Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

i2ADS is an R&D Unit based at the Faculty of Fine Arts of University of Porto, Portugal (FBAUP).

Its mission is to promote research in the fields of Fine Arts, Design, Drawing and Performing Arts, with an emphasis on the practical and educational impact of artistic research in society. The main goals are the creation of a shared research culture between artistic areas to inform and enhance its practice and the promotion of debates regarding the social, cultural and technological frames of art and design.

i2ADS’ organization comprises Research Programs and Art-Based Labs on Arts Education, Critique and Society; Interculturality and Society; Artistic Production, Processes and Technological Studies; Artistic Practice, Politics and Social Engagement; Computation, Hybrid Practices and Culture; and Drawing Across Disciplines. The Unit supports two Doctoral Programs (Fine Arts and Art Education) at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto.

Its team is composed of researchers from the Faculty of Fine Arts and the Faculty of Architecture (University of Porto) and the School of Music and Performing Arts (Polytechnic of Porto), PhD FCT grants and collaborating researchers from several Universities.

i2ADS is an Institutional and Portal member of the Society of Artistic Research (SAR) and the European Educational Research Association (EERA).

DRAWinU

DRAWinU — Drawing Across University Borders.

status	active
portal	i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
admins	Fabrício Fava, Paulo Luís Almeida
members	Paulo Luís Almeida, RC i2ADS, Marina Vale Guedes, David Lopes

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PÁR-A-GEM

PÁR-A-GEM — The importance of Time in times of Time compression within contemporary artistic practices

status	active
portal	i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
admins	Fabrício Fava, Paulo Luís Almeida
members	RC i2ADS, Daniel Sorrentino

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OPDrawing

OPDrawing — The Observation of Perception, considered through Drawing

status	active
portal	i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
admins	Fabrício Fava, Paulo Luís Almeida
members	Mike Croft

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2SMART

The intersection of art and science, or art and engineering, or art and technology, is a common trope since the 1960s when collectives such as “E.A.T.” were formed to explore and promote collaborations with the then-new technologies. But this “intersection of art and technology” is often bandied about in somewhat unclear terms about what it may mean and what its results can be. Art and technology don’t so much intersect as they almost overlap, at least in the sense that we cannot even fathom art without technology. To be realised, art demands a medium and hence, technology. Art cannot be without technology; art is unthinkable without technology. We can frequently witness two types of dynamics in art and technology collaborations. The first is when art works as a function of technology, towards technology, becoming somewhat goal-driven in its aim. This is where we can find commissions with motivations squarely grounded in technology and science. The second is where we find technology and science providing resources to art, such as new materials, tools, methods, etc., that artists use in their work. Occasionally, these can even be developed at the artists’ demand, but they can also result from independent research subsequently put at the artists’ disposal. Neither of these constitute modes of collaboration in which both parties are led to outputs resulting in effective contributions to both fields and where real synergies are developed or where the arrow points both ways. Is this type of synergy possible? Can art and technology cooperate? What can art bring to technology, engineering, and science? Can it produce effective contributions to these fields? i2ADS’s participation in the 2SMART project was steered towards two closely related, albeit quite different, goals. One of these was focused on communication design and communicating science by exploring data visualisation and other media design techniques for the sciences. The communication processes of scientific and engineering teams — those in the 2SMART project, but also in a broader sample of the Portuguese science and technology ecosystem — were studied with the goal of understanding their most frequent needs and of devising design patterns that could be used as tools for researchers to deal with design decisions when designers may not be available. This led to direct contributions to scientists’ and engineers’ design literacy and indirect contributions to a broader scientific literacy. Furthermore, this effort also allowed us to map other needs and opened avenues for future research within i2ADS and the Faculty of Fine Arts. Another goal was focused on art. However, rather than promoting collaborations with science and technology, it aimed to foster creation in a context of science, technologies, and engineering, bringing artists to the laboratories for creative residences for extended periods of time. André Rangel in NANO4MED lab, Carolina Grilo Santos in the Processes Products and Energy group, and Catarina Braga in the Environmental Sciences and Technologies group, all labs of LEPABE, developed processes of artistic research in the labs, exploring and discovering its spaces, the people that work in them, and the technologies, materials and processes they work with. At the start of each of these residences, the artists didn’t have constraints beyond a maximum duration for the residence and the expectation of showcasing the outcomes of their work in an individual show at the Library of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. The residences resulted in very diverse works — in media, concepts, approaches, and in the focus developed by each artist during the residence — leading to the different ways that the works resonate with the contexts where they were developed. However, we may also discover convergent traits in the works, perhaps because of their shared history or the forces that shaped them. With this cycle of residences, we tried to bring the epistemological processes of art to sciences and engineering, to look at STEM processes through the perspective of art, something which may lead to the development of new critical perspectives and to a reframing and reorganisation process that can only be developed through art. In this final show, which also marks the project’s conclusion, the three works are brought together and confronted in the Gallery of the Museum of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, provoking further dialogue between the works and the technologies that brought them to be.

