miguel soares

Play-Pause
Pogo Teatro
(co-direction with Ruy Otero)

February 6 > 21, 2001
Lux
Lisbon, Portugal

triple video projection, aprox. 30 min.  of 3D animation.

made for Play-Pause, Pogo Teatro.

174×129cm
2000
c print
(text by Pedro Cabral Santo)

made for Unlovable, Sala do Veado, Museu Nacional de História Natural, Lisbon, Portugal

Prints from a second city, made during 2000.

see also : X city

Z city 001, 50×120 cm

Z city 002, 50×120 cm

Z city 003, 50×120 cm

Z city 004, 50×70 cm

Z city 005, 50×70 cm

Z city 006, 50×70 cm

Z city 007, 50×120 cm

Z city 008, 50×120 cm

Z city 009, 50×120 cm

Z city 010, 50×120 cm

Z city 011 (doreimon), 50×70x16 cm, Duratrans on lightbox

Z city 012, 50×70 cm

Z city 013, 50×120 cm

Z city 014, 50×120 cm

Z city 015, 50×120 cm

Z city 016, 50×120 cm

2000
07′12”
audio: “Ebb”, Sack & Blumm, TomLab, 1999

Archibunk3r Associates is a video portfolio of an architecture and design bureau based on Mars, in a distant future.
AA are the authors of teleport centers, stadiums, satelites, the Channel of Light, the SofaGuard ™, Hard Disc, the
Multi Purpose Vehicle used in Time for Space, and Tower city, among others.
.
“In Archibunk3r Associates, a kind of prototype catalogue from an architecture and design studio from the future,
we find once again Miguel Soares obsession with the artificial environment in which life in technologically developed
societies or in imagined future societies takes place.
A sense of melancholy, to a great extent given by the music, inhabits this images of idealized architecture and objects.
We do not know for sure to what the sense of loss is due to – if to a world extinct, the city as a space of sociability and
the experience of nature as a tangible reality, if to an utopian society based on technological advances as an instrument
of progress and well-being. ”
Miguel Wandschneider in SlowMotion – Miguel Soares, ESTGAD, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

Untitled (wc)
2000, duratrans on lightbox, 50×70x18 cm

05′00”
text: João Simões. voice: Lula Pena and João Simões. sound design: Ari de Carvalho
music: “Mortícia”, “The chequered flag”, Combustile Edison, 1996. “I’m such a small thing”, Funki Porcini, 1996

“(…) Miguel Soares is a science fiction artist, someone who makes futuristic works that comment on aspects of contemporary human life.
His Time for Space (2000) is perfect editorial on Portugal’s present moment. Like some futuristic tourism commercial, Soares’ frolicking UFOs call upon us to journey with them to fantastic places where we can finally gain an all-encompassing sense of belonging.
However, we are never made to feel sure what the purpose of belonging is. While the upbeat tone of the work indicates positive possibilities, there is a subtle undercurrent that suggests that we are being invited to some darker cultish or militaristic venture.
Soares’ delicious ambiguity relates back to the reason I felt the title Situation Zero was such an apropriate description of the state of portuguese contemporary artmaking: the possibilities of its future are promising yet unknown.”
René de Guzman, in Situation Zero: Recent Art from Portugal. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. San Francisco. USA, August 2001
.

In a society located in a distant future, the promises of happiness are packed with images and sounds of publicity: images of flying saucers flying over seas and crossing the universe are underlined by alienating music and the reading of a text promoting wonderful journeys into unknown worlds.
As one understands at the end of the video, the shift from a feminine voice to a masculine one signals the shift from an travel agency campaign into a military enrolment one.
The illusion of adventure and freedom co-exists with the nightmare of a dictatorial society aimed towards the control of individuals.
Miguel Wandschneider, in SlowMotion – Miguel Soares. exhibition depliant. ESTGAD+Art Attack. Caldas da Rainha. Portugal.

Time for Space images
Duratrans on lightboxes
30×40x16 cm each

tfs 001

tfs 002

tfs 003

tfs 004

tfs 005

03′25”
audio: “James Whale”, Tuxedomoon, 1980

Y2k 1999 One of the works that came out of the X-city project. Y2k is based on the fear of the millenium bug, and was made for the Festival Atlântico 99, in December 1999, at Galeria ZDB – Novo Figurino, Lisbon This is a preview of the effects caused by Y2k, the computer bug of the millenium everyone was talking about during that year. Despite the daylight, the church bells are chiming the Y2k hour.
A jet plane is trying to escape the millenium bug by moving from city to city (time-zone to time-zone). Each time it passes the heart of the city – the administrative center- it becomes distorted, regaining its original shape as it gets further away from the city center, escaping the bug, and moving onto the next city. This routine goes on for about 3 minutes. In the end you see an office building being desintegrated by the Y2k bug.

variable dimentions
1999
junk bag, motorized arm, laser pointer
This is version 1 of Gustavo, made for Espaço 1999, Museu Nacional de História Natural, Lisbon

A junk bag is appently carving a drawing on a wall with a red laser beam.
Gustavo is a yellow junk bag out of which cames a motorized arm with a laser pointer that apparently is
carving a near-circular drawing on the wall through a near-circular continuous movement.
Of course, I previously have carved the drawing on the wall, according to the line described by the laser.
Gustavo stands for the name of the hypothetical disposed robot.
“Do androids dream of electric sheep?” * Would robot-artists carve drawings on a wall?”

