Keywords

1 Introduction

Since its inauguration in 1987, many of Itaú Cultural Institute’s actions have focused on the artistic use of technology. This was the case with the institution’s first product, the Computerized Database – which evolved into the current Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia of Brazilian Art and Culture – with the series biennales of art and technology exhibitions – in particular the Art.ficial – and the Itaú Cultural Collection of Art and Technology, among other examples.

Gradually and naturally, the specific requirements of digital/technological art exhibitions generated knowledge about the necessary maintenance of such works, from small repairs to complete restorations. We have two examples of restoration works carried out at Itaú Cultural between 2013 and 2014. The first one, Beabá, by Waldemar Cordeiro and Giorgio Moscati (1968) and the second, which we will briefly discuss here, Desertesejo, by Gilbertto Prado (2000) [1].

The Desertesejo project, by Gilbertto Prado, was selected to be developed in the Itaú Cultural Rumos Novas Mídias program. Proposed as a multiuser 3D virtual environment, Desertesejo provides an interactive experience with the simultaneous presence of a number of participants. The project poetically explores geographic extent, temporal ruptures, solitude, constant reinvention, and proliferation of meeting and sharing points [2,3,4,5,6].

Upon entering the virtual environment, travelers can find a cave from whose roof stones drop gently. Each of them is clickable. After clicking, travelers are transported to a new environment, where they carry this stone. They can then deposit it in one of the hills (apaicheta) present in different spaces. The stone will mark the passage of this traveler and will be an indication to others that they were there.

Entry into this environment, however, can happen in three different ways. By clicking on a stone in the cave, travelers can be transported as a tiger, a snake or an eagle. That is, they can walk, crawl or fly over the environment, as in a shamanic dream, but they will not know in advance which form they will assume in this new space.

The environments are composed of landscapes, fragments of memories and dreams, being navigable in different routes that intersect and alternate between one another, being linked and composed in several dream paths:

A. Gold

This is the zone of silence. In this first room the navigation is lonely, a space without any preordained paths.

B. Viridis

This is the space of heaven and colors. Inside it, the traveler will see signs that indicate the presence of other travelers, but won’t have any direct contact with them.

C. Plumas

(Feathers). This is the axis of dreams and mirages. Within this zone the traveler interacts directly with others, via 3D chat. This is the zone of contact between the avatars of different users.

2 Desertesejo (2000)

Following we carry out a brief exploration of this virtual environment – which could be done online, a guided voyage among many other possibilities [7, 8].

On entering the virtual environment (Fig. 1), the traveler comes across a cave which has rocks falling gently from the ceiling. Any of these rocks can be clicked on. After having clicked on a rock, the traveler is then transported to a new room, in which he or she has to carry the rock selected. The traveler can then place the rock on one of the various heaps (apaicheta) that are found in different locations. The rock will show that this traveler has been through here and will act as a sign of his/her presence to other travelers.

Fig. 1.
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Desertesejo 2000.

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But there are three different ways to enter this room. By clicking on a rock inside the cave, the traveler will be transported as a tiger, a snake or an eagle. In other words: the traveler will be able to walk, slither or fly across the room, as if in a shamanistic dream, but the traveler won’t know beforehand what form he/she will take on in this new location. This means that the ways of seeing things, as well as the speed at which they move about, are distinct and related to the creatures in question. The multiplication of points of view allows one to see the world in different ways. As well as this, you do not always land in the same place in this world - you can land in various different locations.

Although this first environment is a multi-user one, the visitor navigates alone within it. He will not meet anyone else, he will be alone and sometimes he will hear the sound of the wind in some open areas. It is a wide-open space of desert and desires that is a place of loneliness, of loss of references and at the same time a place of freedom and possibilities, a flat space without any preordained paths.

The stones that fall from the cave ceiling will be found in the piles of stone spread around at various points in this first virtual environment. I will talk a little bit about their story.

While the artist was carrying out this work, he hiked through various deserts, such as the Atacama one in Chile, as well as in arid sandy regions, such as the Lençois MaranhensesFootnote 1. When Gilbertto Prado was walking through the desert in Chile, he noticed some of these piles of stones dotted around in that vast space and he wondered what was the purpose of these stones that were piled up and placed close to the paths and trails in the sand. Could it be that they were there to guide someone, so that he would have some sort of reference point in these vast spaces? A native told him that they were special places. When they left home, they used to look for a stone and they would carry it until the moment that they arrived somewhere, which intuition told them was the place where the stone should be deposited together with others. It is a type of offering (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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Desertesejo 2000. Apaicheta.

