Transformando olhares com tecnologia, arte e árvores: Roberta Carvalho at TEDxVer-o-Peso
[Music] [Applause] Hello, first of all I want to say something to you all. We human beings on this planet have the capacity to act upon this world in which we live. Our existential condition as living beings makes our experience something very special, special because we are aware of it. So I ask you, what is experience? Experience comes from the verb to experience, which means to put into practice, which means to try, which means to rehearse. So life is experience. Art is also experience. Art is a way of expression, and I'm going to talk a little about Nietzsche when he says that art, nothing more than art, connects us to life. Art is the great enabler of life, the great stimulant of life. Forms of expression are bursts of expressiveness that demonstrate the way we want to act and also demonstrate a strength that we have within that doesn't let us be silent. I've always been very passionate about technology. Technology itself is something that needs something to give it strength; it needs something to animate it. It was in 2008 that a project called Symbioses emerged. Symbiosis is a term from ecology that designates a relationship. Mutually beneficial. Between two beings of different species, the first projection of the symbiosis was a man in a fetal position in the womb, let's say, of this great tree. It was life leaping there, radiant, luminous. Can you see it? I started at that moment a project that took me to the most diverse places and to meet the most different people, an art- media project that uses technology to connect me with people, much more than a projection on top of a... This work is very simple: take a projector, point it somewhere. I believe that in this work there is something of a projection beyond the projection. This work has something that provokes reflections, that moves people, creates affections and new relationships with space. I'm going to show you a video now that talks a little about the actions of the [Music] project. I was so scared, I said, "Wow! Is it my imagination?" I spent hours and hours and hours looking at that photo, and I said, "I'll look there, look there, but how come there's a tree here? There isn't one here, Grandma, Grandma, can't you see it moving?" The one who said, "Well, who's crazy, me or you? No, Grandma, it's not moving at all." This provocation of perception was really stirring, wasn't it? If you listen to the lady, she says, "How come there was n't a tree here?" So, how come we don't notice the trees around us? Nature has many exceptions, right? There's nature of a cultural order; other authors talk about first and second nature, but we feel that when we encounter a tree, that nature is there. I took several trips this year, I had great opportunities to take this work to other places and other people, and I proposed to have a more open and relational contact with these people. I proposed that they be part of the project, not only for the record but for an experience of the project and what this relationship with nature means. I think that art should connect us to what is human in us, or rather, to what our existence makes us reflect and think about. I return once again to Nietzsche when she says that man is no longer an artist, he has become the work of art itself. So, the incorporation of these people into the project happened in this way, technology connecting us to ourselves and to the world. On one of those nights... Anyway, people always said, "I'll never look at trees differently again." Some people called them monsters, others said they were green creatures, trees with frightening, observant eyes; others had an affectionate relationship with the trees. And one of those nights, a lady asked someone who had done that, and someone pointed at me. A lady from the countryside, with very simple gestures, came towards me and said very vehemently, "I knew they had eyes, and they come to us." Thank you, everyone.