Vol. 3 No. 1 (2015): Arts, Media and Digital Culture

The thematic section of MATLIT 3.1 consists of a selection of papers presented at the symposium ActaMedia XI: International Symposium on Media Art and Digital Culture, which took place in 2014 in Lisbon (Palácio Foz, 14-15 November), Coimbra (School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Coimbra, 18-19 November) and São Paulo (São Paulo Cultural Centre, 3-4 December). This was an event that brought together researchers associated with COLABOR/ Center for Research on Digital Languages (ECA-USP), the Post-Graduate Programme in Aesthetics and Art History at the University of São Paulo (PGEHA / USP), the FCT PhD Progamme in Materialities of Literature, and the Centre for Portuguese Literature (CLP) at the University of Coimbra. Extending the collaborative atmosphere of the symposium, the articles gathered here focus on different themes – in the sense of ‘problems’ –, addressing material issues and values associated with digital mediation, paying critical attention to new technologies and configurations of so-called ‘virtual reality’, questioning different objects from an Interart and Intermedia Studies perspective, and discussing the interdisciplinary and methodological implications of Digital Humanities. Those research articles are complemented by an interview with Eduardo Kac and, in the ‘Mediascape’ section, by the presentation of projects authored by Portuguese and Brazilian artists who have explored the expressiveness of the digital medium. Therefore the thematic section aims to contribute to a theoretically consistent and systematic reflection on the digital meta-medium, examining its material determinations and cultural symbolic processes, as well as the challenges it poses for thought, imagination, and action.

Paulo Silva Pereira (CLP, University of Coimbra)
Pedro Serra (University of Salamanca)