / S.XX . Porto Alegre, Brasil

QUE NO DESCONCIERTE ESTE TÍTULO PARA UNA RETROSPECTIVA SOBRE LA OBRA REALIZADA POR GONZALO MEZZA CON MEDIOS DIGITALES, MUESTRA QUE ABARCA LO PRODUCIDO ENTRE 1983 Y 2003. UNA DE LAS PLATAFORMAS SIGNIFICATIVAS DE ESTE ARTISTA DE LAS NUEVAS TECNOLOGÍAS DE LA INFORMACIÓN, ES SU OPCIÓN POR LA ARTICULACIÓN ENTRE LO DIGITAL Y LO MATÉRICO. ESA HA SIDO SU MARCA REGISTRADA: INSISTIR EN LA PRESENCIA DE LA MATERIA SENSIBLE JUNTO CON SU ADHESIÓN CRECIENTE (Y SIEMPRE DESDE LA BASE ARTÍSTICA) A LA COMBINACIÓN DE 1 Y 0
( UNOS Y CEROS), BASE DE LOS DESARROLLOS DIGITALES. SE TRATA AQUÍ DE DOS ELEMENTOS PARA ESTE VERDADERO ADN DE LA CIBERTECNOLOGÍA. DOS ELEMENTOS CON LOS QUE SE CONSTRUYE TODO EL UNIVERSO DE LA INFORMACIÓN, SI BUSCAMOS UNA ANALOGÍA CON LOS CUATRO COMPONENTES (ADENINA, GUANINA, CITOCINA, TIMINA) DE LA DOBLE HÉLICE DE LA BIOLOGÍA MOLECULAR, CON LOS QUE SE CONSTRUYE EL UNIVERSO DE LA VIDA. EL DESARROLLO DE OBRAS DIGITALES CYBERGRABADOS- DE GONZALO MEZZA, COINCIDE CON EL RETORNO A LA SENSIBILIDAD DE LOS MÁS RECIENTES TRABAJOS DEL MUNDO DIGITAL. UNA DE SUS MUESTRAS REPRESENTATIVAS ES EL FESTIVAL ARS ELECTRÓNICA DE LINZ. EN SU VERSIÓN 2001, A LA QUE DESEO REFERIRME, ESE RETORNO A LA SENSIBILIDAD FUE MÁS QUE NOTORIO. ALGO ESTÁ SUCEDIENDO EN ESE ÁMBITO. ES UN REDESCUBRIMIENTO EN OTRO PUNTO DE LA ESPIRAL, DE LA FUERZA DE LOS SENTIDOS FUERTEMENTE VINCULADA A LAS TECNOLOGÍAS DE LA INFORMACIÓN. EN OPOSICIÓN A LOS VATICINIOS DE MUCHOS ESCRITORES APOCALÍPTICOS, EL UNIVERSO DIGITAL ES LA BASE IMPRESCINDIBLE DE TRANSMISIÓN COMPARTIDA DE INVESTIGACIÓN CIENTÍFICA DE FRONTERA, ENTRE CIENTÍFICOS DE DIVERSOS PUNTOS DEL PLANETA, ASÍ COMO DE CREACIÓN ARTÍSTICA COMPARTIDA E INTERCAMBIADA A DISTANCIA.¿POR QUÉ E-EVOLUTION? E- ES EL INDICADOR DE ELECTRONIC, VERDADERO PREFIJO ACTUAL QUE APARECE EN DIFERENTES EXPRESIONES TALES COMO E-MEDICINA, E-LEARNING, E-ARTS
¿QUÉ QUIERE DECIR EVOLUCIÓN EN ESTA RETROSPECTIVA? PODRÍA PENSARSE DE MANERA SIMPLISTA QUE SE TRATA DE UN PASAJE DESDE LA MATERIA HACIA LA INFORMACIÓN ELECTRÓNICA. PERO GONZALO MEZZA NO PARTICIPA DE LA IDEA, MAL DISEMINADA, DE LA DESMATERIALIZACIÓN COMO EXCLUYENTE PROCESO Y GRADUAL PROGRESO DE LAS TECNOLOGÍAS DIGITALES. SU PREDICAMENTO DE CREADOR HUMANISTA LO LLEVA A INSISTIR CADA VEZ EN EL RETORNO DE LOS SENTIDOS, EN UNA RECUPERACIÓN DE LOS VALORES DE LA CORPORALIDAD Y LA MATERIA. GONZALO MEZZA HA DEFENDIDO DE MANERA VISIONARIA ESA NECESIDAD DE MANTENER LAZOS CON LO REAL, AL MATERIALIZAR, CADA VEZ, SUS IMÁGENES EN TELAS SINTÉTICAS. POR ESO SUS SALIDAS DESDE LAS COMPUTADORAS SE CONCRETAN EN TELAS ROBOTIZADAS, MEDIANTE TELARES ELECTRÓNICOS, PLASMAS DE CRISTALES LÍQUIDOS DE SILICIO EN PANTALLAS PLANAS, O PANTALLAS CUYA BASE ES UN GAS. ES ALLÍ, EN EL TRABAJO DE EDICIÓN, DONDE EL ARTISTA EXPLORA Y CONDUCE LOS RESULTADOS DE LAS IMÁGENES EN LA PROPIA TELA, BUSCANDO MAYOR PERFECCIÓN CADA VEZ. Y DESDE LAS ESTACIONES DE TRABAJO METROMIDIA SE TRANSFORMA EN EL VERDADERO EDITOR DE LA OBRA.SU PREOCUPACIÓN POR MATERIALIZAR SE ADVIERTE, TAMBIÉN, CUANDO, EN SUS EXHIBICIONES, COMBINA COMPUTADORES CON ELEMENTOS MATERIALES, COMO HIELO O CARBÓN, CRISTALES DE AZÚCAR, MÁRMOL ENTRE OTROS. POR ESO SU OBRA, EN ESE SENTIDO, REPRESENTÓ LA VANGUARDIA DENTRO DE LA VANGUARDIA. PORQUE LA BÚSQUEDA DE LA MATERIA CONCRETA PARA SER PRESENTADA JUNTO CON LAS EXPLORACIONES DIGITALES HA SIDO SIEMPRE UNA PRUEBA DE SU INTERÉS POR LA SENSIBILIDAD. UN FENÓMENO QUE COBRA FUERZA ACTUALMENTE, ENTRE MUCHOS ARTISTAS DEL MEDIO DIGITAL, COMO MENCIONÉ, AUNQUE NO PODAMOS PREDECIR HASTA DÓNDE LLEGARÁ ESE PROCESO. HACE UNOS AÑOS DESCRIBÍ EL QUEHACER ARTÍSTICO DE GONZALO MEZZA COMO UN HUMANISMO TECNOLÓGICO. SUS PRODUCCIONES ACTUALES EN ESTE TERRITORIO DEMUESTRAN QUE LA APROXIMACIÓN NO FUE DESACERTADA.

