Based on the multi-faceted character of the current artistic production field, and mapping the arrival and institutionalization of a phenomenon given by the merger of artistic production and new technologies for the production/distribution of images, this text will consider suwud‘s practices on the internet, from the perspective that the collective produces alternatives for the creative use and at the same time critical of this tool. More specifically, the aim here is to discuss one of its productions conceived and distributed over the internet: Googorama.

…Googorama, comprised only of information, with no material existence, when distributed over the internet, immediately becomes a source for debate; the result of these initial receptions becomes new information that couples to suwud‘s original proposal, which immediately will receive more information, also added to the ones before, and then adding another, and another, and so on.

…We can understand, through Googorama, that thinking art as information on the internet, is to experience in “real-time” what, a few years ago, Giulio Carlo Argan wrote about the fact that an artwork is its reality and everything that all generations have thought about it throughout history. In an accelerated time such as the one in which we live today, works that no longer possess material support –– comprised solely of information in an ongoing transformation process ––, update the Italian scholar’s definition. These new works configure a challenge to all who, coming from a formal tradition in the field of art history, face these new possibilities on thinking art.

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Created in late 2005, suwud is composed by two physicists who are USP graduates (“Universidade de São Paulo”) and by a student of the “Departamento de Artes Plásticas” of the “Escola de Comunicações e Artes” in the same university. All three have varied interests that range from software programming to theater lighting, passing through philosophy, arts,
woodwork, photography and other areas.

The collective is not characterized solely by works made for the internet, or other “immaterial” media (such as video, for instance), its interest in actions that involve interventions in real spaces is noteworthy, by creating specific places/situations, in which the public’s participation is paramount.

… For a collective that, as I have already mentioned, manifests through several media, the issue of media specificity (still from a modernist perspective) is not contained amongst their main concerns, even though it appears as a certain “residue” in the conception/making of the works.

…However, to this new generation of artists – or at least to suwud’s components –, the main aspect regarding internet works is not this kind of specificity (despite its existence). What seems to interest them is the specificity of information that manifests through the mean with which the collective operates.

According to one of its components:

“Technology crates new problems to be faced. I think that our works explore some
specificities of more basic things. For instance, communication, instead of communication devices. Technology usually just facilitates certain procedures that existed prior. A saw and a circular saw do the same thing, despite the fact that one is capable of cutting much faster than the other. Thus, it seems to me that the differences between technologies, which can be understood as each one’s specificities, are rarely disclosed. Going back to my example: a saw’s movement is back and forth, but a circular saw’s movement is circular. These functional details diverge from the mechanical perspective, but produce similar results. It is possible to deal with technology’s specificity in this framework, but I believe suwud deals more with the result produced by a tool than with mechanic details. And this is maybe due to the fact that we have a certain intimacy with the tools we work with”.

“… when we created it, the intention we had was simply revealing what Google
StreetView was. And, by selecting some images, and grouping them it was possible to understand better what it was we were browsing, these very odd world of photographs. Google StreetView is a giant 3 dimensional photograph. Something totally new and incredible. Our initial intention was simply showing, understanding and discussing what that was which was in front of us. This maybe is a fundamental suwud characteristic. Most of the time we are only trying to understand things around us, without adding complexity to the enormous chaos that the world already is.” (e-mail statement by Pedro Terra sent to the author on February 28th, 2008)

[full English version pdf of “Why art today? The suwud inquiry.” by Tadeu Chiarelli]