A pressing problem in archival preservation of information on electronic art, and any possible virtual conservation of such artifacts in Latin America, is the lack of strategic initiatives in the field. Unfortunately, a certain so-called ‘history of digital art’ has not been constructed in the southern continent; neither is any ‘history of digital art in Latin America’ valorized per se in the literature on contemporary art. The creation of databases and sets is inevitable as Latin America transforms into an economic power. Intelligent and user-friendly archival platforms are urgently needed. The potential of a 5G empowered mining for retrieval of dynamic contents in new media arts is immense and would further point to the aesthetic needs of the future.

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In this article we look at four international artists whose art has its origin in common civilian life and its concerns. The story of this art should be re-written in terms of a historiography of the average underprivileged common person, who does not reap the benefits of a discriminatory economy. Artists discussed here, namely, Daniel Cruz (Chile), Gilbert Prado (Brazil), Kausik Mukhopadhyay (India) and Probir Gupta (India) have been creating art on the impoverished side of the digital innovation divide, in their own niche and horizons of belief. Discarded gadgets, scraps, broken circuits or sensors, microphones and other junk are incorporated to create fragile but impactful installations. Junk animism and low-fi artificial intelligence often inform their work. Such artists do not inhabit traditionally known borders of nation, class or identity but only a space across fault lines which divide and exacerbate human society from within. Cruz’ project titled Surfonic exists on the margins of internet gateways. Mukhopadhyay uses scrap media for his installations. They exploit so much technology as just to animate their art. This commitment to voluntary defeatism upends a culture of spectacle. The artist is like a flaneur or technological fakir, quintessentializing human experience against the greed and pretensions of a global market of art.

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O projeto Sideral foi desenvolvido pelos artistas Marcela Armas e Gilberto Esparza, como mais um acréscimo à série de esculturas eletrofônicas expostas por Esparza depois que ele recebeu o Golden Nica de 2015. Em seu esquema básico, o Concepción-Adargas, que é o título do trabalho que emana do Projeto Sideral, usa um meteorito de 3,3 toneladas, que atingiu em 1786 o estado de Chihuahua, México e agora é preservado pelo Instituto de Astronomia da Universidade Nacional Autônoma do México (UNAM). O campo magnético na superfície do meteorito é detectado e traduzido em sons que recriam as harmonias distantes de Buchla, de maneira semelhante à composição Licht de Stockhausen ou às canções contemplativas de Pauline Oliveros, por mais importantes que sejam em aspectos do som, é o companheiro de Armas e Esparza, Daniel Llermaly, que os transforma em termos semelhantes aos da música indígena Tarahumara, uma frequência semelhante conhecida pelos povos da região onde o meteorito atingiu.