MARGARITA SCHULTZ
Profesora de Estetica Universidad de Chile , Critico e Teorica del NetArt .
5 Junio 2003 .

HACIA UN HUMANISMO TECNOLOGICO

por Margarita Schultz

"...En este momento en que me separo de vosotros, mi corazón me dice que debo expresar mis últimos deseos.No aspiro a más gloria que a la consolidación de la Gran Colombia". Fragmento de la última proclama de Simón Bolívar. noviembre de 1830. La tecnología digital parece destituir las situaciones empíricas y desarrollos procesales en favor de un no lugar y un no tiempo.Ese singular espacio-tiempo puede nombrarse con los conceptos de u-topía y u-cronía (no lugar; no tiempo).
Tales modos se encuentran en las bases propias de la informática. Sin embargo, la conexión por Internet no es utópica: se logra desde cualquier punto a cualquier punto del planeta, consolida tanto sus propios nodos sociales, sin importar la distancia que medie entre los puntos, como la cuasi instantaneidad de la conexión temporal.
En ello está implicada una suerte de paradoja y por eso traigo a la memoria el fragmento que expresa las visiones americanistas de Bolívar. Esa Gran Colombia a la que aspiraba Bolíva r era una América unida, interactiva, conectada en lo político, económico y cultural. Aquí la paradoja: la tecnología, aparentemente neutra, de la u-topía y la u-cronía permite incrementar los lazos entre países de este Continente Americano con los medio s más eficaces conocidos.
En estas coordenadas se instala la concepción y la obra del artista chileno Gonzalo Mezza. No haré aquí la descripción de su trayectoria, de larga data en cuanto al empleo de las nuevas tecnologías. Me interesa, en cambio, destacar el modo como Gonzalo Mezza plantea su posición como artista, como americano del Sur, como operador de tecnología informática, como usuario de Internet. Un ejemplo preciso es su proyecto de arte virtual WWW.M@R.CO.SUR.
Este proyecto muestra una trayectoria hasta el pr esente. Sus puntos de inserción: Santiago de Chile (Sala Matta del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1994), Buenos Aires (Fundación Banco Patricios, 1995), Sao Paulo (Bienal de Arte, 1996), Porto Alegre ( I Bienal del Mercosur, 1997), Santiago de Chile ( Sa la CTC, 1998). Se trata de un proyecto en desarrollo donde las imágenes se alimentan y retroalimentan, de manera constante, por incorporación de nuevas imágenes, del artista Gonzalo Mezza, tanto como por el incremento gradual de intervenciones en sus imá genes, por parte de otros artistas o individuos interesados en interactuar con ellas (unas doscientas actualmente). WWW.M@R.CO.SUR es la referencia al Sur informáticamente vinculado, pero también así lo interpreto, es la relación marítima, intercontinenta l, de un eje Sur Asia-África por donde circulaban las culturas prehispánicas.
Según destaca Gonzalo Mezza: "el eje originario al que corresponde Sur América". ¿Que encuentra en esta muestra el visitante? Un símbolo (M@RCO): el fondo de imagen satelital donde los dos "mares océanos", como se los llamaba, se vinculan mediante un puente peculiar, el espacio del territorio de la cordillera andina, las selvas amazón icas, las pampas de Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brasil, Bolivia y Perú. Son estas latitudes las más próximas a la experiencia actual del artista. La representación satelital, donde cada pixel equivale a un metro cuadrado de territorio, actúa com o mapa de otros territorios: los artísticos. Porque Gonzalo Mezza incorpora en óvalos, "elipses planetarias", que le son característicos, diversas imágenes emblemáticas del arte americano: fragmentos de Roberto Matta, Luis Felipe Noé, Iberé Camargo, Frid a Kahlo, Joaquín Torres García. Asimismo, integra elementos escriturales de diversas culturas: ( Rapanui, Inca, Maya, Egipcia, Japonesa, Mapuche, China) o artesanales (las legendarias embarcaciones de totora del Titicaca boliviana-peruano). Estas citas artísticas no están allí por azar, tienen nexos claros con su propuesta de recuperar el sentido de los ejes originarios; tampoco son casuales sus denominaciones, M@R.CO Atlántico 2001, 2002, etc.
Presentan la fisonomía principal de una proyección al futuro nuevo milenio, de un inicio temporal respecto de nuevos valores más equilibrados y también de una continuidad de los procesos creativos. Los principales rasgos articulados, destacables en la poética del artista Gonzalo Mezza son, a mi juicio, el uso de la tecnología informática como medio expresivo para un mensaje básico, el equilibrio de los polos culturales; la reviviscencia de raíces o riginarias de la cultura del continente americano; el ofrecimiento y difusión de sus imágenes para la interacción creativa, sin fronteras, por otros individuos (tanto en el sitio fáctico donde se exhiben sus trabajos como en el sitio virtual, en cualquier parte del mundo, vía Internet); la coexistencia de los nuevos medios computacionales con la presencia material de las imágenes, (en las grandes telas que este artista denomina metafóricamente, "pintura virtual" y en elementos materiales como hielo y carbón, articulados en sus instalaciones). Todo ello marca una diferencia en la obra conceptual del artista Gonzalo Mezza respecto de las acrobacias visuales que el medio informático provee. Frente a las alarmas apocalípticas, acerca de los peligros de deshu manización entrañados por la informática y su vía principal de difusión, Internet, el trabajo de Gonzalo Mezza presenta otro rostro: social, humano artístico. Propongo denominarlo, entonces, humanismo tecnológico. Margarita Schultz ,

