Calenda – Artifices and Artefacts

From May 25th to 27th, 2026, Belo

The theme of this edition of the International Congress of Art, Science, and Technology and Digital Arts Seminar (11th CIACTSAD 2026) reveals crossings between the analog and the digital without establishing hierarchies. It provokes, within the landscape of research, tensions between the true and the false; between fact and fiction; between a disinterested account and a narrative in crisis; between the artisanal and the industrial; it opens space to reflect on automation through slow processes; and ideas of intelligence, artificiality, imagination, and creativity are thrown into crisis.

CIACT-SAD is organized by Laboratório de Poéticas Fronteiriças (https://linktr.ee/labfront – UEMG/CNPq) from a committee composed of members of various institutions (UEMG, CEFETMG, UFSM, UFBA) and an enormous scientific committee consisting of doctoral professors from the country and abroad. The 2026 edition has the support of national funding agencies and various other partners, such as researchers, artists, and specialists from many different fields. The program is quite complete, with participants from the country and abroad. Its seminar section brings a thematic curatorial focus on the “Artifices & Artefacts,” with guests presenting their advanced research on the relationships between art, science, and technology.

As a congress, we have the presentation of work by master’s, doctoral, and post-doctoral students from associations, research groups, and graduate programs in various areas. These presentation proposals, approved in a double-blind review system, are grouped into simultaneous Working Groups and Reading Residencies in the program. The event publishes a volume of proceedings with complete papers in all its editions (http://ciact-sad.labfront. com/anais). In addition to work presentations and guests, there is a cultural program with book launches, exhibitions, and various artistic expressions. Therefore, we call on interested parties to present research (communications) in Working Groups (WG), participate in the Reading Residency, and for exhibition during the event.

Those whose abstracts (normal and expanded ones) are accepted will participate in person in the WG, in their respective rooms, on days and times to be announced later, through an oral presentation in front of the WG with a presentation to be projected in the room. For the WGX – Artifices and Artefacts to be held online and live during the event’s schedule, the presentation must be made in a video format (.mp4), with a maximum duration of 10 minutes, sent by the deadline contained in this call. The WGs are held in a way that enables discussions on the topic with other researchers in the field.

The proposed Working Groups for the 2026 Congress are: 

WG1 – Art, Science, and Media Beyond the Human

Coordination: Caio Dayrell Santos (UFMG)

The coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis, and the emergence of new artificial intelligence technologies challenge the foundations upon which the human constituted itself as a privileged subject in the world. This WG explores post-humanism and its different manifestations in the arts, sciences, and other expressions of visual culture, from video games to literature. There is interest in works that address the human as an open category, engaging with feminist and decolonial critiques, as well as projects that explore other nonanthropocentric ontologies. There is interest in studies exploring New Materialism, Science and Technology Studies, Actor-Network Theory, Animal Studies, Amerindian Perspectivism, Speculative Realism, Object-Oriented Ontology, among other contemporary approaches focused on the more-than-human.

WG2 – Art and Anti-Immersion Artifacts: Frictional Devices

Coordination: Italo Cardoso Travenzoli (UEMG)

This Working Group aims to investigate digital artifacts as devices of aesthetic, cognitive, and sensorial friction, straining the logic of immersion and transparency of cultural artifacts. Instead of technical transparency and an engaging experience, we are interested in processes that operate through opacity, latency, noise, and instability. Interactive interfaces cease to be neutral channels and become zones of critical presence, revealing their layers of mediation and their capacity to affect and be affected. The WG seeks to bring to light investigations that explore digital artifacts, such as games, installations, narratives, artistic software, curatorial works, as well as environments of co

emergence between subject, machinic operation, and language. We are interested in thinking of the interface as a relational and autopoietic field, in which aesthetic experience is articulated to collective and expanded forms of consciousness. Thus, the discussion of technologies is proposed not only as tools but as conceptual operators for critical problems in exploring the limits and tensions between technique, poetics, and subjectivity.

WG3 – Art, Science and Technology of the Afro-Atlantic Triangle

Coordination: Tatiane de Oliveira Elias (UFSM) e Fernando Scherer (UNIVASF)

This working group addresses the intersections between art, science, and technology of the Afro-Atlantic Triangle, exploring the importance of the African diaspora. In science, technology, and the visual arts, Black personalities have played roles of great importance in the construction of historical memory and collective identity. These personalities, for many centuries, were made invisible due to the colonial historical past. Challenging dominant narratives and serving as centers of activism, this WG seeks to examine the multifaceted nature of these artists and their contributions to the ongoing struggle for social change and diversity. We invite proposals that explore (but are not limited to): historical narratives and counter-narratives, transcontinental cultural relations, artist migration, artworks, curation, and exhibition strategies; works that question canonical readings of (Western) art history, as well as collecting practices and archive organization are also welcome. Examples of questions to be raised are: How can practices be reinvented in a new context? How do artists negotiate their migrant identity in new geographies?

