PEDRO ALVES DA VEIGA

PEDRO ALVES DA VEIGA

(Portugal)

PEDRO ALVES DA VEIGA is a Portuguese transdisciplinary artist and scholar. He holds a degree in Computer Science (Nova University of Lisbon), a Post-graduation in Advanced Studies of Digital Media Art (Aberta University) and a PhD in Digital Media Art (Aberta University and University of Algarve). After a two-decade business career in web-design and information systems, including the launch and sale of two IT companies and several multimedia and web-design awards, he is currently a Professor at the Aberta University, in Lisbon, where he is also the subdirector of the Digital Media Arts PhD programme. His research interests include new media artivism, new media curatorship, and the impacts of the experience, attention and ubiquity economies in new media art ecosystems. He develops his work through creative programming, mixed media assemblage, multimedia generative systems, supported by theoretical work on a/r/cography – a digital arts based creative methodology. His artworks are an investigation into representations of facts and situations as well as depictions of ideals and interventions, optimally materialised through media art. They demand and shatter the audience's attention, metaphorically expressing his intentions through aesthetics and technology, while letting the audience freely interpret and build the narrative through sensorial exposure, interaction and exploration. His artworks have been exhibited in Portugal, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, China, Thailand and the USA.

YOU AND ME

DIGITAL ART

Technical sheets

Artistic Direction: Pedro Alves da Veiga

Digital Production: Pedro Alves da Veiga

Digital art format: square (116 x 116 cm)

Year: 2025

Synopsis

You&Me (the infinite constellation of our senses) is a generative art project, initially conceived as an interactive and playful installation, designed for two participants, and now presented as generative video art. It emerged as a response to the increasing encapsulation of individuals within technological microcosms, unable to free themselves from their smartphones, which mediate and interconnect everything. This hyperconnection seems to overshadow direct, physical connections between individuals in the same space, with the world around them, or with the artworks on display. There appears to be an imperative to capture photographs or videos instead of enjoying direct sensations. In this project, two individuals are symbolically represented by realistic animations of two human hearts. The heart, a symbol of life, pumping blood throughout the body, also symbolises various forms of human connection: friendship, love, passion, sharing interests, among others. Initially, the hearts are separated and float in an environment filled with molecules of the most relevant compounds for human "chemistry": dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. When the physical connection is strong(er), the hearts draw closer and euphorically explode into the verses of the poem "The Friend" by Casimiro de Brito, which encapsulate a rich symbolic imagery. In this version, the verses have been rearranged to better compose the conceptual and visual setting:

The Friend

A friend, the first friend within the cloud of a dream.

The impossible suddenly touches our hands - the fire, the concentric flower of planets in exile.

In the land of silence, the fruits fall of their own will.

To the heart of things, to the yoke of the colours of memory, to the small deviation of the shadow in the desert…

… to the love that feeds us with death, to the death that dies with us

… we oppose the infinite constellation of our senses.

Casimiro de Brito, in "Gardens of War"