The project Public Gallery for Digital Arts started in
2005 aiming at questioning the concept of art gallery and
museum spaces, and integrating it in the space of the city.
Thus, it was intended to act, bearing in mind “the need to
broaden the artistic speech to the Polis”, following the
concept of global village set by online technologies. The
resort to these technologies has enhanced the development of
this project through the active participations of artists from
all over the world. So, from the beginning of this project, the
agglutinating idea of the need for these participations at a
distance to materialize within the urban space prevailed, based
on some sort of outdoor that could, somehow, evidence that
intimate relationship between the work of art and the daily
space of the city.
Once the urban equipment design, exclusively built for the
event, was settled, it then became absolutely necessary to cater
for the artistic performances at a distance in digital files
that could be used afterwards, including in printing jobs.
According to these principles, the opening sequence of this
artistic project, based on participations at a distance, from
2005 to 2007, was the invitation addressed to different
international artists. They were requested to send their works
of art as in digital productions. After these works were
received, in digital files, they were manipulated and printed in
materials that could then be held in outdoors, available
throughout the village’s walking path.
Later, in 2008, this artistic project of public intervention
shifted to the new virtual technologies, namely the Metaverse,
by resorting to the digital platform Second Life. However, we
can still easily acknowledge, in this shift in resources and
platforms, the upholding of the original premises of the project
Public Gallery for Digital Arts, namely those connected
to the concept of exhibitive urban space and that of artistic
participation at a distance, enhanced by technologies resulting
from globalization.
Next, we present two texts published in the catalogues of the
International Biennal of Vila Nova de Cerveira (2005/2007), as
well as another text related to the presentation of the project
developed for the Second Life platform. Currently, this project
has been established through the virtual creation of the
Portuguese Cultural Centre V/5 Foundation.