Page 105 - ARTE!Brasileiros #50

helplessness in the face of disaster. “When a solution to leave them intact until the team In the dIgItal world a whirlwind of images
electricity, gas and water stopped, when there found out what their fate would be, although bombards us every fraction of a second and
was no food or fuel and there was no way to keep more and more employees expressed that it everything can dissipate over the network just
warm, there was nothing that photography could would be better to simply discard them. As as quickly. With the purpose of discussing the
do to help them. The photographs seemed to the campaign progressed, an issue that still graphic memory of the main socio-political
document and deliver the scenes of the terrible hammered the heads of the organizers was events in Brazil since the inauguration of
event to people in safe places ”, he would later the possibility of providing a financial return to President Jair Bolsonaro, graphic designer
explain, about the coverage of the tragedy in the affected community. A temporary housing Didiana Prata launches Dissident Calendar,
images, in the prologue to the book Tsunami, scheme was beginning to be implemented and carried out by mapping the aesthetics of images
Photographs and Then, organized later by him needed funds to finance its construction and in the Instagram database.
in an effort to portray the construction of the its workers. They agreed that it was significant The project shows the archeology of visual
Memory Salvage and Lost & Found projects in to show these records to anyone who could not narratives of Brazilian graphic memory. “The
a bilingual publication - Japanese and English visit the collection. idea is to be able to observe and archive these
- offering rich details, interviews with visitors One resolution was to expose the photos that new aesthetics that come from the network”,
to the exhibitions and, of course, some of the were once lost, thus creating the Lost & Found points out Didiana, who shows the partial results
exposed images. Project, taking them from the International of the doctoral research in the postgraduate
Before that, his greatest hope for avoiding Photography Gallery, in Japan, to the Center for course in Design at FAU / USp, under the guidance
inertia in the face of the tragedy was to travel to Contemporary Photography, in Australia, and of the professor. dr. Giselle Beiguelman and
one of the least affected areas in the province, the Aperture Foundation, in the United States. developed during her residency at the Inova
to spend money with local traders and to try to “We chose to display the photos in an exhibition USp Artificial Intelligence Center. These
move the local economy a little. format because we wanted people to see them dissident images, in the opinion of the designer,
“Please let me know if you were able to in person, not through printed material or the bring new vocabulary that also concerns the
collaborate,” said a message spread over the Internet,” reports Takahashi, noting that just aesthetic manifestation of anyone. “This is of
networks eight days after his visit. It was a call before the exhibition went off the paper the interest as we work with a larger sample of
by volunteers to integrate the cleaning and organizers were still asking questions like: “What images and access to other narratives such
cataloging efforts of the photos - family portraits, if we can’t raise enough money for temporary as visual language, divergence and diversity of
home records etc. - taken by the tsunami and housing? What if it is ethically wrong to show production, not only by artist artists but also
eventually rescued by the SDF (Self-Defense the photos publicly? ”. by citizens, engaged people and with diverse
Forces). Following the opposite direction, the show activisms”.
Responding to the summons, Takahashi has become a way of delivering a narrative about The Calendar is in process and the concern
contacted Professor Kuniomi Shibata, who the people affected by the tsunami that fled a is to archive this production chronologically.
led the Memory Salvage project, under the story filled with numbers that would involuntarily “The first stage is to classify based on the
supervision of the FUJIFILM Corporation. At this be translated into a tale about tragedy or a temporality in which they were published,
time, the volunteers were still working in the compelling allegory about hope in the face of creating a chronological visual narrative,
Shibata room, at Otsuma Women’s University, chaos. Lost & Found - with records providing different from what occurs in the fragmented
and there were barriers to be circumvented so rich eminences of history, embracing a larger visualization of these images on the application
that people could search for the photographs on constellation of what remains of the tragedy pages. Hence, looking at them and categorizing
their computers - later two pieces of software and also visually impressive images as a result them within aesthetic filters, categories that
were developed so that the images could be of its chemical deformation - provides a space I am proposing”. To store millions of images
