Portable Devices

Panel: Latin America and Cybernetics

Portables, consisted of a curatorial project, which the notion of portable devices was discussed and reflected upon. Electronic devices were developed by artists and then presented. The set of activities included in the curatorial project were: a cognitive mapping session, two workshops of locative media, one in a public school and the other one in Centro Cultural Matucana 100, four presentations of guest artists, seven documentaries of the electronic devices developed by artists working in the city, and an exhibition in the gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts of Santiago. All activities that were involved in the curatorial project, worked under a critical line of thinking assuming the notion of portable devices. This concept, derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “wearable,” refers to the use of circuits or computers that have been introduced both internally and externally to a given body, usually a person. Originally, these devices consisted of health monitoring systems and performance analysis models. Since the term “wearable” has no Latin root, it became necessary to find a word to replace it and portable was chosen.