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Bearing this in mind, the artist transformed these stone mounds (Apaicheta in the Aymara language) into presence markers (visitor counter). When one enters this virtual world, and clicks on the first stone, it will be carried until we find a place where we wish to leave it. Prado opted to do this instead of using a conventional counter at the site’s entrance in order to give the act of visiting a certain poetic visual element. The visitor receives a stone which he will deposit once and only once in one of the spaces spread out across the various environments. It is a way of saying “this is the place where I want to leave my stone for the others”, a way of leaving behind something to mark the fact that you were there, and modify the environment in a subtle way, a trace of this visitor’s path for those who will come afterwards. This may only be done once. If he wishes to leave another stone, the visitor will have to enter the site once more and complete the whole course again.

The second environment is the “Viridis”, a navigation axis which already contains signs of the presence of other visitors, but where it is still not possible to contact them. However, one can see signs of their presence, indicating that there are other navigators in the same environment at that moment.

An example of the Viridis environment is the “five skies room”, the walls of which are made up of the colors of the local skies of the last visitors. When the visitor enters the room, the wall in front of him is the color of the sky of Sao Paulo at that moment. As other people enter the Desertesejo site, a CGI allows the system to discover the location of each one of them at that moment and whether it is morning, afternoon or evening where they are. To the extent that the other visitors stay online, they make up the room’s four walls.

In other words, the navigator is in a room where the colors of the walls change in accordance with the local color of the sky of those people who are entering the environment. This is one way of transforming the place suffixes of the visitors’ e-mails (.br, .uk, .jp, .fr, .es, .de, etc.) into poetic data. The idea is that the visitor knows whether or not someone has come into the room: if the colors of the walls remain the same and the room does not change, then nobody has entered. Whenever the colors change, the visitor knows that someone else is sharing this piece of cyberspace, but he does not who the other person is, what he does, or where he comes from. When someone comes into the environment, the shared presence repositions the visitor within this transformed space. It is possible that the new visitor may have the same color sky as another visitor who is already in the environment. But even if it is another color, another continent, or another time of day, it is the same moment in a sky that involves all of us. Summarizing, it works with the idea of sharing a common space which shelters all of us, (in)dependently of the time zone or places. What you do influences others and is influenced by them, and in one way or another we are all connected.

Lastly, the third axisFootnote 2. In this axis it is possible to have a 3D chat, to meet other people and talk with them through an avatar that was modeled from figures and images of shamanistic flights. Occasionally one of them welcomes the visitor (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Desertesejo 2000. 3D chat room

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Throughout the whole environment of the Desertesejo project, independently of the zone or axis where the users meet, there are both doorways and communication between these spaces. The portals are semi-transparent cylinders that move about in their own axes. When the visitor clicks on a portal he is transported to another area within the environment.

The different ways of interacting within these spaces, by means of the avatars, helps in the determination, potentiality and perception of the proposed environments. The various speeds and manners of moving around of the avatars that cross each other within the environment, together with the different figures and texts generated by the participants in the chat room in their various languages all reinforces distinct positions and visions of a single world, which is dreamlike and under construction. For example, the speed that is available to the snake avatar is very low, which heightens the sensation of crawling with difficulty. This is combined with the angle of vision (at floor level) and the observation of the details closest to hand. In the case of the eagle, the flight allows rapid swerves and dives from the tops of mountains, which is coupled with panoramic views of the environment. It is important to underline that this is the space where the real performance takes place, ruled by other laws that allow one to fly, go through walls, put oneself in situations and obtain angles of vision that vary from the very strange indeed to the most commonplace. All those who are on-line at this specific moment are participating in the same space and sharing this moment, interacting, performing an action, creating texts, generating events (whether pre-programmed or otherwise), making new relations and situations of a poetic nature and performance possible within cyberspace.

The artist makes possible a situation in which people can share a world with other people, as well as being able to perceive it in different ways and from new points of view. What is produced is a potentiality, a potential environment and situation in which the visitor may or may not meet other people, and may or may not take part in other actions and performances, or may simply spend his time navigating, exploring and creating his own journeys, within this virtual poetic environment that is shareable.