found according to facial recognition and area for suspension in this dichotomy. and respective captions, Didiana deepens her
in which they were rescued. It was necessary to research with the Inova USp team, using artificial
digitize them. However, the electricity supply why do we photograph? intelligence and machine learning to train robots
was scarce and irregular, which means that “Why are people always taking pictures?” it is to classify images within an aesthetic criterion.
they needed a way to do it without depending a question that seems to plague Munemasa “The image classifiers that exist in the market
on the inconsistent power supply, that is, using Takahashi recurrently, at least throughout the are all with a commercial or surveillance bias
digital cameras. The obstacle of the method, writing of the book Tsunami, Photographs and and I am not interested in this profile, nor in
in turn, was the scarcity of equipment and the Then. this type of labeling”.
working environment. It was contaminated, Photography creates a reality that exists This new trend is the use of artificial
full of small dust particles from the dry sludge precisely in it, neither before nor outside it, it intelligence linked to aesthetics and artistic
that could damage the equipment, meaning provides an indicative trace of who was there, production and, for the designer, this is the point.
that any tool would have to be donated, not as they looked like. Walter Benjamin would “Not everything is in the Calendar, because we
borrowed. Incredulous, again, Takahashi sent a affirm that “in the cult of the memory of loved are finalizing the image classification part and
request to the web. The equipment was offered ones, distant or disappeared, the value of cult improving the process”. Didiana will refine the
in a few hours, some by totals unknown to of images is the last refuge. In the fleeting images and assist curation, as she says, with her
the photographer, others by colleagues and expression of a human face, in old photos, for robot friends in the relevant aesthetic categories.
teachers at his photography school. the last time emanates aura. That is what lends Due to the risk of falling into oblivion, due to
As the cleaning and digitalization process them that melancholy beauty, which cannot be the flow of overproduction and broadcasting
started to go smoothly, with 20 to 80 volunteers compared to anything”. in the networks to which they belong, the
showing up every weekend, the reproduced If the photographs grouped for the Lost & images are cataloged and archived, based
photos started to accumulate. In this way, a Found project are well received by visitors, it on the analysis of some hashtags. The site
space was created to return them to the owners. may be possible to speak of a reframing of captures, indexes and publishes daily three most
They were indexed and put back together in what these photographs have symbolized, liked images with hashtags #designativista,
physical albums, with three images on their moving away from an exclusive testimony of #desenhospelademocracia, #marielle presente,
covers for identification by the former owner, disaster, returning to approach a channeler of #coleraalegria. Marielle, according to Didiana,
providing the return of a portion of what was the universal issues of being human; as Ursula is an important hashtag due to the number of
usurped by the disaster. By 2014, at least 300,000 Le Guin wrote, of what is “in the womb of time, images and the various activisms contained not
physical photographs had been returned to their and death, and chance”. only of a political nature, but also for the issue
owners. Perhaps, like the character Hana, by of blacks in Brazil, racism and gender issues.
writer Amós Oz, people cling to memory like TECH: MEMORy [pAgES 86 AND 87] “The idea is that people can consult the Calendar
someone who clings to a parapet, in a high place, for other issues such as journalism, sociology,
and in a time when things are so ephemeral, they DISSIDENT CALENDAR, politics, art.” The hashtags established as a
entrust memories to external devices because search filter are considered to be representative
they want to leave evidence that identifies them. GRAPHIC DOCUMENT OF of dissent and collective manifestations in the
BRAZILIAN POLITICS face of the current moment in our history.
hopeless box How do the images posted on Instagram differ
The photos arrived at the project washed, from those on the Dissident Calendar? “In fact,
soaked and even completely obliterated. For Didiana Prata works with images of the on Instagram, you are subject to viewing the
a time, those that were considerably damaged, flow of networks that are cataloged and images of the people you follow, you can even
whose condition was practically impossible to archived from the hashtags analysis follow a hashtag, but the images that will appear
be restored, were assigned to the Hopeless Box, By LEONOR AMARANTE are the ones that the algorithm selected within

105

10/04/2020 01:29
Encarte_INGLES_50_16pags.indd 105 10/04/2020 01:29
Encarte_INGLES_50_16pags.indd 105