Flavio de Carvalho: Media Artist Avant la Lettre

Fig. 6. In 1951 Flávio de Carvalho created a luminous-kinetic costume that his friend, Zilda Vergueiro, wore when she dressed up as a pearl for the Carnival Ball held at Clube dos Artistas e Amigos das Artes (Artists and Art Friends Society), in São Paulo. (Photo: Archive Rui Moreira Leite.) As part of the apparatus, a hand switch turned on the blinking lights speckled all over the costume.

This article is part of the Leonardo special project A Radical Intervention: The Brazilian Contribution to the International Electronic Art Movement," guest edited by Eduardo Kac.

For the print version of this article, see Leonardo Volume 37, No. 2 (2004), available from the MIT Press.

Updated 31 March 2010