[iDC] introductions (Paulo Tavares)

[paulo_t]

Hello everyone

Just a few minutes to introduce myself. My name is Paulo Tavares, 
I am Brazilian architect interested to be part of this list, 
mainly because now I started my research for a MA project on urban spaces, 
wireless technologies and locative medias. Even knowing I do not have the 
deep experience as I can see in the discussions of my colleagues here, 
I follow with enthusiasm and recognize some of my most important theoretical 
references in these discussions.

My interest in media and new technologies started in 1999 with my practical activities 
as a radio-activist in Radio-Mute – muda.radiolivre.org - a free-radio collective localized 
in Campinas (one million people city - 90 km from SP). Despite of our location, 
inside the university campus – which can assure us a kind of “institutional protection” 
(police is not well seen inside the campus - that is an old “law” described as 
“the autonomy of the university” that dates back from military-dictatorship regime), 
which makes a huge difference from the free radios located inside “favelas” for instance 
(“location” is very, very important!), we do not have a government authorization to broadcast 
and we do find some sometimes problems with federal police.

I´ve been doing free-radio for a while and getting involved with project of critical media activism 
and education, and free-speech rights since then. One of the good ones was – AUTOLABS – media 
laboratories located at the periphery of São Paulo City, that focus on the autonomy 
(infrastructural and subjective) of production of media...Another recent project I can tell you 
about was Submidialogia, a network media activism conference organized by the core of Brazilian 
media-activism groups. (sorry, lost english information) 

I also take part of a multidisciplinary media collective research called Submidia. 
Our activities are mostly about low-potency radio and television transmission at public 
spaces and the fomentation of new free-radios using our “nomadic-transmitter” 
(a self made radio transmitter that can change the frequency, so it can adapt itself to different 
situations of the spectrum). 

A report by David Garcia about Brazilian media activism and some of these projects I described above 
can be found at 

http://mail.kein.org/pipermail/incom-l/2004-September/000114.html
I sure have some divergences with his ideas but I think it is a good overview.  

(Although the situation described in this report date from 2004, we can fore see how the situation 
developed to now: there is a kind of “instrumentation” of media-activism movements by the 
government going on. I do not know if its totally bad, but I can say that the biggest majority 
of the “work force” of our DIY projects are now working for the government.) 

I also take part free-radios network in Brazil called “free-radio rhizome” (www.radiolivre.org) <http://www.radiolivre.org/>, 
that can be described as a collective that wishes the construction of an infrastructure to allow 
radios-streaming and to support academical and cultural projects, establishing collaborative 
tools on the net.

By now, a new collective is getting shape - we are trying to create the first free tv in our country 
(www.tvlivre.org). Finally, after a long time of dreams, we do have a better transmitter, 
but we still don´t have permission to speak (and I can assure you - that is never going to happen ). 
For me, that´s  points out a mojor issue about locative medias: 
“Who can send what”, (as Adrian Mackenzie asked about wireless...)


Cheers,
Paulo Tavares