Cinema para paisagens: o espaço-tempo da exibição audiovisual como dimensão estética e criativa

Abstract

The human quest for the reproduction of movement through images is old. It is so old that it is difficult to establish a date to herald the 'invention' of cinema. For the commercial film industry, however, this landmark is quite definitive: the 28th December 1895, which marks the first paid public exhibition of Lumiere Brothers' movies. What seemed to be inaugurated at that time is not simply an illusory technique to reproduce movement, but also a spectacle concept which was paved during the following ten or twenty years. As a result of economical and ideological issues, cinema migrated from being a practice of 'writing movement with light' to become a well established and standardised medium. Along with this narrative, a "cinema situation" was also born. Using this model, the audience is subjected to a fixed screening architecture, which favours motor inactivity and focus on the screen rather than on the social interaction of the spectators and their active role. Since the beginning of television and videography, this cinema situation has been contested. With those technologies as well as digital devices, audiovisual was no longer restricted to dark rooms, comfortable seats and white screens. Any and every environment became a potential audiovisual exhibition environment. This breakthrough found in the arts a promising field due to its aesthetic, social, cultural appeals. Throughout the last 60 years, the amount of audiovisual gadgets that are portable and interactive has increased. As a result, audiovisual has become the most used medium to exchange information of all sorts textual, visual, audio etc. On a daily basis, human beings move fast and comfortably between material life and cyberspace. Material reality is always an incentive to reach virtual reality and vice-versa. This work is based on this contemporary cultural context, one of audiovisual omnipresence and permanent exchange between these two windows. The search is to unveil the point where these two ways of experiencing space and time touch each other and mix together; how they evolve from being excludent to become complementar. The background for this quest explores the use of the aesthetic and creative potentialities in audiovisual exhibitions and all its inner elements, which includes an active spectator. This is how cinemas for environments are created