The theme was explored under the title “www.parana.e-meio.art.br” as one of the first researches about the use of the internet as a tool by plastic artists from Paraná to spread their work. The research was presented in a course of specialization on the Escola de Música e Belas Artes in Paraná (Embap), in Curitiba, in 2007. Through this research, at the time, the journalist Mari Weigert realized that only 10% of the plastic artists from Paraná, from 200 artists researched, used to use technological resources from internet. In a new update, six years after the final considerations, she observed the radical changes.

Profiles target to the research, as Leila Pugnaloni, Tom Lisboa, Claudia Lara, Katia Velo, José Antonio de Lima, Rogério Dias, among others, that only used e-mails and virtual portfolios, are already conected to Facebook (orkut is in phase of decay, Google+ still did not peaked in Brasil) and interacting day by day with their public, with a considerable number of friends, professional contacts and entities. The communities of each artist (some don’t let appear the number of participants) vary from 500 untill more than 2000 people in mutual contact.

With that diary public, the result is immediate. The plastic artist Leila Pugnaloni updates her profile every day and upload her creations. Leila approves technology and always use it. “I’ve already sold drawings uploading them into my social networking to everyone sees. Once, a netizen that was’nt part of my community liked and acquired the work. We’ve made the negociation online and I sent the work by the post office.”, reveals. Leila wakes up and goes to her atelier to create, delineates traits in the paper, after have done the draw, she scans it and copy to the computer.

Actually, the main issue from www.parana.e-mail.art.br was to know whether the internet will stole the power of the tradicionals halls, museums and culture rooms in the projection of new artists for the coming years. One question that was not answered immediately and that requires constant updating, plus the possibility to be answered in the next 50 years. The research begins comparing the behavior of the painter Brunon Lechowsk Bronislaw (1887-1841), born in Warsaw, Poland, on condition experienced by the current artists. Says the introduction:

“If the panter Brunon Bronislaw Lechowsk (1887-1941), born in Warsaw, Poland, that lived some years in Paraná, had known the virtual technology, he would have another vision about his ideals ans probably would be sailing all around the world with the @.com. Lechowski was a visionary in his time and wanted to show the world that was possible to free himself from a social process based in principles defined by the instuitions. Traveled the world and remained 16 years in Brazil. To accomplish his goal of raising funds to create the International House of Artist, he needed to build an equipment expositive to travel several countries and give examples: a tent that could be assembled in parks to serve as a home during the travel with space for his exhibits. The reason to talk about Lechowski in this work about the online world is to dimension the temporal diferences in the behavior of the humanity. Today, to the plastic artist, the mouse and the screeon of the computer open the doors to a new space. A space where the machine and the body live in symbiosis, which makes man living on another level of consciousness, a free territory without laws and cultural systems. Everything is valid in the virtual. The lie, the truth, war for fun (games) and in fact, violence, harmony and beauty. The research served to document a moment in history, much passenger, because the World Wide Web is, in fact, a technological resource efficient, but unquiet brains and visionaries do not stop and are seeking new ways of interaction between man and the machine”.

Concluding remarks

“The www.parana.e-meio.art.br brings out to the visual arts scene the contemporary theme of the relation man/machine, emphasizing the use of the internet in everyday’s artist life that lives in Paraná, highlighting sites, portfolios, blogs and fotologs produced in the State. To conclude this work abour the use of the web by artists from Paraná and their relation with the technology, is necessary to return to the introduction of the survey, where you can compare the way that Lechowski used to try to reach his ideal, with the new ways used by the artists nowaday.

Lechowski needed to transport himself materially, with his body and his paint equipment. The actual artists do not need to get out of their places to cross borders and present their work to the world. The pixels and the scanning can make miracles of colors and reproduce identical copies of the original in a short time and send them to where the user wants to.

Supported in the benefits of the internet, the modern plastic artists seeks the same ideal of Lechowski, into another world, now, with no more tents built by hand, but with codes sush as www. HTML, @, .com, org., gov., whatever, every possible sign used in the web, so in a few seconds, the interaction public/art materializes.

Different times and different behaviors. “We are made and remade by our inventions”, writes Derrik de Kerckhov (1997), in The skin of culture, when reflects on the current importance of the computer to the culture of eletronic media, because it is the point of approach and intensified from and to the relations between all eletronic media.