status	active
portal	i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
admins	Fabrício Fava
members	Ana Duarte

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  Espelho meu | Performance/installation for voice, body and image (last edited: 2023) author(s): Bruno Pereira, Pedro Santos connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This exposition presents and explores all the creative process related to the performance Espelho meu, premiered in March 2017, in Porto, Portugal. From its assumptions and creative contextualization, we deepen our reflection and explore a possible outcome materialized in this work. It's the materialization of a creative thought, a creative process, into the artistic gesture of the performer. We believe that the creation of new performances is the only effective way to develop the contemporary performative scene. New performances that raise questions and multiple layers of understanding promoting new visions of the world and new possibilities. In this paper, we will briefly discuss the role of improvisation in the process of creating a vocal gesture that externalizes an inner thought, the role of the body and the energy of the performance, the non-imposed but important interaction with the audience, the relevance of the text as semantical and sound object, the choice of the concept mirror and its symbolical impact, the cross paths between artistic practice and technology and the artistic exploration of the performance after its physical existence in time, consolidated in the performative resonance as a creative tool to stretch time and to provocate the ephemerality of performance.
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  LABORATÓRIO F. - the revolt of native species (last edited: 2023) author(s): Susana Soares Pinto connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  LABORATÓRIO F. is a meeting place between species: fungus, flora, fauna, human,.. . This is part of SHS (soil, health and surrounding) project from the UP (University of Porto) which is developing a multidisciplinary research work group focused on three mineral mines in the north of Portugal. Soil remediation and the involvement of local communities are priorities. Planting actions, constructing a pond complemented with knowledge exchanges about native diversity and mine history surrounded by ruins from extractivism. Finding new approaches between species is mandatory.
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  A Change in Perception (last edited: 2022) author(s): Garry Barker This exposition is in review and its share status is: visible to all.
  An artist’s narrative that sets out to introduce the starting point for a new body of evolving work that will grow out of an interrogation of somatic perception and interoception. As the corona virus pandemic emerged the artist Garry Barker had just been given a commission to develop a series of playing cards that were designed to help people develop conversations about their bodies. However lockdown prevented many proposed activities taking place, initial packs of cards were produced but they couldn’t be used to play the suggested games, and the artist was asked if he could develop an online version. The artist’s research then began to change direction and questions were asked about the nature of perception itself, the body and somatic awareness. Research was refocused on inner body perception and neuropsychology and associated drawings were made in response to a growing awareness of internal body schemas, together with visualizations of relationships between interoception and exteroception. Gradually what emerged was the artist’s realization of how important his own imagination was in building images of how we feel about our inner bodies.
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  On Time, Meditation and Creative Process (last edited: 2022) author(s): RC i2ADS, Fernando José Pereira connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Martijn's Comes lecture "On Time, meditation and Creative process", places the discussion within the central assumptions of the research project " pára-agem." The idea of meditation, based on his Buddhist beliefs, can be interpreted in a secular way as an active contemplation, an essential notion for understanding our research. As a way of resisting the compression of time, both meditation and active contemplation became decisively involved in the creative process.
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  [Improvisations] Innere gesang / Inutil (last edited: 2022) author(s): RC i2ADS, Bruno Pereira connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Innere gesang manifests the deep connection of the thought-voice-body system and discusses the singularity of the voice as voice, leading us to an expressiveness closer to the inner song that wishes to be shared. Here, the voice appears as an expressive device for the aesthetic interaction of this internal sound, this internal song. Inútil [Useless] is a sound/performative speculation about the uselessness of performance. Part of the desire to excavate a useless, non-current, inoperative, unclassifiable, intrusive, inexhaustible, insatiable, independent, intentional, intense, inner, interactive, indomitable, restless, inefficient performance.
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  Polarizing Attention – Drawing under the microscope (last edited: 2022) author(s): Paulo Luís Almeida, Mário Bismarck connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  'Polarizing Attention' is an exploratory workshop on Drawing under the microscope. It brings together Fine Arts and Biochemistry students from the University of Porto around biological samples prepared with the tano-ferric method by the Portuguese scientist Abel Salazar. The goal is to identify and explore observation and visualization practices under the microscope in students with different backgrounds in art and STEM areas. By creating modes of interaction between student scientists and artists, the workshop aims to empower students to create their own visual representations, instead of relying their observation and study on pre-existing visual models. Microscopic drawing, based on the histological drawing method described by Abel Salazar, is understood as a form of reasoning requiring a process of translation between visual models. This workshop is part of the research project ‘DRAWinU – Drawing Across University Borders’ (i2ADS-FBAUP) and the Colloquium ‘Transits, Marks, Representations and the Golgi’, based on the work of scientist Abel Salazar (ICBAS).
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