sobradinho

Sobradinho, 2025 Multimedia sculpture 36.5 × 15 × 21 cm Support: Breno Verlage, Lenomarkes Silveira, Prahlada Hargreaves, Ulisses Athanasio, Gabriel Arcoverde, Calango H4cker Clube, Isadora Valença.

Sobradinho is a multimedia sculpture that challenged me deeply as an artist, throughout its entire creative process and learning curve. It began with a brainstorming session where I considered ideas like a music-and-video box or recreating a local artwork that had been destroyed. But among all the possibilities, Sobradinho stood out because of its symbolism, timing, and visual impact.

“Sobrado” or “Sobradinho” is the name given to the house built by the rufous hornero (Furnarius rufus), a bird native to South America —also known as hornero común, alonsito, uiracuiar or uiracuité in the Tupi-Guarani language. It’s a monogamous “architect” bird that builds, with its partner, a clay home to protect its nest. As they reproduce, they build new houses directly above the previous ones. The city where I was born and still live is also called Sobradinho, named after an event that took place before the city was built: the land had been marked with a crucifix, and when people returned some time later to begin construction, a bird’s sobrado was found on one arm of the cross. That’s how the city got its name.

This work was created for a project called “Territory, Art, and Technology,” supported by the Cultural Support Fund (FAC/DF) and organized by Vilarejo21. Since the exhibition’s theme was to connect the idea of territory with technology, the initial sketch made perfect sense. It wasn’t just about the sobrado structure itself, but also about including small screens in place of doors —showing moving images of the city’s landscapes, divided between Sobradinho I and Sobradinho II.

The first challenge was researching how to play videos on small screens. I watched videos of people connecting TFT screens to Arduinos or Raspberry Pis and thought —this is it! I bought two 2.4" TFT screens and a Raspberry Pi 4, believing I could connect both to the same microcomputer and play video smoothly. Little did I know how wrong I was. On YouTube, everything looked easy, but following the tutorials was a struggle. First of all, my PC took over an hour just to flash the operating system onto the SD card. Then I found out the SD card was corrupted and had to replace it.

Prahlada, an artist friend who mentored me during the project, introduced me to a group called Calango H4cker Clube. Inevitably, I was initiated into hacker culture —the idea that your background or education doesn’t matter, that there’s no hierarchy of knowledge. Ulisses Athanasio and Gabriel Arcoverde basically adopted me, guiding me through each step while encouraging and respecting my autonomy.

What could be so hard? Programming in Linux without ever having programmed —or used Linux—before. But this whole process helped me demystify the idea of programmers or hardware engineers as untouchable geniuses. In reality, programmers are just determined people who know how to search online. There’s a tutorial for everything —though not always one that fits your hardware. In the end, the 2.4" screens didn’t work, so I bought a 3.5" LCD touchscreen compatible with the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4. But I only had one screen —it was my backup plan— so I had to buy another. Ulisses sold me a Raspberry Pi 3 he had.

Getting the Raspberry Pis to recognize the screens was another challenge, with multiple possible configurations depending on screen compatibility. Once that was solved, I started recording the videos —with help from my friend Isadora, who drove while I filmed. We drove all around the city —it was actually a fun trip. I spent a full day editing the footage and testing it on the screens. Then came the modeling stage. I used a mix of cement, plaster, and anthill soil. The next day, my father showed up to help with the finishing touches, since the architecture of my sobradinhos had to accommodate the screen and a dual cooler (I was terrified they’d overheat in Brasília’s desert-like weather). The sculpture also needed to be detachable, in case one of the screens needed maintenance. I also added cobogós (ventilation tiles) on the sides for airflow.

I thought the work was finally done —I was ready to relax after two months of bootcamp. But then Prahlada reminded me the piece had to run on autoplay, since there would be no exhibition mediators. Ulisses suggested using crontab —and there went another full day. After giving up at one point because VLC just wouldn’t auto-launch, it was already late at night. Ulisses went to sleep, and I tried one last tutorial involving an autostart folder. ChatGPT gave me the full path to create that folder —and it finally worked. The video started automatically when plugged in. Then I set up crontab to shut down automatically —safer than unplugging the power directly— and it worked! So Sobradinho is currently programmed to shut down at 5:55 p.m., five minutes before the exhibition space closes and cuts power to everything.

The piece will be on display until November 7, at Espaço Oscar Niemeyer, competing with works by 34 other artists in a public vote for a cash prize.

Since the process means much more to me than the final piece, I also created this lo-fi 3D version (https://huggingface.co/collections/CatBytes/image23d) of Sobradinho —mainly as an illustrative thing, using the description to share the experience with you all. I plan to mint the videos shown on the screens, along with a digital version of my sketchbook containing handwritten notes and photographs. I hope you enjoyed learning more about what I’ve been working on over these past few months.