WG4 – Constellations of Writing: Typographic Studies and Graphic Culture

Coordination: Mário Vinícius Ribeiro Gonçalves (CEFET-MG) and Emerson Nunes Eller (UFMG)

The Working Group proposes to explore typography and other systems of graphic inscription as fields that combine 

experimentation, critical investigation, and attention to the materialities of writing. It welcomes research on letters, characters, and various modes of inscription, involving type design, calligraphy, lettering, graphic design, editorial practices, and studies on reading, among other domains. It considers that writing, in its diverse expressions, results from articulations between techniques, supports, and visual cultures that span both the digital and the analog. The WG is interested in bringing together works that examine formal choices, production processes, and situated uses, valuing approaches that understand writing as a practice in constant renewal. The proposal thus seeks to integrate perspectives that relate research, creation, and critique in discussions about the ways of making and thinking about graphic form yesterday, and, above all, today.

WG5 – Interface Design for Bioethical Connections: Artifices and Artifacts Beyond the Screen

Coordination: Débora Aita Gasparetto (UFSM)

The Working Group proposes to discuss how interface design can promote bioethical connections between people, technologies, and ecosystems, surpassing the screen-centered paradigm. In a scenario of environmental crisis, social inequalities, and the proliferation of dark patterns, the WG seeks to explore artifices and artifacts that favor more responsible, accessible, and sustainable interactions. From perspectives such as Design Justice, post-digital studies, and extensionist practices, it investigates how responsive environments, objects, gestures, sonorities, and low-complexity technologies can generate meaningful experiences for real communities. The WG welcomes research, prototypes, and critical reflections that propose alternatives to digital extractivism, broaden accessibility, confront UI/UX manipulations, and imagine forms of interaction that respect human and non-human lives.

WG6 – Time Devices: Temporal Poetics

Coordination: Miguel Alonso (USP)

“Time Devices” invites us to rethink traditional artifices and artifacts created to represent and present what time can be, beyond what is chronological and hegemonic. The proposal of this Working Group is to investigate ways of dealing with “times” in a plural and multidisciplinary manner, bringing the visual arts closer to other areas of knowledge such as chronobiology, temporal design, among other possibilities of narratives of time as in Artists’ Clocks. The objective is to promote dialogue by looking at oscillations of objective and subjective perspectives of temporality, in the relationships between artistic works, technologies, sciences, and society. In everyday life, social time devices deal with power and control, but they are challenged here, with temporal poetics.

WG7 – Blurred Frontiers

Coordination: Guilherme Rodrigues Bruno (UFFS) and Marcela Alvares Maciel (UFFS)

Leonardo Da Vinci, the famous Florentine polymath of the Renaissance, inspired modern thought by combining art, technique, and science in a disruptive philosophical message, written essentially by his artifices and artifacts. In this sense, sfumato, his well-known pictorial resource that plays with the limits of perception, can be taken up as an archetype of current times. A nebulous mystery veiling the perspectives of future times would not be just a symbolist metaphor to diagnose the present, but also, in this WG, an invocation to think and write about the increasingly diluted frontiers between artifacts and artifices. Beyond a “virtual,” “augmented,” or “mixed” reality, metamodern technological artifacts bring forth what we will call “blurred reality,” full of hallucinations, pareidolias, apophenias, and new signs. More than amusing, artificially sweetened images, these new artifacts may be producing a true rewriting of the coercive myths of human interactions, that powerful artifice that sews the social fabric. At the same time, on the margins of the perplexity with which science contemplates new generations losing interest in academic knowledge, it sublimates the understanding that the future will not only be unveiled by a new formula but invented by a new fable, new myths, in short, by a creative rewriting, and not just by its technical reformulation. In this sense, this WG invites all who dare to think the role of art-science-technology within this context, advancing over this blurred frontier that challenges its horizons.