Crítica de arte y Profesora de Estética Facultad de Artes, Universidad de Chile  

Arte reciente en Chile / libro Copiar el eden

Pionero del arte tecnologico en chile ,libera su trabajo de la oposicion entre el arte y la nueva industria cultural ,
integrando soportes y mecanismos tecnologicos en combinacion con elementos organicos , como hielo o carbon ,
Ha desarrollado instalaciones , interactivas mediante internet , intervenciones urbanas y en la naturaleza ,instalaciones multimedia ,pintura digital,vide-arte,y fotografia .La particularidad de sus materiales de trabajo no limita el trasfondo conceptual a uan reflexion sobre su uso para el arte : plantea ademas asuntos propios del presente historico , como el desborde geografico y la globalizacion, las identidades culturales ,la politica ,la religion y sus simbolos , la historia del arte y la ecologia
Por esto su obra ha sido descrita como "humanismo tecnologico " (Margarita Schultz )con la que  propone la utopia de la cybercultura . / Catalina Valdes

editado por Gerardo Mosquera

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RETHINKING ART IN THE DIGITAL ERA

by Arlindo Machado

As a result of the ever increasing assimilation of scientific and technological processes, Gonzalo Mezza undoubtedly occupies a privileged space among Latin-American artists who take part in the debate on the course that art has been taking over the last few years. Deploying since the early ‘70s ever more sophisticated technological resources, such as film, video, neon, laser projections, computers, computer networks, etc., for the elaboration of his creative works, Mezza ended up constructing a peculiar perspective of technical mediation.

Undoubtedly, the work of this important Chilean artist has proved to run parallel to the course taken by international technological poetics, while at the same time varying from them in some meaningful aspects, as his work also lets itself be influenced by the intense reality of this peculiar part of the world in which we live. It is very difficult to speak about geography when dealing with dematerialized works—works that move about in the form of energy and may be made available on a simultaneous basis via the Internet to any part of the planet—works that don’t have a definite appearance; which can be modified by their transmission channels or by those who have access to them. In fact, it is almost impossible to identify the great majority of works that nowadays move about in the Internet in terms of geographical origin or of local identity, for everything tends to become collective and global right after having been made available in the World Wide Web. Even the language tends to become homogeneous. Nevertheless, something in Mezza’s works tends to resist every chance to become uniform.

They always keep the mark of a specific visual quality that we have learned to identify historically as "belonging to the south," just as the icons and stylized forms of Andean or South Pacific, African or Easter Island civilizations belong to the south. Appearing in Mezza’s installations under a form that Gestalt Theory would not hesitate in calling pregnant, those icons define a visual purpose or a field of forces whose general outlines remain intact even when the works are submitted to the most disjunctive of interventions. With the widespread use of computers and the Internet, it has become commonplace to say that every work is always the result of a gigantic and unpredictable interaction that takes place under the form of a collective creation process. In other words, a work of art nowadays can no longer be understood as the expression of an individual subjectivity, but as a total cosmic process led by a kind of hypersubject (a term introduced by Mario Costa). The Internet would then be conceived of as a "live" organism, in which a kind of uncontrollable universal and collective conscience is being engendered. This organism purportedly "thinks" and "organizes" itself through countless interferences performed in its virtual body by people from around the world. But are we really watching the complete dissolution of the subject and of its space and time, the demise of the "artist" in favor of an anonymous and collective form of creation, the extinction of the local and circumstantial in the name of the general and global?

Mezza’s body of works seems to allow these issues to be viewed from a slightly different perspective.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that new and more complex forms of subjectivity and identity are being spawned that go beyond simplistic dualisms Self/Other, individual/community, inside/outside, here/there. After all, how can we think about interfaces, if we cannot conceive of differentiated realities to be placed face to face to strike a dialog? In a certain sense, the Internet is a collective and universal organism, but at the same time it is in the Internet that people are designing their identities, constructing their history, mapping and filtering fields of interest, of desire and action. One of the images Mezza made available in his Virtual Museum shows a Venus de Milo as if it were a block of ice, floating among the icebergs in the freezing seas of the Antarctic. This type of collage, made possible through digital image processing, almost functions as a metaphor of the hybridization processes currently going on throughout cyberspace. By hybridization I mean every process of contagion of frontiers and languages, as well as the appropriation and recycling of materials that have circulated through the computer networks. Nowadays images are composed setting out from the most varied of sources, generally based on other preexisting images and, in that sense, they may be viewed as hybrid events, constituted as they are by images in a permanent state of migration. In the age of satellite telecommunications, we are no longer isolated from the world and we can no longer think identities as uncontaminable ghettoes, but as a dialogue process in which the self and the other modify one another at each renewed contact. Identities now are not as binding, they are less precise (is this my line or does it belong to someone who intervened in my work, or was it already in the image which I appropriated?), and yet, perhaps for those same reasons, they are more intense, for it is precisely when I am confronted by diversity that I best become aware of my singularity. The Greek Love Goddess myth at the tip of the South Cone leads us to think about who we are, and how we can still define ourselves as "we" at a time when the movement toward indiscrimination is becoming increasingly stronger.

Mezza’s most recent work (project M@R.CO.SUR, for instance, which has been in progress since 1995, and which was shown at the XXIII Bienal de São Paulo) seeks to point to innovative solutions to the issue of how to rethink art in our highly technology-centralized societies. The idea on which the project seems to be grounded is that a new stage in the course of mankind does not destroy the previous ones, but it superposes itself to them, producing results that are not necessarily predatory, just more complex. Instead of simply determining the death of painting, of the museum or the art gallery, of the specific place for the occurrence of art, Mezza formulates more intelligent issues that are also more in tune with a new ecological awareness. How to have a museum that is physically installed in a locality (a city, a country, a continent) dialog with the Internet? How to interconnect intangible, unlocalizable, globalized Internet events with the installation and performance located at a given space to where people must physically flow? How can the individual art work, materialized in a painting by an individual artist, find a new fruition environment and a new type of "viewer" no longer intent on adopting a passive reverential stance, but rather predisposed to undergo transformational assimilation processes? Mezza’s current project seeks to perform works, events, installations or event fields simultaneously in physical and electronic spaces without distinguishing in principle between an area reserved for art (the "white cube" of the art gallery) and a supposedly non-artistic environment (the Internet). Thus images (be they artistic or not) made available in the web may be accessed at a public event with defined hours and place to compose a unique, local and unrepeatable event.

Conversely, any one from anywhere in the world who navigates in the Internet may interfere on events that take place outside it, in a public space (a museum, a biennial), and may even have the result of their intervention in return. We often speak of "works" as a language habit, but in the context of Mezza’s oeuvre, it is clear that this term cannot be understood in the conventional sense, as something that has been completed, that is finished and that may be placed in circulation under an author’s signature. "Works" are now open processes in continual progress that accumulate results which, for their turn, feed new cycles. Other artists are allowed to interfere in the piece originally offered as a response to the artist’s initial gesture of departing from previously existing "works." Moreover, the viewers in attendance both at the installation’s physical space and in the virtual space of the Internet are also allowed to intervene in the process. Each time a work by Mezza is "reinstalled," it is already something different as it embodies the results of the most recent assemblies. But then, this may be a condition of every work of art of any time in history, for, strictly speaking, a work is never "ended," it is interrupted due to circumstances external to it.

Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote, for his turn, that the concept of a finished work is meaningful only in the context of religion or of weariness. Events currently taking place in cyberspace merely provide the structural evidence for that which is at the root of every creative process. If it were possible to sum it all up in a single paragraph, it could be said that Mezza’s most recent work makes it possible to better understand the complex process of interaction between all of the minds and sensitivities that make the advent of contemporary aesthetic experiences into a reality. Today’s artists may be compared to the conductor of an invisible orchestra made up of a variable number of creative agents. This analogy entails, of course, the demystification of a number of conventional—even arrogant—values inspired in the idea of "work" as a finished product that has been conceived by an individual creative genius who holds a position of superiority in the hierarchy of artistic skills.

When Mezza, makes his computers and works available to the visitors of his installations or to Internet travelers, when he makes it possible for others to occupy a part of the space of his works, he is really inserting his work into a dialog process where none of the parts produces a final determination. This is not to mean that art has been placed within the reach of every one, or that any one can make art, as it is sometimes heard or read in questionable discourses about a purported democratization of art. If on the one hand many of the results obtained in Mezza’s installations are the result of a complex interaction and could never have been premeditated or planned by the artist, on the other hand, they never could have emerged out of a merely conventional deployment of technical resources within their "normal" functioning parameters. If the results display qualities that we may view, in a new sense, as aesthetic, that’s because the "conductor" knew how to make the best out of the conjunction of factors. As for knowing whether the "work" obtained through that process is the creation of the artist who conceived it or of the visitors who interfered in it constitutes an insoluble question, and for that very reason, an obsolete one.

It is becoming increasingly less relevant to view contemporary aesthetic products and processes as individually motivated—as the manifestations of style of a unique genius, rather than a socially motivated work of interaction, in which the result can only consist of an interplay of tensions between the most varied agents and factors, a symbolic economy dialogic in nature. The artist involved in this process may become a catalyst that makes things happen in an unpredictable direction (i.e., in a non programmed way, free from industrial purposes) and, most important of all, within a perspective of expansion, in a direction that leads to increase in the complexity rate of the culture.

Arlindo Machado.

Sao Paulo. 1998Texto ,catalogo ,
exibition by Gonzalo Mezza in the Museum MARGS
in porto alegre , 1998

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English Text By : Gonzalo Mezza (1997)

My work in the cyberspace, Museums and Public spaces, since 1970

represents the transformation and transition process that humanity is experiencing as the new millennium approaches. The visual arts are not aloof from this passage from the material to the virtual realm.

The new geopolitical and multicultural order among continents affected by the democratization of the huge advancements performed by ever more intelligent means of communication, alter the nature of the perception of time and space of the reproductive apparatus of the classical fine arts.

As in the Renaissance, the artist recovers his status as intellectual, scientific and technical craftsman. Nowadays, the avant-garde is everywhere free from the hegemonic power of the State.

Cyberspace provides the new base for the creative energy of contemporary thought.

With its endless network links, the Internet potentates new collective associations, connecting each human being with his or her peers, unhindered by frontiers and centers of power.

A true ocean of the digital neurons of knowledge, the Internet is open to the challenge of the new century as a metaphor of life, solidarity and relationship. It would be unlikely that humanity would survive the next millennium without it. Unmasking the self of elitist ideologies of Western aesthetics, art should not be viewed in opposition to the new cultural industry.

Computer science and technology are powerful tools of human intelligence which may be instrumental in the demystification of supposedly universal theories of beauty, thus able to show that, in reality, such theories are only class-determined views on socially shared codes of communications and market formations.

Network cyberculture the new paradigm- constitutes a never before seen anthropological mutation.

Each neuron is a link toward the creation of a more just world that navigates among infinite galaxies since the time of the big bang.,

Each chip represents a check on the anthropophagite system of contemporary arts.

MCMXCVIl / S.XX

Gonzalo Mezza , 1997 Porto Alegre.Brazil

Texto em Português : Gonzalo Mezza (1997)

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Minha obra no Cyberespaço, Espaço público y Museológico desde 1970

representa a mutação e o trânsito que a humanidade está experimentando com a proximidade do novo milênio.   As artes visuais não estão alheias a esta passagem do material ao

virtual. A nova ordem geo-política e multicultural entre continentes, afetados pela democratização dos gigantescos avanços dos novos meios de comunicação, cada vez mais inteligentes, alteram a natureza do pensamento e percepção do tempo e espaço dos aparatos reprodutivos das clássicas belas artes.

Hoje, a vanguarda  está em todas as partes, livre do poder hegemônico dos Estados. O cyberespaço é o marco de um novo suporte para a energia criadora do pensamento contemporâneo.   A internet potencializa com suas infinitas conexões em rede, novos vínculos coletivos, conectando cada ser humano com seus semelhantes, sem limites de fronteiras e centros de poder. Verdadeiros Oceanos de neurônios digitais do conhecimento abertos ao desafio do novo século como metáfora de vida, solidariedade e relacionamento, sendo que dificilmente a humanidade sobreviveria sem ele ao novo milênio.   Desmascarando o ego das ideologias elitistas da estética ocidental, a arte não deve ser pensada em oposição à nova industria cultural. A informática e a tecnologia são poderosos instrumentos criados pelo homem inteligente para desmistificar teorias supostamente universais do belo, mostrando que, na realidade, tais teorias não passam de visões de classe sobre códigos socialmente compartilhados de comunicação e de mercado.   O novo paradigma, a cybercultura de redes, é uma mutação antropológica nunca vista. Cada neurônio é um link para criar um mundo mais justo que navega entre as galaxias infinitas desde o tempo do Bigbang.  

Cada chips é um cheque ao sistema antropofágico das artes contemporâneas.

© Gonzalo Mezza . MCMXCVIl / S.XX . Porto Alegre, Brasil

All (five) Senses

by : Margarita Schultz

E-EVOLUTION GONZALO MEZZA in MAVI

One should not be disconcerted by this title for a retrospective of the digital work made
by Gonzalo Mezza between 1983 and 2003.

