 |
|
 |
|
|
||||
RESEARCH 2005 - PRESENT The large overarching point to my research concerns ideas about how communication interfaces mediate our relationship to the world and to society. Within this context, I study how information is represented through diverse communication technologies. My current and future specific research interests include the study of mobile communication technologies and locative media, such as cell phones, focusing on how these devices change social practices and the experience of urban spaces by means of location-based mobile games and media art installations in public spaces. I am also interested in the ways that the study of the relationship between locative media, urban spaces and mobile communities offers clues about how the mobile interface might simulatneously create and reflect new modes of organization of spaces, raising issues about communication, mobility, play, construction of space, power and surveillance. These types of playful activities may also be sucessfuly used to create new educational and technologically-mediated learning environments. Adriana de Souza e Silva, 2008 Ph.D 2000-2004 Degree on Communication and Culture. School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Dissertation PDF 3.6 MB] This dissertation addresses how mobile communication technologies, such as cell phones, play an active role in creating new types of communication and social networks in hybrid spaces formed by the blurring of borders between physical and digital spaces. It analyzes the transference of social places from cyberspace to hybrid spaces. Nomadic technology devices are responsible for producing new social networks in a space that interconnects the physical and the virtual due to their users’ perpetual mobility. During the last decade, multiuser environments in cyberspace have frequently been regarded as spaces on which users could project their imagination. Moreover, digital spaces have been considered as essentially disconnected from physical spaces. Nowadays, the constant connection to digital spaces, allowed by new mobile communication technologies, transforms our social spaces, as well as the projection of our imagination in urban spaces. To develop this argument, I first analyze the existing literature on cyberspace and mobile technology devices, emphasizing concepts such as virtual, cyberspace, immersion, and hybrid. Practical aspects of this research include the analysis of current mobile practices, via interviews with artists and scholars who think and produce work on new mobile media, in addition to an Internet survey applied in Brazil about people's use of cell phones in this country. MASTERS 1998-1999 Design: Interface da Contemporaneidade (Design: Interface of contemporary times) [Thesis PDF 3.6 MB] Degree on Communication and Image Technology. School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This thesis analyzes graphic design as an interface of contemporary times, that is, as a (printed / on screen) representation of today's society. The shift from functional to contemporary (deconstructed) design is seen as a consequence of a technological shift in the process of information transmission and reception. I define 'interface' from two distinct stand points. First, interfaces are regarded as the material information supports on which people produce design, i.e., organize information in space. This idea is developed by a historical analysis of graphic design, including the history of typograpy, which is the basis of our visual communication processes. Second, I analyze the computational development of the concept of interface. Through this analyzes, I emphasize how the shift of interfaces (information supports) over time exemplifies new ways of organizing information and, consequently, the way we think about and represent our world. Finally, the last part of this thesis focuses on deconstructionism as a characteristic of the contemporary graphic interface. The presence of deconstruction is analyzed both in graphic design and on the world wide web. B.A.
1993-1996 [Monograph PDF 1.1 Mb] Degree on Social Communication / Journalism. School of Communications, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This Monograph analyzes the development of constructivist design in Brazil through its European antecedents: the functionalist movements (De Stijl, Russian Constructivism, Bauhaus and Suprematism). I show how the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (School of Industrial Design) synthetizes, within its own story, the history of Brazilian design. I also show how Brazilian designers took this constructivist perspective to create a national "Brazilian" design via the case study of the Domingo magazine. Finally, through the study of history, we may find approaches to the future of the constructivist design as a Brazilian (or European) way of understanding the organization of our spaces.
|