WG8 – Image, Editing and Technopoetics

Coordination: Rogério Barbosa da Silva (CEFETMG), Wagner José Moreira (CEFET-MG) and Patricia Chanely Silva Ricarte (CEFET-MG)

This Working Group explores thinking about Interarts relations, Editing Technologies, Technological Education, and Digital

Technologies. It seeks the discussion of works that deal with static or moving images in relation to mechanical (19th century), electronic, and digital (20th and 21st centuries) technologies, as well as the close dialogue of education, editing, electronic poetry, digital literature with the technological and its relations with the poetics that traverse it.

WG9 – Narratives in Video Games

Coordination: Adriana Falqueto Lemos (IFSULDEMINAS)

Video games are configured as contemporary media endowed with narrative capacity, mobilizing fiction itself as the foundation for game development; they are, therefore, games constituted through fiction (Tavinor, 2009). In light of the notion of ergodicity proposed by Espen Aarseth (1997), it is understood that the engine operates in such a way that the narrative acts as the organizing axis of the ergodic elements distributed throughout the gaming experience. In this context, narrative progression depends on the player’s success in overcoming the challenges established by the programming. When investigating games and their narratives, we align our approach with the perspective of Mia Consalvo, who argued in 2012 that “no discipline or field should (or can) have control over game research or theorizing, and the study of games is enriched by various paths of investigation” (p. 8). Thus, we propose to examine games and their narrative constructions with the aim of understanding how their programming enables, through ergodic elements, the development of narratives and the effects produced on players. This WG accepts works that address any research related to game narratives and the forms of their appreciation art-science-technology within this context, advancing over this blurred frontier that challenges its horizons.

WG8 – Image, Editing and Technopoetics

Coordination: Rogério Barbosa da Silva (CEFETMG), Wagner José Moreira (CEFET-MG) and Patricia Chanely Silva Ricarte (CEFET-MG)

This Working Group explores thinking about Interarts relations, Editing Technologies, Technological Education, and Digital

Technologies. It seeks the discussion of works that deal with static or moving images in relation to mechanical (19th century), electronic, and digital (20th and 21st centuries) technologies, as well as the close dialogue of education, editing, electronic poetry, digital literature with the technological and its relations with the poetics that traverse it.

WG9 – Narratives in Video Games

Coordination:  Adriana Falqueto Lemos (IFSULDEMINAS)

Video games are configured as contemporary media endowed with narrative capacity, mobilizing fiction itself as the foundation for game development; they are, therefore, games constituted through fiction (Tavinor, 2009). In light of the notion of ergodicity proposed by Espen Aarseth (1997), it is understood that the engine operates in such a way that the narrative acts as the organizing axis of the ergodic elements distributed throughout the gaming experience. In this context, narrative progression depends on the player’s success in overcoming the challenges established by the programming. When investigating games and their narratives, we align our approach with the perspective of Mia Consalvo, who argued in 2012 that “no discipline or field should (or can) have control over game research or theorizing, and the study of games is enriched by various paths of investigation” (p. 8). Thus, we propose to examine games and their narrative constructions with the aim of understanding how their programming enables, through ergodic elements, the development of narratives and the effects produced on players. This WG accepts works that address any research related to game narratives and the forms of their appreciation

WG10 – The Artist in the Twenty-First Century and the Possibility of Autonomous Creation by Artificial Intelligence

Coordination: Alberto M. R. Semeler (UFRGS)

Artificial Intelligence promotes a complete democratization of the creative process. In a world where every person is a potential creator, what is the role of the artist in this century dominated by artificial intelligence? What will be realized is similar to what happened with art considered extinct at the beginning of the 20th century and which remains in recurrent deconstruction and reinvention to this day? For example, there is no consensual and accepted definition of what art is among professionals and creators. Can the database and artificial intelligence create a style that is independent and unique? This is the proposal of this research group.

WG11 –  The Book: Arts, Crafts, and Technologies

Coordination: Ana Elisa Ribeiro (CEFET-MG) and Elaine Martins (CEFET-MG)

We accept works about the book, its creation and production processes, the artifacts it transforms into, crafts directly and indirectly involved with it, as well as production practices that lead to various forms of circulation and consumption of the object, whatever its format and materiality. Book technologies and techniques, specialized knowledge, forms and resources for editing and dissemination, convergences with artificial intelligences, resistances, and the preservation of technodiversity related to the book. We invite researchers from Literature, Communication, Sociology, Anthropology, Librarianship, History, Fine Arts, Design, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Education, and related areas to speculate on theoretical and/or practical aspects of the book and its production processes (including gender and intersectional aspects), with works originating from academic research, laboratory practices, experiments, and professional editorial activities 

