Draft:Cicero Inacio da Silva

Cicero Inacio da Silva is a Brazilian scholar, scientist, artist, curator, and new media theoretician. He started out in 1997 as a digital media artist, then later moved from the hypertext to the internet within the postmodernism methodology. His work includes hypertext and other digital art forms. From 2006 to 2008 he was the director of the FILE Labo hosted at SESI in São Paulo.

Biography
da Silva was born in Novo Hamburgo, Brazil. He was raised in Sapiranga, Rio Grande do Sul, and studied computer science in UK. In 1992 he began to study philosophy in Brazil, but changed soon to psychology, with an emphasis on psychoanalysis.

da Silva's work is in digital media, computer art, postmodern art and experimental code.

Beginning in 1997 from semiotic and linguistic reflections (Austin, Derrida, Peirce, Lacan, Ted Nelson), da Silva developed several projects which led him from experimental digital media to computer art. Critically da Silva analyzed their function for the construction of reality. da Silva elaborates on these reflections in his writings and works. In the digital media art field, he also produced extensively new media art pieces based on the use of the Internet (the so called “netart” field in late 1990’s and beginning of 2000’s), such as the 1990/2000’s Plato Online project, which was considered by the specialized art & technology field one of the first explorations on the deep problems related to the so called “hoaxes” on Internet. The project developed the first experiments using artificial intelligence bots based on the first text parsers that produced millions of texts and spread them on the Internet, creating a debate about how to trust in online texts published in websites and blogs. Afterwards, Cicero started a long time collaboration with media artists related the use of locative media art, producing several pieces with the use of the first GPS enable cell phones. The first piece developed with a GPS was called GPSArt. The artwork was an applet (as app’s were called in 2004) designed to be connected to Google Maps, recording all the movements of the user of the cell phone and creating lines over the maps. In the same field, Cicero developed the works GPSFace, a social network based on the location of the user, the HiperGps and HiperGeo projects, that created a platform for media artists to develop their own locative media projects by associating digital media artifacts (film, music and animations) to a latitude and longitude. In the locative media field he also started a collaboration with the artist Brett Stalbaum. Together they developed the project Walkingtools. The Walkingtools project became a source for teaching digital media students how to use locative media, as is the case of several activist projects that were based on the technology, such as the Immigrant Transborder Tool and the Gun Geo Marker project. Currently Cicero and Brett are running a project called Calzona, California Collective, where they are developing several media projects based on the use of computer electronics and sensors, such as Arduino’s, Rapsberry Pi’s, Orange Pi’s and supercomputer theories to address issues such as distributed computation, sensor networks, creative code and art and education using computational power. The Calzona Collective is also debating the problem related to gentrification and the use of land by acquiring on Ebay very cheap lots in the California desert.

da Silva works uses a variety of materials, forms and techniques: text, installation, computers and creative code.

In his lectures and articles, da Silva analyzes new media art, media history, computer art and remix. As theoretician and curator, he advocates for a form of new media art that includes the history of technology and history of science. In his function as a university professor at Federal University of São Paulo and director of institutions like Electronic Language International Festival-FILE Labo, Software Studies Lab at University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Cultural Analytics Lab his works aim to develop the so-called computer art through conferences, exhibitions and publications.

Research and teaching
From 1998, da Silva taught at various institutions, including the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo in São Paulo. In 2013 he was appointed to teach as Associate Professor for Digital Media at the Federal University of São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil. From 2008 to 2018 he became Visiting Professor for visual media at the University of California, San Diego, San Diego.

Curatorial activities
From 2001 da Silva worked as artistic advisor for the Electronic Language International Festival, which he then headed from 2004 until 2010 as its symposium director. From 2009 to 2010, he curated the digital art sector of the Brazilian Digital Culture Forum.

Decorations and awards

 * 2010: Digital Communities honorary mention for the Digital Art curatorship of the Brazilian Digital Culture Forum at the Prix Ars Electronica