One of the sense-making platforms of this IT artist is his articulation of the digital and the physical.
This has become his trademark: the insistence of physical matter together with his growing commitment (always from an artistic standpoint) to the combination of one and zero (1 and 0), which is the basis for all digital developments.

These are here, two elements comprising this veritable DNA of cyber-technology, the two basic elements for the construction of the entire universe of information. If we seek an analogy with the four components (adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine) comprising the double helix of molecular biology, with which the universe of life is built.

The development of digital works (cyber-prints) by Gonzalo Mezza coincides with a return to the sensibility of the most recent developments in the digital world. One of its most representative examples is the ARS ELECTRONICA festival in Linz. In its 2001 edition, to which I will refer here, this return to physicality was quite noticeable.

Something is happening in this field, a rediscovery-in another point of the spiral-of the force of the senses, which is firmly linked to information technologies (IT). Contrary to the predictions of many apocalyptic writers, the digital universe is the essential basis for the shared transmission of borderline scientific research between scientists in different points of the planet, as well as of remotely shared and exchanged artistic creativity.

Why E-EVOLUTION? E- is the indicator of electronic, today's prefix par excelence, which appears in various expressions such as e-medicine, e-learning, e-art just to name a few. What does this evolution mean in terms of this retrospective exhibition? One could think about it in simple terms as a moving from physical matter to electronic information. However, Gonzalo Mezza does not share the poorly disseminated notion of de-materialization as a process of exclusion and the gradual progress of digital technologies. As a humanist creator he is led every time to a return of the senses, to a recovery of the values of corporeality and physical matter.

Gonzalo Mezza has been a visionary champion of the need to maintain links with the real by materializing his images on synthetic fabrics. Emerging from within the computers, his images become physical in robotized fabrics that are in turn woven by electronic looms, the plasma of silica crystals on flat screens or gas-based screens. From this point, in an editing process, the artist explores and conducts the results of the images on the canvas itself, always seeking a higher degree of perfection. Manning the controls of the Metromedia® workstations-he becomes the true editor of the works.

His preoccupation with materializing is noticeable, also, when, in his exhibitions he combines computers with material elements such as ice, or coal, sugar and marble, among others.

In this sense, his work was the avant-garde within the avant-garde. This because the search for concrete matter to be represented jointly with his digital explorations has always been proof of his interest in what is perceivable through the senses. As I mentioned earlier, this is an increasingly recurrent phenomenon among digital artists, although it is possible to foretell where this process will lead.

A few years ago, I described the artistic work of Gonzalo Mezza in terms of a TECHNOLOGICAL HUMANISM. His current works in this field show that such a view was not mistaken.

Margarita Schultz
Filosofia e Estetica Universidad de Chile , escritora, critico net-art.

TECHNOLOGICAL TOWARDS HUMANISM 

by Margarita Schultz 

"... At this moment I am leaving you, my heart tells me that I must express my last deseos.No aspire to greater glory than the consolidation of Greater Colombia." Excerpt from the last proclamation of Simón Bolívar. November 1830. Digital technology seems to dismiss the empirical situations and procedural developments in favor of a non tiempo.Ese place and not peculiar space-time can be appointed to the concepts of u-and u-topia Kronia (no place, no time). 
These modes are at the foundation's own computer. However, the Internet connection is not utopian: it does from anywhere to anywhere in the world, strengthens both their own nodes, no matter what the distance between points, as the quasi-instantaneous temporal connection. 
It is involved in a kind of paradox, and so bring to mind the passage that expresses the American vision of Bolivar. Gran Colombia that he wished to achieve Bolíva r was an America united, interactive, connected politically, economically and culturally. Here is the paradox: technology, apparently neutral, the u-and u-topia Kronia allows increasing ties between countries of the Americas with the most effective medium s known. 
In these coordinates the design and installation works by Chilean artist Gonzalo Mezza. I will not here the description of his career, long-standing as to the use of new technologies. I am interested, however, highlight how Gonzalo Mezza raises its position as an artist, as South American, as an operator of information technology, Internet user. A specific example is the virtual art project www.m @ R.CO.SUR. 
This project shows a path to the pr esent. Their points of insertion: Santiago de Chile (Sala Matta National Museum of Fine Arts, 1994), Buenos Aires (Banco Patricios Foundation, 1995), Sao Paulo (Bienal de Arte, 1996), Porto Alegre (Mercosur Biennial, 1997 ), Santiago de Chile (CTC Sa, 1998). This is a development project where the images are fed and feed back, steadily, by adding new images, the artist Gonzalo Mezza, as well as by the gradual increase ima interventions in their genes, by other artists or individuals interested in interacting with them (about two hundred at present). Www.m @ R.CO.SUR South is the reference to computer-linked, but they also interpret, is the relationship sea Intercontinent l, a South Asia-Africa axis by which reported the pre-Hispanic cultures. 
According to Gonzalo Mezza stresses "the original axis corresponds to South America. What is in this show the visitor? A symbol (M @ RCO): The background satellite image where two oceans seas "as they called them, are linked by a peculiar bridge, the space of the territory of the Andes, the Amazon jungle icas,'s pampas Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. Are these latitudes closer to the actual experience of the artist. The satellite representation, where each pixel equals one square meter of land, acting com or map of other areas: the arts. For Gonzalo Mezza incorporated into ovals, "planetary ellipses, which are characteristic, various iconic images of American art: fragments of Roberto Matta, Luis Felipe Noe, Iber Camargo, Frida Kahlo, Joaquin Torres Garcia. It also integrates scriptural elements from different cultures: (Rapanui, Inca, Maya, Egyptian, Japanese, Mapuche, China) or craft (the legendary reed boats of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia and Peru). These artistic events are not there by chance, have clear linkages with its proposal to restore a sense of the original axes, nor their names are casual, M@R.CO Atlantic 2001, 2002 etc.. 
They present the main features of a future outlook for the new millennium, a temporary home for new values more balanced and also a continuity of creative processes. The main features article is to highlight the artist Gonzalo Mezza poetics are, in my view, the use of computer technology as an expressive medium for a basic message, the balance of the cultural poles, the revival of roots or the culture of riginarias American continent, the offering and distribution of their images for creative interaction without boundaries, by other individuals (both factual site which displays his works and in the virtual site, anywhere in the world via the Internet), the coexistence new media computer with the material presence of images (in the large canvases that the artist metaphorically called "virtual painting" and the material elements like ice and coal, connected at their facilities). All this makes a difference in the conceptual work by the artist Gonzalo Mezza on visual acrobatics provides the computer environment. Faced with apocalyptic alarms about the dangers of deshu manización enter through the main computer and its dissemination via Internet, the work of Gonzalo Mezza has another face: social, human art. I propose to call it, then, technological humanism. Margaret Schultz 

