Presentaciones de «Narrativas digitales» en Sao Paulo

La próxima semana Karla Brunet (grupo Ecoarte, UFBA) y yo participaremos en dos eventos en Sao Paulo (Brasil) donde presentaremos los resultados que estamos obteniendo en el proyecto Narrativas digitales para la gestión de ecosistemas costeros.

Por una parte del 18 al 21 de octubre se celebra SoftBorders, la 4th Upgrade! International Network Conference and Festival. Una conferencia que reúne «artists, curators and researchers from 30 countries to present and discuss the field of new media art, in the international and local contexts, especially in Brazil» (programa). El 20 octubre presentamos nuestra comunicación «Ecology and collaborative digital narratives: a comparative project Cairu-Aguiño». En los próximos días publicaremos el articulo que hemos preparado para esta conferencia; este es el resumen:

Artistic experimentation for the creation of digital narratives dealing with ecological issues in two coastal communities is illustrated here. Theses case studies from the project “Digital Narratives for community participation on coastal ecosystem management” involved the communities of Garapuá (Cairu) and Aguiño, coastal places located in Brazil (Bahia) and in Spain (Galicia), respectively. In both places, teenagers developed narratives of their territories using a combination of technologies and media such as: GPS, videos, photos, audio, texts, mapping and blogging. These narratives were constructed on workshops facilitated by a team of artists, scientists and local educators. These pilot experiences allowed to test methodologies for the development of a collaborative framework and a toolbox of open methods and free software to facilitate future projects.

The economies of both communities are dependent mainly of artisanal fisheries and, to a lesser extent, of a growing tourist activity. However whereas Garapuá is a small, isolated, rural community, Aguiño has transformed in the last years in a village highly connected with the rest of the region. The comparative analysis of the dynamics of workshops and of the results obtained will allow to identify the cultural and socioeconomic changes associated with the urbanization of Aguiño and, as a consequence, the transformation of the relationships between the community and their territories.

These coastal communities are highly dependent of their territories and the diversity of habitats and ecosystems both terrestrial and marine. Traditionally the management of these systems has been limited by a scarce knowledge of the local ecology and the lack of involvement of the users. Local knowledge could fill these gaps providing efficiently basic information about the ecosystems and involving the users. Digital narratives are proposed and tested in these case studies as an alternative.

Digital media allow communities to actively develop their own narratives about their individual and collective identities, lives and territories. The materials derived from these digital narratives are analyzed to facilitate the communication to both inside the community and towards the exterior. A combination of tagging and visualizations enables the representation of geographic and conceptual information. Here narratives are used as tool for self-representation, space understanding and public debate. Therefore, art experimentation provides the cultural interdisciplinary platform for the development of collaborative narratives that constitute a visualization of knowledge and territorial commons allowing users to understand their own place. In this way, debates can emerge from the community developing collective views and community cohesion and empowerment will increase facilitating the organization of its collective action to participate actively in the co-management of their ecosystems.

Por otra parte el 22 de octubre el Centro Cultural de España en Sao Paulo organiza una presentación del proyecto Narrativas digitales que tendrá lugar en el Instituto Sócio Ambiental.