* (title of the Philip K. Dick book on which the movie Blade Runner was based)

untitled (story), 1999, 160×80 cm

06′50”
1999
video projection, stereo sound,
music: “I can’t see you” and “song slowly song”, Tim Buckley

One night at home, my quiet was disturbed by these four people having a discussion that ended up in a fight. I grabbed my Hi8 camera and started shooting the scene from the balcony of my apartment, trying to pass unnoticed. My heart was beating fast. Months later I was looking at the Hi8 footage with sound turned off, and listening to one of my favourite cds: Tim Buckley’s first album,”Tim Buckley”, 1968, ed. Electa. I noticed how two diferent songs would give two different ways of percepting the same images. untitled (two) shows the footage shot from the balcony two times, with two different songs from the Tim Buckley album: “I can’t see you” and “Song slowly song”.
.
.
“From the window of his apartment, holding the video camera, Miguel Soares recorded violent events that have disturbed his long nights spent working in his computer. This video is the most distressing example of a series of three done in the same amateur video style, that contrast with his 3D animation work for which he is known. By commenting the image of a couple involved in a violent discussion that ends in a fight, with two different songs by Tim Buckley, one in a melancholic tone, the other in a passionate tone, the artist opens reality to a fictional construction and to poetic imagination.”
Miguel Wandschneider, in SlowMotion – Miguel Soares. exhibition depliant. ESTGAD+Art Attack. Caldas da Rainha. Portugal

variable dimentions
1999
mobile phone boxes, lamps, blasts, cables, etc.

lamps made out of mobile phone boxes.
made for Design Inserts, Experimenta design 99, Gare Marítima de Alcântara, Lisbon

During my design graduation I learned that in Portugal it used to be not worthy to cast steel moulds
in order to produce plastic objects, since there was no market for all the objects you had to sell,
to pay for the mould. Perspectives of exportation were weak as well.
Suddenly in 1998, the 3 portuguese mobile phone companies start competing with each other through
expensive, designer-like, plastic containers for their cell phones:
TMN – Mimo, Telecel – Vitamina and the Optimus – Boomrang.
People were throwing away tens of thousands of these objects every day.
For Design Inserts, at the ExperimentaDesign99 I recycled those colourful plastic containers as lamps,
making two different models for each mobile phone company.

.

A clockwork toy with a coupled keyholder laser pointer.
Later used in the cover and booklet of 002 audio CD.

bug001

bug002

bug003

bug004

bug005

bug006

Bíblia #6 – Biblia goes to America
December, 1998
cover, graphic design, some images inside

X city is a 3d virtual city that I was building and animating during a 3-year period.
It was meant to grow in size and complexity as I would get faster and faster computers.
I would transfer the city to a faster computer every time I could, so in the end it would be an
almost “real” city.
Unfortunately I started wrong by choosing the wrong software (Corel Dream 3d): animation had to
be done frame by frame manually, with no keyframes. Then files were put on a render queue.
X-city was based in the city of New York. In December 1998 I animated 3d planes crashing into
buildings. One can be seen on the cover of Biblia magazine #6 – Biblia goes to America.The other can
be seen as animation in this page and was part of my videofolio “miguel soares – works 1991-2001″.
During this period I always had the same computer (a pentium 166mmx).
I started at a rendering speed of 25 frames per day (1 second).
I abandoned the project when frames were taking 13 hours to render each.
I gave the computer to a friend.

Atlas – Colección de Ilustraciones La Casa del Futuro
curated by MacDiego

Sevilha (Spain). Frankfurt (Germany). Milano (Italy). Lisbon – Standard Eléctrica (Portugal).

catalogue ISBN 84-605-81 38-1

Book cover for Fernando Guerreiro’s Outono.
Black Son Editores, July 1998.

Book cover for Rita Taborda Duarte’s Poética Breve.
Black Son Editores, July 1998.

1998
40×40x15cm
duratrans on lightbox

For the Flashback exhibition, comemorating the 25th aniversary of the art school where I studied
photography in, I composed this image from 5 diferent layers:
Layer 1- Dog
Layer 2- Monorail
Layer 3- Hotel
Layer 4- Mount Fuji
Layer 5- a 3D plane
Few people can survive as contemporary artists in Portugal. Lots of artists work “like dogs” (we use
this expression) without any good results. Some of them have to escape (”fugir” in portuguese), emigrating.