Art Criticism and Aesthetics Professor of Faculty of Arts, University of Chile

Conceptual Results 

by Margarita Schultz, 2005 
Information technology, multimedia Internet supported technologies (ICTs) has proved a suitable land to build new production and, in turn, stimulate the invention of new concepts to interpret.The idea matrix is indicated by the shaft (which operates Internet specific support required): 

interaction - collaboration - distribución.La joint construction of knowledge and / or artistic work, therefore, are scattered in cyberspace called. However, due to the existence of the Internet, the notion of collaboration assumes a different hue when compared with other forms of collaborative work (for example, the initial community work by corporations). It is the transformation of time-space correlation as to the possibility of: 1) work, work together, without relying on (or not require) a coordination of the timing, 2) act at a distance, as well from different parts of the world, or even at different locations within the same city. Interaction - collaboration - distribuciónEl work of production and communication of diverse information via the Internet is open-ended and distributive. Research Groups and creation are exponentially populating the territories of cyberspace. Enter mesh possible routes (Red) where, as we know, no predetermined paths is now a daily practice of real openness. That flow of information contains the conditions to enhance the knowledge (collective intelligence exhibited by P. Levy) as well as artistic and cultural phenomena. 
I will focus briefly on the subject of artistic creative practices. Collaborative art may be called the specific exercise shared artistic creation on the Internet. Their main issue is the hetero-genesis of the completion of works. When an individual proposes a kind work of art (visual, literary, musical, multimedia) and another individual receives somewhere in the planet, if it decides to act returns to the space (cyberspace), as amended, drawn, spoken, transformed. That is, an image (or phenomena such as those listed above, more or less complex), is taken and worked by another user of the Network, who returns to his starting point, or install it on your own site, oranother available, or combine the situations ... such a matrix is non-linear, as is easy to perceive, but multiple in nature, and branching in unpredictable ways. 
The collaborative work of art can originate in a moment of the production process, which need not be the starting point mythical-real artwork. Often lost in unknown causalities. Here again, practice a different appropriation of the notion of time, not only space and / or causality.Emerged as a major fragment, the process as such (rather than the entire sequence), action (which is always present for performing the task). 

As is overwhelming, on the other hand, it is impossible to know all the ramifications of a collaborative action, unless the project is to develop a closed loop between a finite set of pre-selected artists, and declaring an end of the process. Some visual artists adopted this approach (eg the Chilean Gonzalo Mezza creator for some of his works: see www.mezza.cl). 
It's easy to imagine that this unit works projects into new directions, divides again and again, as the garden paths of J. L. Borges ( "The Garden of Forking Paths," Ficciones) 
With respect to the initial question that motivated this research is the work of collaborative creation on the Internet, is art or not art? indeed, this is not a question liable to a response exhaustive. Even less, if the question is asked with reference to the masterpieces of Western art (eg art teacher or consgrados Renaissance artists of Impressionism, to name prime examples). But there is understandable concern in evaluating these results, the collaborative works, open, not covered, unpredictable. The system involves computers, Internet, cyberspace, works taken up and developed by individuals (professional designers or not) they can return to its owner intervened, or leave them in the anonymity of your computer ... 
Try this connection, again a comparison: advanced scientific collaborative work with a double assurance: what is known and what is not yet known. Dr. David Holmes (in his lecture on bio-informatics, 2 meeting on Internet2 - Valdivia 2002) expressed on different aspects of research on human genome: we are sure that ... we are not sure about this ... But art does not works well, it is usually risky and exposed for that very difficult to settle disputes. Their confirmations or refutations from other fields, different from science. Just think how the news reverberates in each case: as something to hold (usually), in modern Western art, as something to put under the microscope carefully theoretical science. 
For the collaborative art on the Internet, any security on the artistic value of the results would not be distributed to each of its directors, or even based in each of its producers. 
But the question should be thought of from another platform. Maybe that's why it happens that the progress of scientific research resulting from the use of the Internet are supported by the community, while the processes of artistic creation through computers and commissioning works in cyberspace generate still an doubt on those seeking comprehensive compliance there trdicionales parameters. 
How is estimated as, with what instrument measure their value? Artists-recipients, delimited blurred their traditional roles (some as issuers, some as receivers), they overlap and more specific works in progress from different forms of interaction (proposition, scheduling, placement, intervention ...). This is another manifestation of the idea of 'open work' (U. Eco, 1963), not only metaphorically, too literally, as a continuation of the profuse experimentation of the '60s, in the twentieth century. The collaborative art works prove nothing for or against the artistry, however, can provide arguments in favor of increasing creative actions. Okay in this case the following statement, which is not intended as a pun: the machine does not make art, not prevents it. 
The main epistemological shift leads from the conception of a creative subject and a subject always cognitive receiver to another stage where creativity is distributed, also in the factual sense. 

In the estimate of the artistic processes generated so far for 'colaborarte' it is clear that even made by artists, with all of its aesthetic and expressive craft, the main thing for them in this production is in the very experience of participation. Thus, again, for the original question was this game engine research project, collaborative art: art or creative experience? is the second term of this disjunction that counts. I mean the experience of creating. This makes it conducive to these works for educational and cultural Projections: stimulate the creation, value and forming imaginative creativity. 
I think the more than 6,000 responses to a work (in the case of the proposals by the artist Gonzalo Mezza pioneer in Chile creations on the Internet), in the course of a couple of months, is a strong argument in that direction. The jibarización of art education in schools (primary and secondary) can be offset, in part, with these and other similar opportunities available to Internet users (pupils, students, others). 
The insecurity of the answers to the question of art for centuries and until the present, consists Also here with this other way to experience the creation in any of their degrees: active, participatory, collaborative (even in the case of the (modest) degree of intervention in the images that an artist has deliberately Internet-proposed).

