Imaging São Paulo

In December of 2005, I was invited by Museu de Art Contemporênea (Museum of Contemporary Art) da Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo) to participate in “Acta Media In Signo São Paulo (International Symposium of Media Art and Digital Culture)” and to produce “Imaging Place: São Paulo” in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. On December 10th, I delivered a public lecture titled “Realidade Virtual para Representar Lugares (Virtual Reality Represent Places)”. This lecture was translated into Portuguese. On December 12th and 13th, I conducted a two-day workshop titled “Oficina De Tecnologia Digital E Geografia Imersiva (Workshop of Digital Technology and Immersive Geography)” at the Museum and assembled a team of local collaborators. “Imaging Place: São Paulo” was added to the larger “Imaging Place” project and exhibited in a variety of venues starting in 2007

The São Paulo work focused on a small historic building in the city’s center known as the “Castelinho da rua Apa (the Little Castle of Apa Street.)” In 1937, the castelinho was the site of a gruesome multiple murder and suicide. The details of what happened the night of May 12th that year remain unclear, as everyone involved died. The story survives as a kind of mysterious urban legend. As the user navigates from the chaos of the streets of São Paulo’s to the interior the castelinho, she experiences a shift from a quasi-documentary nonlinear narrative to a deeply psychological, dreamlike state.