Cesar Baio is artist, professor and researcher. He is visiting artist-researcher at i-DAT (Plymouth University | U.K.) and associate professor at Campinas University (UNICAMP) | Brazil. Having background in electronics and media studies, his interest as artist and researcher is on the relationship between art, technology and society. He developed his PhDʼs research at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC/SP) with a graduate internship at the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Universität der Künste, Berlin.
His PhD thesis analyses experimental artworks, most of them produced with technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, interactive video, cybernetic systems and locative media, assuming a perspective of the art and media theories. This research aimed to comprehend how some of these artworks reshape the models of representations and, in doing that, they materialize forms of understanding the world that are different from the ones consolidated in traditional media. Seeking to demonstrate the heterogeneity of the sensibilities implied in these different modes of existence and functioning of the image, he analyses these artworks from the “apparatus philosophy” by Vilém Flusser, as well as, from the concepts of performativity, co-presence and embodied experience.
The series of videos, photos, interactive installations and urban interventions produced by him place questions in some political, ethic and cognitive aspects of the insertion of the technology into the cultural practices and power structures. The most of his projects is based in procedures such as reverse engineering, occupation of information networks and subversion of the industrial devices, aiming to reveal tensions in the human-machine relationship, encourage creative collective participation in digital platforms or speculate on alternatives forms to represent the world and to produce reality.
He was professor and co-founded of the Graduated Program in Arts of the Universidade Federal do Ceará | UFC, where he coordinated the actLAB – Laboratório de Pesquisa em Arte, Ciência e Tecnologia. During the last years, he has been collaborator researcher of the “CISC - Centro Interdisciplinar de Semiótica da Cultura e da Mídia” (PUC/SP) and the “Grupo de Pesquisa Fotografia, Imagem e Pensamento” (UFRJ).
Author of the book “Máquinas de imagem: arte, tecnologia e pós-virtualidade” (Machines of image: art, technology and post-virtuality), he has written papers that are published in academic journals and collections. He has participated in congress, seminars and exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. His activities have been commissioned by Brazilians federal agencies and prizes for research and art production.