M@R.CO.SUR

Virtual Digital Instalação interest via Internet 

For Milan Ivelic 

Uma vez que o tema da 23rd International Biennial of São Paulo é a 'desmaterialização da arte', we believe that Gonzalo Mezza seja um representante important for this event. From a 70's artistic investigations têm suas They turn to video art, photos and impressões a laser. Na década seguinte, dedicou-se, and continued to fazê-lo, e às possibilidades visuais da conceituais digital painting, using meios sofisticados.Seu eletrônicos projeto, baseado na da desmaterialização art, use technology eletrônica - na qual a subject materialidade enquanto da obra tangível physical foi aside and substituted deixar pela transmissão da informação visual via the Internet. Em nossa opinião, this work coerente é com o tema proposto for this evento.MAR.CO.SUR é uma instalação Multimedia uses computers to transmitirão as imagens do geradas from Atelier do artist, located not Chile. O público poderá interagir and interventions do nas imagens computer, as it was sailing from um tratasse virtual ocean (Pacific do Oceano Atlântico ao). Trata-se de uma metaphor refere à substituição das Transmissões that até então eram feitas by sea, symbolically represented by digital painting represented uma grande por um pela Caiaque sailing culture continent do not SUR.Abre Continental MAR-se, portanto to public or a possibilidade to participate and to reinterpret visual lhe informação é proposta. Assim, poderá deslocar forms and cores, incorporating text and também novos em contato com to enter deep estrutura da imagem, fazendo com que a proposta do artista em um processo becomes continuous, mesmo já concluída.MAR.CO.SUR being at work question to send e navegação Eurocentric cultural repeat informação somente em um sense. O 'digital Caiaque' retem and distributed as imagens deste nosso cultural universe or do assim as marginal and peripheral universe meio de seu centralização power internationally. Isso dá espaço ao multiculturalism as a phenomenon of resistance to this cultural hegemony. Esta é a origem identidade two problems of 'peripheral' faced superposição de imagens com a silk-specific advindas two natives da da Ilha de Páscoa, two Mapuche, Aymara, Maya, Inca, African and Asian com pictorial fragments of works from Latin American artists and Kahlo, Noah, Lam, Torres-Garcia and Matta. Isto retenção provides two pontos da load energy that do ato brotam painting; energy that is na própria base of retenção do processo eletrônico em sua da imagem e em sua desmaterialização leveza máximas.Outro important aspect gives digital painting Gonzalo Mezza propõe imagens learned própria nas quais tem works trabalhando há anos e que também são na baseadas cultural descentralização. Ilha de Páscoa, Hiroshima, Mururoa and disso são também fazem exemplos alusão to contaminated ou um olhar já pela ameaçado nuclear irradiação. 

MAR.CO.SUR face ao Mercosul alusão as maps existissem navegação dois até hoje apresentam diferenças to each other. Esse final map navegação econômica assinado by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and, recently, Chile. Se o Mercado Comum do Cone Sul (Mercosul) navigates pelas águas da integração economy or Sea Continental Sul (MAR.CO.SUR) Question or former principal objective of dimensões alfandegárias comerciais e que não encontro permitem or two circles that deveriam acompanhar culturais this integração. 

GONZALO MEZZA IN THE BIENNIAL

Justo Pastor Mellado

In his multimedia projects for the First Biennial of Visual Arts of Mercosur, Gonzalo Mezza works in the laying of a real-time virtual bridge between two specific symbolic places of the city of Porto Alegre, the Public Market and lysine do Gasômetro connected via the Internet, linked to each other and simultaneously to all five continents and, through hypertext, cyberspace, thousands of people can interact and participate in the work. This is a temporary storage location, classification and exchange of goods, on the one hand and on the other, a place of temporary storage, classification and exchange of cultural goods.

In the culture industry, these goods circulating in their condition of goods, have had the leisure market. It is important to note that the participation of Mezza intervention is as immaterial in the city, ensuring ar a particular type of connectivity, not only between two symbolic places of the city, but between institutions that extend, or at least problematize, the articulation betweenMHC and trade. Somehow this work means that places where tipping one over another.

Materially, the computer monitors on the market stores are converted to images, which in turn reproduce the events occurring in the Usina do Gasômetro, the relationship of this chimney, coal with the installation of bars s ice on the river bank Guaiba, it is the de-ice ice bar pigmented colors of the flags of the countries of Mercosur (melting of boundaries): the chimney remains, the bar is dematerialized, rather changes that do , and also transforms into a commodity among other necessities of daily life.

The work of de-ice waters of the Andes, South Pole and territorial Rios, corresponding to different moments in the work of Gonzalo Mezza, and iconic capital shares the same virtual space of the images reproduced from the production of cough market and images collected by the artist himself in his objectual recognition of the city of Porto Alegre.

Justo Pastor Mellado, art critic and curator, 1996

FREEZE, focus .. THE PLOT OF THE STORY

By Justo Pastor Mellado

To Freeze, to focus ... The scremo of History:

Gonzalo Mezza traveling outside of Canada when very young, in 1969, following an old myth of childhood come to Florence to study painting. But above all, because in the 70 Chilean art, the journey is an enterprise of knowledge, among others. However, the sun and the Mediterranean live, where he started studying photography and design. Alli comes in contact with the Catalans and conceptual juuuaqproduccion becomes involved.
Gonzalo Mezza travels to chile in 1972, steeped in their experience with conceptualism catalan, start a sculpture project in the cold, whose parents are killed by strangers who assault brigades overnight workshop n the College of Fine arts University of Chile. At that time, the artist's engagement with society was a dominant theme in Chilean society and resolved preferably organica.Obiamente figuratively ... and in these conditions, developing and publishing a project as caificado concept could not take place.
The project presented in 1972 Gonzalo Mezza consisted of freeze-blue waters of the pigmented mapocho Red and Transparent, which contains the national flag colors - of three replicas of a plaster copy of the Venus de Milo, which was used in exercises of the academy. The three replicas would form part of a facility, along with other materials which recorded a video interbalos certain time, the process of melting of the figures.
The project had the approval of the director of the Museo de Bellas Artes de Chile,
and the Dean of the Faculty. But after the curious "accident" the work could not be performed.Gonzalo Mezza returned to Barcelona, dedicated to photography and design; continued its work of conceptual plastic artist, dabbling in video art.
Returning to Chile in 1979, as part of the Rencontres de Arte-young, organized by the Instituto Cultural de las Condes, finally was able to install the work he had designed seven years ago.Meanwhile speeches operaria art, in the Chilean countryside, this would be the photographic record video and graphic markup of three key elements of the Chilean territory: Cordillera, longitudinal road and maritime border. . It picks up Presis noted that since 70 had already started work intervention with the Polaroid SX-70 camera. So to return to our country, not only the first document deals with "performances" made in our environment, but also performs visual tasks - real declines iconic literary work of Chilean poets like Nicaror Parra and theoretical Kay Ronal art.
Continue its work investigating the technological extensions allowed by the "little science of instant packet: Polariod that the format allows. Polaroid, in this area, is more than one format, it is a working concept in art a synecdoche.

