Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

October

The role of games in human social configuration has been widely researched: since the 1930s by Johan Huizinga and, later by Roger Callois in the 1950s and other authors till our days. As soon as computer science became a regular and useful tool for human endeavour, videogames appeared, playful devices created and mediated by digital technology. Ever since a group of MIT students created Spacewar in 1962, electronic gaming has been responsible for a development that has expanded in forms, technologies and purposes. Socially, videogames constitute a popular product which is used on a massive scale and a strong industry in continuous development. In addition, there is a great diversity of genres and platforms for serious games: from educational ones and those aimed at taking care of our health or our cognitive capacity, to strategy games which purpose is to train combat personnel or to improve productivity. In this article we will focus on the discursive and operative capabilities that net art pioneers saw in videogames, and how those operate in the art world and in social activism. We will analyse what are the traits that establish them in this scope of action, and some strategies they utilise.

Throughout history, a large number of artists have frequently approached the labor environment and work as subjects for art. However, to a lesser extent, the artistic activity itself has been problematized as labor and/or employment. Nevertheless, in recent times we have attended an in-depth debate about the easements and limitations of artistic activity and its dependence on some established power structures. The text that we develop below raises the repercussions and contradictions of some art projects, which take as a starting point or base on the relationship art/work. Through them, it is possible to notice an awareness of the artists concerning their position in the art system, revealing common practices that highlight its precarity and the lack of a regulatory framework to protect their professional activity. Each one of these ways of proceeding projects reflections and questions we think necessary to review critically since they present sharp comments about the problems we raise in our research.

This article presents results obtained in research focused on the photochemical and digital supports that capture cinematographic images. Specifically, the results that are presented are in relation to a definition of one concept: texture. In this sense, this article starts describing the cinematographic acquisition current context before the paradigm change produced by the arrival of digital cameras. After that, the article focuses on the theoretical parameters, methodology and instruments used in the research. Finally, the results about the definition of "texture" are presented by three approximations marked by the phases of the research. In the first place, a proposal arising from the bibliographic analysis of technical literature of the cinematographic sector; secondly, a proposal based on the analysis of ten in-depth interviews with directors of photography; and finally, a definition of the concept "texture" delimited and focused on the world of film acquisition.

The speed in obtaining responses characterizes our use of the information and communication technologies (ICT). The feeling of immediacy comes along with the occultation of the intermediate processes and the agents that mediate those uses. In this sense, McKenzie Wark came up with the term “third nature”, which refers to the separation between the ICT and the natural resources with which they interact. Likewise, Michael Cronin (2013) described the “3T paradigm” (trade, technology and translation) to address the issue of the invisibilization of the entailments between trade, technology and translation in the digital age. These thoughts emphasize the need of raising awareness about the ICT infrastructure in order to understand the political, economic, social and environmental consequences of the use of digital tools. By taking all this into account, the goal of this paper is to bring to light the interaction between the 3T paradigm and its linkage to environmental issues by analysing Eugenio Tisselli’s digital art project El 27 || The 27th (2014 - nowadays).

This paper investigates the links that the artist Gerhard Richter establishes between photography and painting throughout his artistic career, initiated on 60ths. Since then, Richter's goal has been to build images, whether pictorial or photographic, whether blurry or sharp, geometric, abstract or figurative. The world that Richter paints is made up of banal situations, by anonymous people, by familiar landscapes, and that makes us feel comfortable as spectators, because it seems that Richter is creating a file of known places, moments with which we can connect from our subjectivity. Most part of the images are blurry, so Richter is not painting photographs, but that he is building images, from photography and through painting. The richness of his artistic process is his position between photography and painting, between figuration and abstraction, between the subjective and the collective. Richter creates an extensive and varied register of different types of images, which are part of our everyday universe. Richter build those images on painting them or on collecting them, creating a simulated reality, a vast and aesthetic archive where we can find ourselves reflected, interrogated, seduced. The archive of images by Gerhard Richter invites us, in fact, to ask ourselves about our relationship with the world and with its representations.

On Kawara´s One million years exhibits enormous temporal magnitudes enumerations, with that, problematizes diverse ways of relation with time as representation and as experience possibility. However, time is apprehended in a sensitive way, therefore time is alienated from the means that try to contain it. But then, how can enumeration show temporary magnitudes in the piece? How can we record time? and how can art articulate time as a productive poetic? From this problem is proposed the following: time in One million years is addressed in three ways; enumeration, imagination and experience. These three modes of time problematize and exhibit the constant abandonment of time in the work of art. This study thinks over these time modes showed in Kawara´s work, contrasting them with artistic proposals that address similar temporalities, reflecting upon the paradoxes and contradictions that the pieces try to display.

The Bolivian community in Argentina celebrates the Virgin of Copacabana by travelling to the city of Luján, the country’s largest center of pilgrimage. During the first weekend of August, the faithful engage in a tradition that dates back over 60 years. The circulation of multiple symbols is linked to identity claims and the reaffirmation of this community, as well as their music and dance. All of these elements reveal a sense of belonging that is expressed through various corporal practices. The combination of these practices distinguishes this celebration from the other practices that have developed in this city over the years. However, the practice of calling it a ‘Bolivian pilgrimage’ implies a representation of identity and religious ritual that does not reflect the ‘hybridity’ of this phenomenon. In fact, the symbols, practices and participants go beyond the characterization of this manifestation as being ‘foreign’. The aim of this article is thus to explore and analyze the transcultural and transmedial identity strategies in the 'mobile setting' of the pilgrimage. The authors consider how such discourses, symbols and practices are expressed and deployed and de-territorialized and re-territorialized in a heterotopic space-movement. The result is an analysis that questions the boundaries between sacred and profane spaces, re-actualizing in the ritual those aspects of historical memory that allow us to re-signify the links between identity and territory.

This article explores an early moment in the social history of Iquique: the years prior to the War of the Pacific and the last stage of Peruvian sovereignty, which was a period characterized by the vertiginous growth of the saltpetre (nitrate) industry and the port of Iquique. In the years studied, the province received a large number of Chilean migrants. These were mainly laborers from the central region of Chile who were experiencing an early phase of the labor transition towards salaried employment. In the city, they adopted various forms of rebelliousness against the urban order of the ruling classes of the province of Tarapaca. The latter had been aiming to convert Iquique into a modern city that could respond to the needs of capital accumulation, and for this purpose they had tried to increase their social control over the urban space and its inhabitants. This article underlines how the social conflict between popular urban sectors and city elites was an important factor in urban development. The study of primary sources offers a depiction of the society of the period in question and provides an opportunity to analyze the variables linked to the social conflict and their impact on the configuration of the city.

Costa Rica has historically been identified as the main destination country of migration in Central America. However, from 2009 onwards, important changes were observed in the migration scenario which have led to two major emergencies: the first in November 2015 with the massive arrival of Cuban citizens and the second in April 2016 with the arrival of people from various Caribbean, African and Asian countries. This work is based on an analysis of news articles, a review of reports on this situation issued by institutions linked to the response to these emergencies, and interviews with key actors. This analysis therefore allows us to identify the changes registered in the migratory scenario of transit to establish the main challenges faced by the Costa Rican State in its response to these emergencies. As a result of this research process, it has been concluded that the country must reassess its migration policy and adopt a forward looking and versatile approach, which transcends its focus on immigration issues and plays a comprehensive role in the regional migratory framework.