WG12 – Innovative Perspectives on Cities and the Built Environment

Coordination: Renata Maria Abrantes Baracho e Mozart Joaquim Magalhães Vidigal (UFMG)

Reflections, research, experimentation, and applications on urban transformations from fluid, digital, virtual, and intelligent perspectives, driven by contemporary technologies and media. With an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach, it integrates fields such as architecture, urban planning, heritage, arts, engineering, and related areas to explore new ways of conceiving, producing, and managing the built environment and its buildings. The investigations articulate technological innovation, artistic creation, and social sustainability, combining digital modeling, urban data, immersive simulations, and participatory processes. The goal is to develop integrated solutions that enhance efficiency, spatial quality, and collective wellbeing, contributing to more just and inclusive cities, capable of responding to contemporary challenges such as climate change, territorial inequalities, and digital transformation.

WG13 – Procedure Facing the Instrumentalization of Attention

Coordination: Paulo Roberto Barreto Caetano (CEFET-MG)

A feature of Modernity is the explosion of stimuli that cross the individual. Walter Benjamin points this out while reading Baudelaire, taking as paradigmatic the episode in which soldiers return mute from the trenches – an empty response from the psychic apparatus to the excess of stimuli that is war and progress. A discussion of this numbness is carried out by the Russian Formalists, who will think of literature as a means of dealing with the economy of attention, so sequestered with the intensification of work and the economic system: to singularize the object to make its perception more lasting, said Victor Shklovsky in “Art as Technique.” The critical current in question, although it has been the target of criticism for being apolitical, can serve to think about the status of art in the 20th and 21st centuries? The WG then proposes to approach the idea of artifice in this key, as well as discussions that orbit and unfold the themes raised in this summary, raising questions such as: How does contemporary art revitalize the “known vs. unknown” tension? To what extent is it possible to generate estrangement, in the fabric of notifications as numbing as they are anxietyinducing, which the technological revolution created for 21st-century users? Could it be said that Post-structuralism touches on estrangement by revisiting crystallized truths? How does the politicization of critical currents enliven the debate about art and the university? These are some of the questions that the WG proposes, inviting researchers from various areas.

WG14 – Territories of Memory

Coordination: Cristina Horta de Almeida (UFMG)

 Memory is a phenomenon in which materialities and our perceptions of them are inseparable. This idea encompasses both notions of the documentary and the imaginary. It carries an active dimension in the face of its capacity for permanent reconstruction, establishing the connection between past, present, and future. It is, therefore, a living experience, and what the WG seeks to explore are the modes used to produce and tell memories. With a transdisciplinary character, the group aims to promote the discussion of works that touch on the relationships between memory and spatiality (territories, monuments, museums); record and narrative (documents, archives, testimonies); body and the inscriptions of memory (ritual, social, artistic); biopolitics of memory (power, erasures, constructions of identities); memory and symbolic processes (fiction, imagination, signification).

WGX – Artifices and Artifacts

Coordination: Pablo Gobira (UEMG)

The Working Group X: ARTIFICES AND ARTIFACTS will be the only one with remote/ online sessions. It adheres to research by master’s students, masters, doctoral students, and doctors who conduct their studies in the field of relationships between art, science and technology (digital arts) and who, directly or indirectly, address the theme of this edition of the event. The rules for submission to this WG are similar to the others, but the mode of presentation of the work, in case of approval, will occur online.

Reading residence 

Coordination: João Vilnei de Oliveira Filho (UFC)

The residency is an experience of collective writing and reading, inspired by the idea of “reading camps” by Tonika Sealy Thompson and Stefano Harney. In “Ground Provision” (2018), the authors present “reading camps” as a refuge where people can read together, a space for contemplation and reflection. In the text, they develop a critique of the place of reading at the university, which, most of the time, is a solitary and hidden experience, transformed into a moment of profound individualization. The residency’s proposal is to promote at the event a space for collective and affectionate reading, experienced as an academic and artistic activity, in addition to connecting practice and theory. Participants enroll in the residency with an expanded abstract of 2 to 5 pages, on a topic related to the arts and related areas, at any stage of development. A room will be prepared with chairs, a table, pens, pencils, and the printed texts of the participants. In the first moment, the texts will be read by the group, receiving comments and suggestions written on the printed document itself. Subsequently, the group meets again to exchange impressions about the reading experience and to discuss the contributions and comments received in the texts.

