Diaporama is a project by Cesario Alves presented August 19 at Centro Português de Fotografia (CPF), Porto.

Transparencies in this installation/performance were found or acquired in several parts of the world. They’re mainly vernacular photographs from unknown creators, which were mixed with rejected fragments of the projection of motion pictures from the analog era.

This event is a consequence of Cesario Alves’s PHD research on the appropriation of vernacular photographs in contemporary art. Its public presentation at CPF brings together sound artists Miguel Pipa and Mariana Sardon, with my own technical supervision.

My main contribution was the Dataton Trax software programming in conjunction with Dataton SmartPax QC interface connected to various Kodak Ektapro 7020 slide projectors.

I programmed and designed a graphical user interface in Dataton Trax, for Cesário Alves to use during the performance, and it provided an elegant and simple way to manipulate and interact with the various slide projectors.

The graphical user interface provided direct control of the projectors allowing for slide selection and sequencing, light intensity and shutter manipulation.

Several timelines were running in parallel (for each slide projector) and could be stopped at any time surrendering autonomous control to the interface and allowing manual control.

The software was developed and run on a Apple PowerBook Duo 270c due to the limitations of Dataton Trax software which doesn’t run in MacOS X. It was a great challenge to make it work on such an old machine. But ultimately it worked flawlessly and was a positive confirmation regarding the use of supposedly obsolete technology.