Brazilian Electronic Literature Collection

Despite Brazil’s continental dimensions, Brazilian electronic literary production is concentrated on a few metropolitan areas, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo being the most prolific. Though one can certainly detect interconnections amongst the producers and critics of electronic literature, it would be somewhat premature to speak of a national (in the sense of all-encompassing) community of electronic literature in Brazil. There are, however, burgeoning sub-communities well worth mentioning, particularly if one is willing to aggregate electronic art as an “edge” to a Brazilian network of Electronic Literature. Institutionally, São Paulo houses both the internationally renowned FILE (Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica) , a success story from its inception, and Itaú Cultural, the cultural branch of the eponymous bank, which hosts and maintains the most complete online encyclopedia of Brazilian interchanges between art and technology (http://elmcip.net/databases-and-archives/enciclopedia-itau-cultural-arte...). On the scholarly side of the São Paulo sub-community one will inevitably encounter the Programa de Pós-graduação em Comunicação e Semiótica at Pontifícia Universidade Católica São Paulo. The program at PUC-SP has produced a variety of dissertations on electronic language over the years. Notably, professor Lucia Santaella, the director of CIMID, Center of Research in Digital Media, PUCSP has advised a plethora of scholars of electronic language and could be regarded as one of the key nodes of a “paulista” network community in Brazilian electronic literature. A similar “network logic” applies to artist, curator, and scholar of electronic literature Giselle Beiguelman, whose works are featured in electronic literature syllabi all over the planet. Still in the São Paulo sphere, Wilton Azevedo is a rare example of a full-fledged electronic artist cum scholar: co-author of Interpoetry (alongside Philadelpho Menezes), Azevedo is a poet, musician, graphic designer, and academic. Rio de Janeiro has Andre Vallias as perhaps its most well-known representative in electronic literature. Working in electronic poetry since 1988, Vallias is coeditor (alongside poet and critic Eucanaã Ferraz) of the online literary magazine Errática, a prolific critical resource on poetry and new media. Ample documentation on Vallias’ paradigmatic poems as well as the author’s participation during the several stages of development of the Brazilian Collection have amounted to rich entries in the ELMCIP Knowledge Base. Notable examples are IO (http://elmcip.net/creative-work/io-analysis), and Nous N’avons pas Compris Descartes (http://elmcip.net/creative-work/nous-navons-pas-compris-descartes). Rio de Janeiro headquarters Oi Futuro, an institute which has consistently invested in and curated exhibits of electronic poetry, visual poetry, and new media installations. A highlight from the Oi Futuro output is the exhibit POIESIS ENTRE PIXEL E PROGRAMA, co-curated by Vallias, Friedrich Block, and Adolfo Montejo Navas in 2007 (http://elmcip.net/event/poiesis-entre-pixel-e-programa). The full catalog and individual creative works (including images and videos) featured in the Poiesis exhibit are currently contained in the Brazilian Collection. A cosmopolitan carioca, Eduardo Kac, is another central figure of a Brazilian electronic literature network community. Responsible for revolutionary works such as the “Genesis” installation and the fluorescent GFP bunny “Alba” —a piece of transgenic art consisting of an albino bunny injected with a green fluorescent protein—Eduardo Kac has been an active voice in the theorization of new media art as well as a remarkable practitioner of digital language as it relates to and dialogues with biology, sociology, and culture. Because Kac embodies the kind of post or trans-nationality which is characteristic of the electronic medium, it is difficult to sell him as a typical “Brazilian” author. Yet, in the end, passports do make a difference and databases are built on rather trite binary distinctions. As such, Kac is included in the Brazilian collection as a central node. Additionally and rather parenthetically, I should mention that apart from the examples extracted from Kac’s Holopoetry, a great number of Kac’s works would technically fall under the heading of electronic or bio-art rather than electronic literature. Decisions were made on an individual basis. The Genesis installation, for instance, has warranted its individual ELMCIP Knowledge Base entry (http://elmcip.net/creative-work/genesis), whereas the GFP bunny was omitted. A notable geographical outlier is NUPILL - Núcleo de Pesquisas em Informática, Literatura e Linguística, linked to the Department of Vernacular Language and Literatures, in the Center of Communication and Expression at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Headed by new media poet and academic Alckmar Luiz dos Santos, NUPILL has organized the first international Symposium of Electronic Literature (I Simpósio Internacional e V Simpósio Nacional de Literatura e Informática) in 2012 (http://elmcip.net/event/i-simposio-internacional-e-v-simposio-nacional-d...).