The visitor is transported to a piece of a desert, which is occupied on-line, at the present moment in which forests that were previously inhabited are spaces visited by avatars. Where previously there was the bottom of the sea or of a river, now there are eagles flying and snakes slithering. Or, at the threshold we have a cybernetic space that is temporarily inhabited. A world like the mist of a desire, the magic of a fleeting encounter and a vision shared over the net of a dreamlike world that can be restarted and is open to participation.

3 Desertesejo (2014): Restoration Process

While in the 1960s, large computers were limited to the printing of paper characters, 30 years later, low-cost personal computers began to exhibit remarkable graphics capabilities on their color video monitors. It became possible in the early 1990 s to simulate the presence of a microcomputer user in navigable virtual environments, constructed by pixels and/or mathematical projections of virtual polygons. The technique already existed a few years prior, that is true, but was until then limited to very expensive graphic stations.

The works that popularized this technology were video games, of which we can cite “Wolfenstein 3D” and “Quake” (id Software, 1992 and 1996, respectively). In turn, one of the first examples of artistic application for 3D virtual environments is Jeffrey Shaw’s The Legible City, which had one of its first versions introduced in 1989 using a Silicon Graphics station.

One of the first artists to use this feature in Brazil was Gilbertto Prado, with the Desertesejo project. In the year 2000, the work brought interesting innovations in terms of use of available technology [9, 10]. Virtual environments were able to run on personal computers with a good level of graphic quality (required to create a dreamlike look). In the case in question, the relationship between the graphic quality presented, based on an optimization of the number of polygons and texture, and the filtering of a level of detail of information in the modeling of the environments was worked out. As an example, the largest of the environments – the single user (Gold) – had approximately 2,000 polygons and 380 Kbytes in size (20 × 5 km – relative scale), with a very good level of graphic quality. This was possible after several tests and trials of textures and relative fittings between polygons. This work was long and crucial, the process of construction, modeling and programming of Desertesejo taking about a year.

Consequently, the Gold environment described above was particularly large by the standards of the time but ran with good speed on standard personal computers not in a specific application (as did the main video games of the period), but in a browser plugin, directly embedded in the Internet browsing application. The multiuser feature of the third environment (Plumes), with users from anywhere on the planet being represented by avatars and being able to communicate via text, preceded in three years a very popular application that used a similar browser technology: Second Life, by Linden Lab.

The work received the special mention prize at the 9th Prix Möbius International des Multimédias, held in Beijing, China (2001) and participated in several other exhibitions, including the 25th São Paulo Biennial, Net Arte (2002).

In 2014, Desertesejo was selected to participate in the exhibition Singularidades/Anotações, by curators Aracy Amaral, Paulo Miyada, and Regina Silveira. Nevertheless, developed in 1999/2000 using a plugin specific to VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and a 3D chat, the work could no longer be presented. The plugin used 14 years before did not work – it had become obsolete in more recent browsers. How to relive all this in the present time, with other tools and possibilities? How to put the viewer in this dreamlike environment?

The Desertesejo restoration process was the only option so that the work could be presented as originally proposed – as opposed to as a mere video documentation, for example. The work of restoration was intense, as all the environments of the work had to be remodeled in 3D, textures, sounds and lighting recreated, avatars rebuilt, etc. Consequently, even with the creation of new environments developed for different programs, both the looks and experience of the original work were maintained and presented to the public at the 2014 exhibition. The artist’s guidance throughout the restoration process was crucial to that the result obtained was as faithful as possible to the original, as well as the various encounters that happened with the 3D modeler in the Unity environment to discuss this new context and the subsequent approval of each stage. For the artist, it was essential that the poetic dimension of the work be preserved, as well as the relationship with the users in the navigable spaces (Figs. 4, 5 and 6).

Fig. 4.
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Desertesejo, Gilbertto Prado, (2000/2014)

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Fig. 5.
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Desertesejo (2000/2014), #Tempo Narrador, 15º Festival de Inverno do Sesc, Petrópolis, Quitandinha, Rio de Janeiro, 2016. Five skies room.

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Fig. 6.
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Desertesejo, Gilbertto Prado (2000/2014). Arte Cibernética - Coleção Itaú Cultural, Museu Nacional do Conjunto Cultural da República, Brasília, 2016.

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For Karen O’Rourke, the experience proposed by artists in digital art projects beyond the poetic issue also considers a series of composition, reading and practical elements that ensure a better understanding of the project.

