WR3AD1NG D1GIT5

Supported by Funchal City Council through the 2023–2024 Artistic Creation Grant, FAMILY PORTRAIT[S]: A Virtual Photonovel is a cyberliterary creation by d1g1t0 indivíduo_coletivo (Diogo Marques and João Santa Cruz). Combining digital technologies, literary writing, heritage, and insularity, this research-creation project pays homage to the Madeiran author António Aragão, offering a rereading, retextualisation, and reinterpretation of his artistic-ethnographic investigations.

Inspired by Poesia Urro (1980), the project revisits the ten biographical models used by Aragão in the sound portraits of the Capela Gomes family, bringing together the memories of characters from the experimental novel Um buraco na boca (1971) with testimonies collected during writing workshops—conducted in educational institutions and cultural associations in Funchal (Escola Secundária Francisco Franco and Porta 33).

Using combinatory reading techniques, AI-assisted visual synthesis systems, and augmented reality (AR) technology, the project proposes ten new portraits—ten new faces awaiting readers to engage in a process of distributed authorship. Ten potentially unique biographies with every interaction. Ten digito-familial ties, endlessly renewable, caught in a permanent tension between fiction and reality.

Curators

Inês Cardoso and Ana Salgueiro

Credits

Authorship

d1g1t0 indivíduo_coletivo [Diogo Marques + João Santa Cruz]

Curatorship

Ana Salgueiro (DRABL) and Inês Cardoso (ILCML/University of Porto)

Support

Artistic Creation Grant – Funchal City Council

Regional Government of Madeira

Regional Secretariat for Economy, Tourism and Culture

Madeira Photography Museum – Atelier Vicente’s

Regional Directorate of Archives and Libraries of Madeira

MUDAS. Museum of Contemporary Art of Madeira

Escola Secundária Francisco Franco

PORTA33 — Associação Quebra Costas Contemporary Art Centre

CODA – Centre for Digital Culture and Innovation – University of Porto

Margarida Losa Institute for Comparative Literature / University of Porto

Video Animation

Valter Nunes Ramos

AI-Generated Visual Syntheses

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Graphic Design

Cecília Magalhães

Framing

Molduradora do Carmo

Acknowledgements

Alexandra Melim

Students of Escola Secundária Francisco Franco with Prof. Teresa Jardim, Prof. Graça Berimbau, and Prof. Sílvia Pimenta

Ana Gago

António Barros

António Dantas

Bárbara Loja

Carolina Vieira

Cecília Freitas & Maurício Reis

Filipe Bettencourt

Márcia de Sousa

Marco Gonçalves

Marcos Aragão Correia

Marta Cília

Natércia Gouveia

Nuno Franco

Paula Jardim

Rui Torres & PO.EX Digital Archive

Vítor Luis

All exhibition photos by Marco Gonçalves

Dedicated to João Elói Santa Cruz Silva (1953–2024)