Hockney once spoke about the closeness between Polaroid and sketch drawing. Something that can correct the sketch, acquiring a familiarity extreme re-enfoque.Como if repiticion the previous shutter always be wrong.
Gonzalo Mezza approximates the use of Polaroid that Freud made to the model of "Block wonderful" to produce the concept of the unconscious. But then, the Polaroid camera, the images do not accumulate on the same support of registration, but each shutter deposits the effect of a trace that crystallizes through a miniaturized device recorded, which suggests partial use of models in lithography and etching. The Polaroid concept becomes an objectified, but also an act of ghost conjugatorio temporality. In his field, time is a question of color manipulated.
Knowl first Mezza work at the National Museum of Fine Arts (Santiago de Chile) in September 1980 when he received the prize awarded by the National Securities wrapper for her installation "Southern Cross". Since then I have continued and have been attentive to its development, enjoying a line of continuity Ecologica, verifiable method of feedback control their own work, in which baseline data will never be found in "raw state" but are appropriate materials and the technological history of figurative reproduction. What Gonzalo Mezza practices is a certain "ecology of mind" (Bateson), which sets in motion some key elements of the landscape "natural" and "cultural" Chilean, agreeing various systems for recording and playback for the image. By this I mean that the "nature" in its construction as a nation, is "culture" because it is memory of his own intervention.
The work described in this occasion "The Thousand and One Nights of Goya's naked Maja-given" (1988) summarizes in part the plastic strategy Gonzalo Mezza is a Neo-installation that the materials staging and the acrylic, neon and metal shielding them from their dependence Polaroid technique and turns it into a "multi-layer view", activated by the pressure of rollers that close, either a classical etching press and a manual expremidora ... bed linen.
May this help us to mention parodic instroducir hacerca a word in the title of the book: "The Thousand and One Nights" refer to a scene of repeated and endless stories on the end hangs a death threat, I know: the pulsion polaroid -- expressed by the sound of the shutter and prolonged by the sound of the mechanical device that puts into operation the revealed-has to do with the restitution of a loss.
What that says work is a variation of light, and auditing, product of a repetition compulsion, you take the reproductions of the Clothed Maja and Naked Maja, Goya, which are impaired in their technological behavior by altering temperatures. faint zone of the puzzle, find a reproduction fracmentarias, localized and amplified the Goya painting of the same, 3 May 1808.
The appointment of this table is a hidden reference to a chapter of Latin American history. The dramatic events of 1808 were decisive for the following history of Spain and Europe, to say nothing of South America .. as well as being a nod alegotico on the situation of restriction of public freedoms for which our country was at the time of design work. Not to mention the proximity Fonica other is in the Castilian language between Goya's name and the word "slain".That word, in our country, focusing on an institutional tragedy.
Gonzalo Mezza had already done work on variation and repetition with reproductions of the Rokeby Venus, by Velazquez. If Goya used to mean a maximum magnitude of historical rupture, Velazquez said the appearance of science moderna.La Venus in the mirror is thereforeto stand as a decline epistemological Las Meninas. The collection and subjectification two general historical ruptures, the effects of today's world order. The Polaroid enable "action step" in recovering the pictures-fetish of our culture.
Through more than six hundred variations in the area reserved for the mirror is operated by a reproduction of previous work by Gonzalo Mezza, Polaroid became a fun fair decorated as those in which human figures are reproduced, and perform an hole at its end, where the public can enter the head and photographed in the pose. These games what they put into circulation, is a variation of the theme of decapitation. The Polaroid is an object that is close to identity, thelibrary cards, to unicum that restores the individual's subjective dimension of religious stamp.What I said is the certainty that somewhere there is always a lost document.
Important to remember the type of association proposed that these works, in terms of their iconic content: the "Majas" and "shot" refers to the question of "freeze image" in art, and thus, Gonzalo Mezza "date" so distorted their own work in 1972 on the freezing of the three replicas of the Venus de Milo, a model for future generations, thus mimicking the exercises that make up the academy neoclassical reproduction.
Somehow, between 1972 and this date, Gonzalo Mezza work is directed towards a search for clarity and focus of conflict zones.
Clearly than in previous work as a notion was dissolved by the melting literal illustration of a matrix. The current phase, then, freeze certain moments in history, has been established through his concern for the "model Hiroshima" city view from the air, asemaja to Santiago de Chile. In truth, every city, viewed from the air "are" Hiroshima.
For this reason, her work presented at Gallery Sur in 1983 agreed to images produced by computer-Coinside the form of a fighter jet f-16 with the map of south america, with the installation and reproduction of Japanese text that tells a survivor the explosion of the atomic bomb pictograms and photographs of islanders who have not yet been deciphered. Easter Island is a metaphor of entropy effects in society. Pictograms and ideograms indicate different layers in the construction of verbal languages. fotografica Targeting indicates the desire to deepen understanding of conflict areas that can cause destruction of the planet. The Polaroid, used consistently since then, focuses on the methodological individuation search Gonzalo Mezza, who can not escape the imperative to link their extreme particularity the extention of culture, in the planetary era.
Seven years of this work, the Greek statues and paintings of Goya, the caller as hubs through which artistic meanings Mezza in critical condition puts the majority mode of diffusion of art in our country. This is strictly speaking, the project proposes: THE FREEZING OF POSE TO FOCUS OF HISTORY.



By: Justo Pastor Mellado
Contemporary art from chile.
New York 1991 American Society Galery

Recent Art in Chile / Copyin Eden

A pioneer of the art technology in Chile, released his work of the opposition between art and the new cultural industry, integrating media and technological mechanisms in combination with organic elements, such as ice or charcoal, has developed facilities, interactive through the Internet, urban interventions and in nature, multimedia installations, digital painting, video art, and photography. The peculiarity of their materials work does not limit the conceptual background to uan reflection on their use for art also raises issues resulting from this historic, geographic and overflowing as globalization, cultural identities, politics, religion and its symbols, and art history ecology Hence his work has been described as "technological humanism" (Margarita Schultz) with that proposed by the utopia of cyberculture. /Catalina Valdes

edited by Gerardo Mosquera

taken from the book Copying Eden

edited by Gerardo Mosquera Copy the text book eden