“Digital art is part of the temporal development in/through the interfaces. Even if the device cannot be summarized as being the work, it is a not inconsiderable component of the experience. One part of the interface is fixed, while the other depends on choices (i.e., the desires of the viewer) and another is open to randomness of material manipulation (bug, crashes in the material, software aging, etc.). Thus, in each new occurrence and presentation is a time to rethink this relationship.” O’ROURKE 2011, p. 137 [11]

While there are a number of devices and interfaces that locate us and indicate moments and eras, this does not mean that they cannot be occasionally updated. They are new choices that present themselves and new possible displacements [12, 13].

During the restoration process, which lasted almost a year, issues that were a problem to be worked on in the first version, such as the speed of navigation in the environments, had been transformed14 years later. Computers already allowed much more complex and elaborate environments, as well as a much faster and frantic navigation flow. The initially desired speed of navigation, however, was slow and delicate, not only due to a limitation of the machine, but by a coincident desire also in the poetics.

During the restoration process, in addition to the regular face-to-face meetings, there was an immense correspondence exchange between the team participants. One of the notes shows the artist’s intention, assigned to the modeler/programmer, as opposed to the machinic speed possible and desired in the work:

I also remember the “climate” of lethargy, the slow speed of navigation, as if displaced in time, the weight of the environment, the solitude of the solo navigation, as in a space between dream and reality. That sensation the moment you wake up, that you do not know whether you are floating or walking, whether it is cold or hot, the weight of the environment, and the immensity of space. Majestic and lonely, with no way out. (PRADO, project notes)

In another brief comparison between versions, in the environments of the 2000 version show the mouse control of the Cosmo Player navigator, in the environments made in VRML. In 2014, there is no such insertion in the environment using the Unity 3D game engine. Still in 2000, although we already presented the work projected in some occasions, the immersion in the images given was more difficult, given the relative pixelization. The 2000 version provided a better browsing experience on the computer screen itself or in monitors, unlike the new version, which due to the resolution of the images, allowed the exploration through the space and walking using the joypad control in one hand, as opposed to the mouse next to the keyboard (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.
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Desertesejo, Gilbertto Prado. Views of environments with the Cosmos Player plugin (2000) and the 2014 version.

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In the videos below, we can see an example of navigation in the environments in the different versions:

Desertesejo 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fov7V32pF8

Desertesejo 2014: https://youtu.be/nzPcC0WJFs8

In 2016, Jonathan Biz Medina and João Amadeu made a version of Desertesejo VR for Oculus Rift.

In 2018, on the occasion of the Paradox(es) of Contemporary Art at the MAC – USP [14], in São Paulo and, simultaneously, the individual exhibition Alameda Circuit, at the Alameda Art Laboratory of Mexico [15], new maintenance and adjustments were made to the 2014 version of Desertesejo, also with the participation of Fernando Oliveira and Felipe Santini (Figs. 8 and 9).

Fig. 8.
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Desertesejo, Gilbertto Prado (2000/2014). Circuito Alameda, Claustro Bajo, curatorship Jorge La Ferla, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, 2018.

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Fig. 9.
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Desertesejo, Gilbertto Prado (2000/2014). Modos de ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 anos, OCA – Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo, 2017; Paradoxo(s) da Arte Contemporânea, curatorship Ana Gonçalves Magalhães and Priscila Arantes, MAC-USP, Sao Paulo, 2018.

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We note that the works go beyond the appearances and lines of code and beyond the devices and interfaces and possible enchantments, ensuring the association of complex universes, in an ephemeral approximation and coherence, to bring the tenuity of these incorporations with new insights and conjugations.

Restoring a work of art, and in this case digital art, is more than reconstructing environments: an understanding of the poetics of the work and the subtleties of the work, such as the colors of the spaces, speeds of navigation, possible routes and interactions, etc. is necessary. One cannot generalize what would be a “standard” restoration process for works of art using relatively recent technologies. Such works vary widely between technologies and proposals. There are purely procedural works, virtually independent of the hardware employed, even for those with strong object characteristics, which would be disfigured without specific hardware [16].

The Desertesejo restoration sought to recreate virtual environments that allowed the same interactive experience of the original work. In this case, the technical issue, while obviously important, is secondary. What is it that really matters if Desertesejo is developed for a VRML plugin or a game engine such as Unity 3D? Much more importantly, what must guide any process of restoration of technological/digital works is the poetic aspect. That is what really matters.