Pontos de cultura, (Cultural Points), Brazil
August - April 07

Rich Mix has sent two digital artists to Brazil to help establish a network for the sharing of cultural products. This is part of the Brazilian government’s  Pontos de Cultura initiative. The artists are Pedro Zaz and Philip Mayer- Pedro left in August and Philip in September for 6 months. They are spending time in Sao Paolo and visiting developing their own projects which allow on-line sharing and broadcasting of images, videos and music produced in Brazil with the rest of the world. Visit their blogs to track their progress while they're there!

Pedro Zaz's project in Brazil:

Pedro Zaz will be building a piece of software that lives online and allows people to upload video clips for Vjing and play with them live. He will involve different people from Brazilian hotspots plus international celebrity VJs in the making of content for this online video database.

http://showskills.com/brazcast/

Philip Mayer's project in Brazil:

Philip Mayer will be building a web TV channel and teaching people in cultural hotspots how to have their own regular show on it.

http://www.fluxo.org/blog

Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian music superstar who is also the country’s Minister for Culture has spearheaded the digitisation of cultural centres in Brazil enabling this pioneering project. The Cultural Points consist of connecting up existing cultural organisations all over Brazil, ranging from film clubs and samba schools to native American groups documenting their culture. Under ‘Cultura Viva’, these communities have been provided with multimedia studios configured with Free and Open Source Software tools and supported with regional workshops enabling them to produce digital content and to communicate with other groups across Brazil and beyond. Currently there are over 300 Cultural Points, and there will be 600 of them by the end of this year.

This cultural exchange program, which is supported by the Arts Council, is a great opportunity to develop an ongoing exchange of film, music, fashion, food, photography and much more - both produced in the UK and in cultural centres around Brazil.

Pontos de cultura

http://www.estudiolivre.org
Download a .pdf detailing the Cultural Points (in English) here

Our host partner in Brazil is the IPTI - Institute de Pesquisas em Tecnologia da Informação (Institute of Information Technology Research) - a Sao Paolo multidisciplinary centre of study, research and installation of IT services.

http://www.ipti.org.br

These placements are part of a wider program of cultural exchange, with artists being sent to Thailand and Hewlett-Packard labs in Bangalore and Bristol.

Information on the other placements

www.dshed.net

www.artscouncil.org.uk/aboutus

All the placements are supported by

Arts Council England, Diffraction project

A new exchange scheme set up by the Arts Council and the British Council with Brazil is:

www.artistlinks.org.br