Álvaro Andrade Garcia
writer, digital artist and director
Escritor, artista digital e diretor. Biografia em português.
Álvaro Andrade Garcia was born in Belo Horizonte, in 1961. He graduated himself as medical doctor in 1985 at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. In 1989 he left medicine to dedicate to literature, and later, from 1991, also to the audiovisual and multimedia.
While writer, already published 10 books of poetry and 3 romances, among them Caimán Operation, edited by Editora Objetiva, in 1989. His poems had been published in the carioca magazine 34 Letras, fascicles 8 and 9 of the collection Season of Poetry, edited for the City department of Culture of Belo Horizonte, in 1994 and 1996. Between 1987 and 1989 he worked with a group of poets that made pioneering experimentations with videopoetry, showing works in Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasilia. Between 1989 and 1991 he wrote chronicles for the Ideas section of the periodical Jornal do Brasil in partnership with Delfim Alfonso Jr, under pseudonym of Tom Laughwood. In 1990 he wrote chronicles for periodicals Estado de Minas and Correio Braziliense. Alvaro still wrote some texts on Communication and New Technologies and teached in some institutions, with subjects always related to the Communication and New Technologies. In 2001, his poem The Buddha of the Word participated of the Bunker of Poetry installation, made by Harald Szeemann, in the 49th Biennial of Venice.
Alvaro Andrade Garcia associated himself with Versão Brasileira video company in 1990 and created and directed its sector of graphical computation. In 1992 he left the company to establish with other partners the Ciclope – Video and Multimedia, making the first digital video studio of Minas Gerais state in Brazil. In 1997 he became the only owner of Ciclope Video and Multimedia, where he conceives, scripts and directs projects in electronic media (DVD, CD ROM and internet) in the areas of culture and sustainable tourism.
Since then, the history of Ciclope atelier overlaps to his. Between 1995 and 2002 he directed 5 projects of interactive video with 1 hour of duration, 15 CD ROMs, some bilingual, 4 documentary videos and 3 Internet Portals, some awarded nationally. The electronic magazine Zapp Cultural (Multimedia CD ROM, Internet and Terminals), edited in partnership with the Secretariat of Culture of Belo Horizonte, with the support of the Ministry of the Culture and the CD ROM of Interactive Video Discovering Brazil 2000, with actors of Galpão group of theater, carried through for the Particular Schools of Minas Gerais Syndicate had won the Brazilian stage of the Prix International Mobius of Multimedia, carried through in Rio De Janeiro and had represented Brazil in the same Prize, international stage, in Paris, in 1997 and 2000. The Prix Mobius is a prize for works in new medias directed toward the culture, education and science areas, promoted with the support of the European Community, UNESCO and French Ministry of Superior Education and Research.
Currently he has created and directed projects of sites with content for broadband internet, with intense use digital audiovisual and projects of Video CDs and DVDs with use of interactive digital video of long duration, uninterrupted, in cinema format (16 for 9). The project Brazilian Historical Cities (portuguese only), with information on 30 cities in 6 states and more than 100 videos, produced for the Ciclope since 1995, is an example of this moment. It was part of the Terra site in Brazil between 2000 and 2002. Another project in this line is the site Ecological Sanctuaries produced for the periodical O Povo of Fortaleza. The portuguese-english site had some hours of video, thousand of photos and hundreds of pages of information in text.
In September of 2003, Ouro Preto: Ouro Preto DVD was launched. This portuguese-english 52 minutes video of his authorship also was shown in the Rede Minas Television. Beyond this DVD, Alvaro Andrade Garcia has made scripts and directions of videos on Brazilian Historical Cities for television. The works Cora: Goiás , Ouro Preto: Guignard and Baroque Rain had been shown in Mostra de Cinema de Tiradentes in 2000 and 2001. Later, in 2002, these and other videochronicles passed regularly to be shown in the Rede Minas television station, with exhibitions programmed until the end of 2004.
The Imagination Site project, with interactive video, duplicable and controlable by the user, distributed in web and CD ROM is his most important work of script and direction, launched in May of 2002, in the Museum of Art of Pampulha. Video installations of the Imagination Site occurred in 12 of August of 2002 in the Palace of the Arts, in Belo Horizonte and in 19 of December of 2002, in the event Digital Noise, promoted for the Cultural Institute Itaú. Between 12 and 18 of January of 2003 the video installation was seen in Fortaleza, in the Festival Life and Art, of the periodical O Povo.
His new projects are the Sertões project, a multimedia visit to Central Brazil and the interactive installations of two cultural centers in Belo Horizonte and Brasília, with content about the Brazilian ecosystems. These installations use collective interactions with the audience though the use of cell phones.
