The project Public Gallery for Digital Arts

The project Public Gallery for Digital Arts, which is presented in the 5th International Printmaking Biennial of Douro / 2010, started in Vila Nova de Cerveira 2005 aiming at questioning the concept of art gallery and museum spaces, and integrating it in the space of the city. This, 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, drew and disposable specifically to public way, 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 after its reception 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.

The Second Life platform as a relational, ludic and global media has enabled the systematic encounter between several international artists who have created artistic projects on this digital platform. In the follow-up of the Public Gallery project for the Digital Arts on the SL, invitations were addressed to many avatar_artists who developed works that were available on different Second Life sights and places, namely since 2008, in an continuous form in Commercial Square / Portugal Lisbon (101,4,23).

From 2008 onwards, two poets – the Portuguese Ernesto de Melo e Castro and the Brazilian Jorge Luís António – have replied to the Public Gallery project for the Digital Arts on the SL. Their works might be viewed as a whole as part of the permanent collection of the SL V/5 Foundation at Sim Angels Isles (186,200,22), along with works proposed by the digital avatar_artists: Juanita Deharo_Australia; Magix Merlin_ Switzerland; Sunflower Aichi_Tunísia/Switzerland; Elro Tuominen_Spain: Vitos Porta_Portugal; Soleil Oh_France; Gracek Adamczyk_Poland; Mirodi Tremor_Taiwan; Moya Janus_France; WIN Iwish_England; Shihi Laa_Scotland and Filthy Fluno_U.S.A.; Urbanist of the SIM Angel Isles, avatar ZEB BING/architect Pierre-Divier Fouqué, Nice School.

For the V Douro’s Biennial two avatar_artists Mirodi Tremor_Taiwan e Xiaoduo Abbot_China , were invited to send through the Web in order to present the artistic projects they have created for the Public Gallery for the Digital Arts on the SL 

The invitation was officially put forward when they were asked to send their projects in high resolution files so that they could then be printed as final art.

During the V Douro’ s Biennial these digital Works will be available all along the village walking pathway of Vila de Alijó on the two urban settings specifically destined to the Public Gallery for the Digital Arts.

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.