Kerckhov’s words refers to the thinking of the French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, about the card game. Bruno was Lechowski player, as the artists of the contemporary world are players. He had it, and the new ones have in their hands the cards he did not invented, because the card game is a fact of history and civilization. Anyway, the kind of game was and is still the same: the search for freedom without frontiers in art. In Lechowski’s case, the history shows us that the factor time and place interfered in his goals. Nowadays, time and space are endless.

And the “World Wide Web” was made in a dimension beyond the material and, at the same time, is transformed into matter: equipment, text, image, sound and data. A network invisible to the naked eye, although its strength and power of transformation are used and noticed sensorially. Without realizing it, the modern society saw this magnific giant dematerialized still without laws and criteria established by man. A free and neutral place in the hands of the power of consume of the capitalism, that enjoys comercially its benefits, but not control its ways. Is the spell turning against the wizard.

Is not the technology that is bad. Is the man who don know how to use it. Used to live always under the rules imposed and religious brakes, get lost in so much freedom, especially because in the virtual he is not material, is mind, is action, consciousness or inconsequence/inconsistency. In the chaos of communication, the artist interposes himself as a decoder of the time, in reading what is beauty in the world. The research conducted in the first part of this work reveals that a site aimed specifically to spreading events as is the Curitiba Interativa, receives on average 3,486 hits a day on weekdays, wich means 145 people per hour, in any part of the planet. On a site that meets schedule is much easier to achieve this average than in a printed newspaper.

Talking about a printed newspaper, as the Folha de Londrina and O Estado do Paraná , the daily sales are around 30 to 40 thousand copies shipped in only one territory, the Paraná, specially in Curitiba. Its segments online generate, in case of the State of Paraná, 28 thousand daily hits. This means that over a thousand people enter the page per hour, also from different territories.

The Oscar Niemeyer Museum, one of the largest in Latin America, receives an average of four thousand visitors by day, to visit different types of shows. However, it is an important cultural place with criteria for its selection, including politicians. Is important to call attention to the detail that these places are embedded into an territorial space that covers a specific audience.

If, in fact, they consider these data only for disclosure of shows in newspapers and specializes sites, is possible to check inside the phisical universe the point is not related only with numbers. The place, even having a big number of visitors, can not be compared to the netizen, because lose “in light years” for the speed. The internet user interacts and can be living in the other side of the world and acess the site from Curitiba, talk to the person and at the time or in some days, receive your reply.

The research concluded that in Paraná, the internet is not completely discovered in the segment of art and is not been exploited to its full potential. About 200 names searched by the author, just over 10% have virtual portfolio. The virtual portfolio from Douglas Mayer recorded, since 2000, exactly 22,483, when the author of the work clicked the site, what means 11 hits a day since it was created. If the reader click it again, for sure this number will be higher. This is the great magic and dynamics that fascinated those who invented the network.

Nothing is static in this universe, different from the physical world. The advantages of the online tool as a way of dissemination and marketing of artwork already become evident only with these scarce numerical data, considering that the portfolio is exposed to the world and can remain throughout the life of the artist, in an unlimited time. The online experience provides access to an audience of different nationalities and is not only restricted to the population of the place where the event takes place or the artist lives. By the internet the artist can openly disclose his ideas and promote his work, interacting with public with any age, nationality, from the lay to the art connoisseur.

In the end, is already possible to see that the “World Wide Web” can be a way of democratization of art, but with the exception that technology requires a society more evolved culturally, environmentally and socially. Still with another exception, the web is less than 50 years old, too young to commit the imprudence of making early conclusions or expose a definite prejudice about the subject. This attitude will repeat, on a different scale of values, which Charles Baudelaire remarked, in the nineteenth century, about the photography: “But if he is allowed to invade the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary, all what is valid only because man adds the soul, what a disgrace for us!”

Did the photography caused some misfortune in the visual arts?

The possible deduction is the internet is into what is called Quantum Physics, where none of the properties of any part of this network is fundamental; all derive from the properties of other parts, and the global consistency of their interrelations determines the structure of the whole network. Maybe in the XXII century our descendants will know to answer if man knew to use it as he should and if it was valid for us, simples mortals.