Below, some of his works.
Books of fiction:
Caimán Operation and Ana.
Essays
The Art of Imagination – 2004
The Outback and the City – 2007
Books of poetry:
Fire, Librare, Improvisations for keyboard and flute, Monodias, Trip with the River San Francisco, Visages, Senses’ College, Summer Inside the Breast, Alvaro and One Man Messiah.
Videopoetry:
Quarteto de Sopros, 10 minutes, 1987.
Pioneering work of poem animation in computer, at the time the production was carried through in PC XT. It was shown in Belo Horizonte, Rio De Janeiro, São Paulo and Brasilia.
Country, script of Alvaro Andrade Garcia, texts of Nicoletta Padovani, illustrations of Túlio Resende and animation of Aggeo Simões, 20 minutes, 1990.
Experience to cast in video texts and plastic arts.
Pepsi Machine, poems, script and animation of Alvaro Andrade Garcia, soundtrack of Luis Eduardo Sá, 1,30 minutes,1991.
Experience of three-dimensional animation with texts and audio.
Multimedia Sites:
www.map.art.br – Museum of Art of the Pampulha – from 1996 to 2003
www.ciclope.art.br – Imaginative Digital Art
www.cidadeshistoricas.art.br – Brazilian Historical Cities
www.santuarios.com.br – Ecological Sanctuaries
www.sertoes.art.br – Brazilian hinterlands
CD ROMs:
Ouro Preto Electronic Guide
BH 100 Years – Our History
Brasilia 40 Years
Pampulha Museum of Art
Zapp magazine vol I
Zapp magazine vol II
Brazilian Historical cities – Vol I Campos das Vertentes
Project Amazônia Occidental of long-distance Education
Manual Multimedia Telemig Celular
Brazilian Historical Cities – Special Edition
Brazilian Historical cities – Vol II Ouro Preto and Congonhas
Brazilian Historical cities – Vol III Paraty, Bananal, Embu and Paranapiacaba
Interactive video (distributed in CD ROM):
Discovering Brazil – Edition 2000
One Day in Jericoacoara
One Day in Canoa Quebrada
Expedition to the Parnaíba River Delta
Expedition to the Maranhenses Sheets
Videochronicles shown in Television from 2002 to 2005:
Brazilian Historical Cities
Cora: Goiás – Red River
Cora: Goiás – Imaginable Yard
Cora: Goiás – Soul in the House
Ouro Preto: Guignard – Inspired Dawn
Ouro Preto: Guignard – Illustrated Twilight
Baroque Rain I – Tiradentes MG
Baroque Rain II – Milho Verde MG
Minas Gerais’ Kitchen- Milho Verde MG
Small Store I – Lavras Novas MG
Small Store II – Milho Verde MG
Church – Lavras Novas MG
Kitchen – Lavras Novas MG
City Tour – Pirenópolis GO
Goiaz by night – Goiás GO
River of Accounts – Rio de Contas BA
Awakening – Rio de Contas BA
Sertões – Outback in Minas Gerais
Mountain range of the Espinhaço – Espinosa MG
Little Tip – Paraopeba MG
Vereda of the Tapir – João Pinheiro MG
Vereda of the Mutuca – João Pinheiro MG
Vereda of the Darkness – São Romão
Cowboy Manoel – Brasilândia de Minas MG
Cowboy Zezinho – João Pinheiro MG
Nine times – Buritizeiro MG
Brejão by night – Brasilândia de Minas MG
San Francisco, sun and moon – Pirapora Januária MG
San Francisco, cloud and smoke – Pirapora MG
Ways of the Hinterland I – Unaí Brasilândia MG
Market – Montes Claros MG
Ways of the Hinterland II – Unaí Brasilia MG
Sea of eucaliptus in the hinterlands – Felixlândia/Bocaiúva MG
Navigation in the São Francisco river 1946/57
Central do Brasil 1943
Agribusiness in the hinterlads – Brasilândia de Minas MG
Lonely fisher – Buritizeiro MG
Film videos for DVD and television:
Ouro Preto: Ouro Preto – Bilingual, 52 minutes of duration, shown in Rede Minas of Television, 2003 and finished in DVD.
The Outback in Minas Gerais – Bilingual, 75 minutes of duration, finished in DVD and it will be shown in the Rede Minas of Television in 18th of july, 2005.
Multimedia Installations in cultural centers:
Living Hinterland – a spacetime waterway in the cerrado – Espaço Israel Pinheiro, 2009 and Espaço Tim UFMG do Conhecimento, 2010
