General Coordinator: Prof. Doutor Rui Valério

(Department of Visual Arts, University of Évora)

2009-2017

1. DOSSIER Art, Science and Technology

Projects concerning the relation between artistic and scientific forms of language. Truth and value in art and in science. Artistic projects and their technological materialization. Concept and execution. The contents of art and technical progress. Aesthetic implications in the new technologies and recent advances in science and technology.

Researchers responsible, titles and summaries of projects in progress:

Manuela Cristóvão

“Mixed techniques in the area of pictorial expression: painting, engraving and photography – sensitive manipulations”.

The aim is to carry out practical studies and reflections concerning the mixed use of painting, (non-toxic) engraving and photography, in order to develop ‘images of pictorial expression’ that use these means and techniques, connected and combined with informatic and digital means.

Sebastião Resende

“Lightness: Project, Processes and Contingencies”

  • Reflecting on these expressions in my own work.
  • Characterizing the reasons for lightness, on their symbolic and poetic planes, as attributes of intelligence present in many works of art.
  • Showing, if possible evaluating, how light, the experience of colour, magnetic fields, action in spaces without references like the desert and digital supports, in their immateriality support, indeed benefit expectations of lightness.
  • Documental and photographic survey, from among past works, of examples that I recognize as my ideal of lightness, as a discerned emotional quality.
  • Attempt to demonstrate this position of value in contemporary society.
  • To establish relations between materials that are solid, liquid, made of gas, of light, of sound and digital supports. Intermediability.

José Eduardo Machado

“Analysis of the pictorial language used in informatic circles”

The study and analysis of:

Whether there is a connection between the writing mentioned in the previous point and the sound of the original word or if it is just to save letters.

  • The non-preference of verbal language in interpersonal communication
  • Mechanisms that lead to written messages using ‘emotion icons’ instead of words
  • Mechanisms underlying the replacement of words by some form of shorthand

2. DOSSIER Art and Society

The general objective of this research area is to study how the arts fit into a social and human context. With this in mind, attention is paid not only to the contents of the visual arts produced yesterday and today, but also the manner in which these same are seen and recognised by the outside world. Also relevant is a survey and study of the outside reality, from an aesthetic-visual point of view.  Thus it is possible to have recourse to the writing of texts but also the construction of discourses including images and sound, when this is justified. Within this research area are included projects that interconnect in an interdisciplinary fashion the visual arts, the so-called human sciences, such as History, Sociology, Psychology, Anthropology, Museology, Communication Sciences and Aesthetics.   The fact that they function within a research centre that combines scientific and artistic approaches  enables projects to use a range of methodological principles, with a creative freedom and recourse to intuition that are characteristic of the Arts. Though respecting the methodologies of various sciences, these are considered solely as means, to arrive at conclusions that fit into the domain of the Arts. Polymedia may be read here as the successive or combined use of different methodologies.

Researchers responsible, titles and summaries of projects in progress:

Pintor Pedro Portugal

“The Art that is”

The cause of the ‘art thing’ and the cause of art. The thing of art. When a thing becomes art. This study researches and theorizes about when, how and why symbolic representations come to form part of the category of Art. Initially there was drawing (40,000 B.C.). Drawing became writing (8,000 B.C.). Genetic evolution (mirror neurons) and civilizational evolution (culture), and the notion of universals of artistic practice. Cyclical metamorphoses of artistic periods: Archaic – Classical – Baroque + Modern/Contemporary. The ‘Artom’ as the aggregating element of the thing that is art. ‘Explainism’ as a form of explaining and doing art.

Prof. Doutor Filipe Rocha da Silva

“Observatory of Art Criticism”

Continuation of the project of surveying and studying the reality of art criticism and artistic journalism, after the publication of a book of preliminary notes made at the beginning of this project.

Under the auspices of this project:

Seminar: ABOUT LUSITANIA. January 2009.

Lusitânia was a periodical founded and directed by Martim Avillez from New York between 1988 and 2001 and which, despite the importance and wealth of its contents, is little known in Portugal.

Sub-theme of the Observatory:

“Anatomy of the unaesthetic”

The ugly is aesthetically much more active and consensual than the beautiful. In relation to it we may come to an understanding and detect considerable social consensus. Furthermore, it is generally an aesthetic impulse that leads the citizen to propose or promote public works that are ugly and that stand out from the aesthetically neutral background that constitutes the usual, everyday reality. The study of the unaesthetic is thus the best way, and maybe the only possible way, of discussing the beautiful.

Prof. Doutor Filipe Rocha da Silva

“Variations on Mannerism”

Publication of the conclusions of research carried out by FRS in the course of his doctorate.