Verve Cultural and the digital art gallery
Brazilian company Verve Cultural is part of the important network surrounding MAB14. They’ll attend the biennale in November and give their take on how to create urban experiences in the billboard free city of São Paolo.
Back in 2006, the mayor of São Paolo decreed the removal of almost all outdoor advertising, and within a year, 15000 billboards were taken down.
This, however, doesn’t mean that São Paolo is completely stripped of digital media. On example of this is Verve Cultural’s Art Gallery Digital SESI-SP, the largest media façade initiative in Latin America – and the continent’s first open air gallery.
It’s a multimedia façade meant to establish a new cultural channel as an integrating part of the city – merging architecture, art and media through different exhibitions and events.
When night falls, a large emblematic building on the central Paulista Avenue transforms itself into an urban screen with digital art. According to Verve Cultural, the intention is “transforming the urban scenario of the Paulista Avenue into a spectacle, in which both artists and the people are the protagonists.”
The open air gallery concept allows to address issues of interest of the city in an intuitive and participatory manner and raise discussion about the impact that a major metropolis has on the lives of its residents. In 2013, the gallery addressed topics directly related to the citizens of São Paulo: the exhibition VivaCidade translated into digital language a handful of topics, such as the pulse of urban life, natural phenomena like the flow of the seas and the strength of winds, climate change, the search for solutions to maintain the balance between humans and nature, as well as human actions and their role in such a complex and constantly changing ecosystem. Focused on mankind and the consequences of our actions, the exhibition also examined how the locals interact and shape the environment in which they live and what are the challenges to improve their quality of life.
The digital art gallery has an electric consumption of 4,5 kVA – the same as a normal residential house, and the electronic infrastructure has 26 thousands LED clusters.
Verve Cultural was created in 2011 by Marília Pasculli and João Frugiuele. It is dedicated to performing musical events, installations and exhibitions of contemporary and digital art. Read more on their website.
