Page 29 - Fundação MEO - Net Arte no Triângulo das Bermudas

become fully internalised. However, only Mediações, Cyber 98,
and Playmode included works by Portuguese artists. Many of the
earliest net art projects in Portugal emerged within academic contexts
in major cities, where initiatives focusing on the increasing presence
of information and communication technologies in Portuguese society
were also organised.
The exhibition Net Arte no Triângulo das Bermudas,
much like what Luís Silva had previously observed, does not present
a punk, subversive, countercultural phenomenon per se, but rather
a landscape of disengagement – expressed through humour and
irony – by artists, designers, computer engineers, and communication
science specialists in their exploration of the creative and liberatory
space afforded by the Internet. The exhibition showcases a segment
of this techno-cultural context in the form of both documentation
and artistic projects by Beatriz Albuquerque, Daniel Pinheiro & Annie
Abrahams, the collective Pizz Buin, Rui Torres, Susana Mendes Silva,
the collective wr3ad1ng d1g1t5, Luísa Ribas & João Cruz, Mário
Cameira, Rudolfo Quintas, Alice dos Reis, @c & Lia / @c & Rodrigo
Carvalho, Joana Chicau, and Luís Fernandes.
The documentary dimension of the exhibition materialises through
a curated selection of documents related to conferences, festivals,
gatherings, and exhibitions, offering insight into the development of
the phenomenon in Portugal. It encompasses publications, brochures,
television programmes, photographs, posters, website screenshots,
books, catalogues, magazines, doctoral theses, and artists’ writings.
The artistic projects featured in the exhibition, in turn, provide a subtle
yet compelling portrayal of the disruptive strategies devised by artists
working in this medium – often with the intent of challenging the
country’s weighty conservative and culturally traditionalist legacy. As
an ever-evolving field, net art in Portugal emerges at the intersection of
multiple disciplines, including computing, literature, visual culture, and
digital technology. The fourteen artistic projects presented are parti-
cularly engaged with areas such as cyberpoetry, digital radio, program-
ming, generative art, web design, audiovisual performance, digital
games, and electronic music. They explore the artisticity of the Internet,
addressing themes as diverse as identity, Portuguese culture and lite-
rature, institutional critique, globalisation, authorship, the notion of the
artwork, the concept of the “cyborg,” and the amplification of sensory
perception through computing and improvisational audiovisual perfor-
mance. The exhibition sheds light on a phenomenon that, from
its inception, accompanied technological innovation and fostered
artistic experimentation.

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Sofia Ponte
Sofia Ponte