My second visit to a Ponto de Cultura. South East Sao Paulo, “Real Parque” and “Jardim Panorama”. This one was in the border with the “periferia“ . It was a great venue and its story is quite amazing. Project Casulo started with the investment from the favela’s rich neighbours.  A considerable investment from lots of different macro companies made the beginning of the project possible. This investment was certainly good to the local area and possibly one of the best ways to avoid drug trafficking and crime. The venue has 4 floors, dance classes, drum classes, Multimedia studio and a Ponto de Cultura. This really shows Brazil as the land of contrasts. A rich neighbourhood sharing walls with a Shanty town, but this time the rich had no other solution than help. In between many partnerships they have with macro companies (more here) such as Deutsche Bank, Bradesco, Nestle, Microsoft; the one with the Ministry of Culture seems to work fine and they already have some media publish in the estudio livre database.

• NOT similar to the first Ponto I visited, Internet connection here was less than 1 Mega, but both Fluxo TV and Brazcast worked perfectly. I’ve met Paco born in 1988 and he was already a Linux expert. He is the strong link between the project Casulo and the Pontos de Cultura. It is notorious the open source enthusiasm I could feel in this place. We will be back in January to do a workshop on how to use Fluxo TV and Brazcast.

I did the first visit to a “Ponto” this week. Was a fantastic human expirience. It was the “Casa da Cultura da Tainã” in the Sao Paulo State at a twon called: “Campinas”– I’ve met in there a bunch of great people. “TC” is the menthor (with the drum on the photo).

• I found this extremly interesting: “Quilombo is a Brazilian hinterland founded by Quilombolos, or Maroons and, sometimes, a minority of marginalised Portuguese, Brazilian aboriginals, and/or other non-black, non-slave Brazilians.” I’ve been told that in those communities they used share. Helpped each other to overcome problems, they have communal places and they are still alive today. “TC” grew up in a Quilombo and he finds that same sharing spirit in the opensource community.

The venue used to be a public swiming pool but in 1989 collapsed and it was closed down. The commuity occupied the permises and 3 years ago became an official “Ponto de Cultura” receiving an “Open source Multimedia KiT” (with support from de estudioLivre) regular funding plus free satelite conection to the internet. They are producing music, have an amazing Steel drums orquestra, regular digital opensource workshops, hacklab, music studio, all runing without a single license! Well done. Allthought they have a telephone line and they could be receiving adsl, their satelite conection is so slow that they have skipped the youtube revolution. When they need to upload some of their productions they go to their friends adsl connection. Again Brazil, so many people to blame that it looks like is no ones fault. But one thing is true: Well done from all the people involved but a Linux Quilombo in the 21st century should NOT be treated with third class Internet.

“Pontos de Cultura” are hubs, communities Linux “hot-spots”, Capoeira or Cinema groups, for example. Several of these communities work with artistic expression, by the use of theatre, fine arts, circus, video, and internet. As a condition, this locations must have cultural projects for social inclusion.

There are around 500 associations like this all over Brazil. They all have applied for governmental funds to become a so-called “Ponto de Cultura”. It doesn’t mean they all are producing quality content on Linux, but certainly that’s the plan. www.estudiolivre.org is a good starting place to sneak into the Brazilian open source adventure. Lots of info and Free Media well organized over an amazing web site architecture.

Brazcast is THIS online audio/visual performance tool that users from “Pontos de Cultura” will use. Phil, the other artist coming from the UK is doing Fluxo.org, a WebTV for these same places.

I’m organizing a event in Sao Paulo for the Launch of both platforms Brazcast and Fluxo, We are making a call for Brazilians creative to participate in a small contest with their own content. This Loops will be the demo-loops for Brazcast and Fluxo’s Trailer. Hopefully, this call for content will positively influence a new generation of Brazilina creatives.

Interface & Programming,

These are quite exiting times because finally we can see things moving around!!! ☺

This was the week where we have started working on the interface design. The head behind this is VJ Spetto. He’s making a web version of his own software -VR Studio- work with the Showskills library.

Neo Tag is in charge of the web
software programming. They building up the software architecture that we have done together last month. Maybe next couple of weeks we will be able to get both interface and database working together online!

The server situation is almost ready, almost… So, the infamous “BRAZCAST” is almost in shape. “by the way, almost is a very Brazilian feature” ☺

There is another artist from the UK coming to Sao Paulo . His name Phil Mayer. + Info. Phill will assemble a Web TV. Isn’t that great? Our both projects will complement eachother.

I am organizing an event to collect artistic multimedia content. This will be “Brazcast Suite’s” off-line samples library. It’s still in a very early stage of creation together with VJ Pixel. Soon we will have more info.

This isn’t about the Technical side but what you can do with IT;

Server condition Sorted… Brazcast will be hosted under the Cultura Viva server.All uploads will physically be in there.

Which format will users have to use?
avi, mov, mpeg, jpeg, vob, ogg, jpeg, mp4, wmv, mp3, cda, cd,dvd,dvdr,hdv,minidv,vhs,bla, bla, bla…
This is a whole issue… innit? Could spend hours talking about it, but all it matters is that all uploaded formats will automatically be displayed.

To achieve this I’ve asked Blue Pac a hand because they have a piece of software called Turbine Video Engine. It will do the job just fine with lots and lots of quality. The remaining question is the fact that Turbine costs money: £840. For an open source project this sounds like a fortune, but I believe in merging diferent systems together to take the best out of both. Blue Pac is up to make a top deal and still there is an opensourceHERE. I’m afraid its quality isn’t just the same , but it works and is free. I’ll try my best in order to finish the Brazcast’s “Suite” in total opensource.

Whom with?

IPTI Instituto de Pesquisas em Tecnologias da Informação (Institute of Information Technology Research) - a Sao Paolo multidisciplinary centre of study, research and installation of IT services. I’ve met the Host’s Headquarters! Great stuff. I was very well promptly received with a welcome meeting.

Estudio Livre / Converse / “Casinha”

Great people with lots of dreams. This is the place where the equipment from “Pontos de Cultura” is tested, assembled and posted. 450 times they have done that. Total of 14 persons are directly involved with all the workshops, hack lab,programming, artistic media development… all open source. No money is paid for a single computer license. ☺ Well Done!

Neotag is in charge of the database programming. They are assembling the digital structure that will enable you to upload and download media files and show your skills!
Next concern will be encoding…. but I’ll talk about that on the next post… ☺

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Some old/new links:

July: BRAZILCAST I
August: BRAZILCAST II
September: BRAZCAST I
October: BRAZCAST II

For the next 6 months I will be doing regular posts to explain what I came here for. Gradually revealing the nature of this venture… It’s not expected from the readers to fully understand this media work but surely they will comprehend the spirit of its artistic production.

1)-To begin with, I will have to pull together a web-based software that allows the act of sharing. In other words: database or sample library; I’ve called it “Showskills” .
2)-After this, it will be the time to make the performance tool (VRstudio) work with showskills database. I’d say it would take 2 months to assemble it all together. Can always go mistaken of course, specially over here in “Sampa”. Let’s see…