• Pablo Gobira (Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais) – President
• Professor Doctor Débora Aita Gasparetto (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria)
• Professor Doctor Lynn Alves (Universidade Federal da Bahia)
• Professor Doctor Rogério Barbosa da Silva (Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica de Minas Gerais)

• Submission of abstracts : until 3rd February, 2026
• Submission of artisitic proposals : until 3rd February, 2026
• Acceptance notification : until 23rd February, 2026
• Wgx – artifices and artefacts presentation video : until 23rd March, 2026
• Expandes abstract submission : until 23rd April, 2026
• Full paper submission : until 13th April, 2026
• Registration of presenters on Sympla (mandatory for approved presenters) : until 25th April, 2026
• Attendee registration : until 27th may, 2026
• Digital certificates until 30th June, 2026 

To submit your proposal, it is mandatory that the author, or at least one of the authors, be a master’s or Ph.D. student or have a master’s degree. Furthermore, the abstracts (up  to 150 words) must be sent in the template madeavailable on the Congress website in BLIND BLIND REVIEW (i.e., without the identification of the author(s) in the document, to enable its assessment by 3 February 2026, in .doc or .docx file format, through the Submission link.

The complete papers and reading proposals for the residence that are approved at the event must follow ABNT standards and be submitted (according to the templates) via the submission form to be provided to the proposers of the accepted works at the email contatolabfront@gmail.com, with the file name:

COMPLETE WORK – WG# – Participant’sName, or EXPANDED ABSTRACT – Participant’s Name, no later than April 13,2026, in .doc or .docx format.

Papers that do not conform to the templates will be returned to the author(s) with a 5-day deadline for adjustments.

The abstract, extended abstract, and complete work template

The event’s registration

The approved works for presentation will be announced by 23 February 2026. When submitting the communication summary (via Google Forms), the author(s) must indicate all required information, allowing for its evaluation.

In its 11th edition, the Congress organization continues to accept proposals for artistic works.

The category of work is not limited as long as it is recognized in the relationship between art, science, and technology. In addition, the artist who submits a proposal for an artwork to be exhibited at the Congress  does not need any academic degree (something different from the participants in the Working Groups, who must be master’s or doctoral students or have a master’s or doctoral degree).

For evaluating these proposals, we expect the submission of artistic projects (on completed works in the field of the relationship between art, science, and technology). The exhibition will occur in Belo Horizonte/MG, with a few performances happening in places to be announced.

In its 11th edition, we intend to continue the movement initiated in 2019 and exhibit works proposed by artists who plan to attend the Congress. We expect the submission of artistic projects (finished works of art in the field of relationships between art, science, and technology) for the evaluation of these proposals.

In the 7th edition of the Panorama Exhibition, the production will have two modalities: works to be exhibited in the PHYSICAL environment of PANORAMA 7, to be held in Belo  Horizonte/MG – Brazil during the CIACT-SAD 11 program, and results will also be accepted for evaluation of the possibility of hybrid display (online/offline) and works to be exhibited EXCLUSIVELY in a metaverse in a 3D computer environment. IMPORTANT: Please note that this year, unfortunately, we will not be accepting PHYSICAL artworks to be received/sent by mail. It will also not be possible this year for artists coming to Belo Horizonte solely for the Congress to pick up their artworks in advance.

We expect the submission of artistic projects (on works of art in the field of relationships between art, science, and technology) for the evaluation of these proposals.

Artisitic proposal submission until February 03, 2026

The submission  form for the exhibition can be found through the submission link.

We request that the proposal contains the following information:

1. title,
2. summary,
3. category (if possible),
4. year of the work (or if unpublished),
5. concept/argument/poetic support of the work,
6. technical description of the work,
7. proposal for exhibition design (suggestion on how to display the work),
8. images and videos of the work (or link to website/portfolio, etc.),
9. mini-bio of the artist.

Notice:  The evaluation of papers will be “blind” (reviewers will not know who the authors are, and authors will not know who the reviewers are). However, it will not be possible to conduct this type of evaluation for the artworks. In this edition, as a result of funding from the National Aldir Blanc Cultural Promotion Policy (PNAB) through Municipal Grant Notice 03/2024 – BH FOMENTO, project number 111407/2024, and State Grant Notice 10/2024 – Circulation of Performances, a stipend of R$600 (six hundred reais) is planned for artists selected for PHYSICAL PANORAMA and R$400 (four hundred reais) for artists selected for METAVERSE PANORAMA and HYBRID PANORAMA. Please note that to receive the full amount, an invoice must be issued.