About Oficina Cosmos

Where are the magical devices?

We create artisanal objects, blending software, graphics and sounds with materials like wood and concrete. Electronics and computing hardware are industrial artifacts, but they can be integrated in artisanal and expressive ways, where physical matter may anchor and support the volatility of images or sound.

When microcomputers became accessible back in the 1980s, they were seen as magical devices, with video games bringing entire new worlds to astonished eyes. Nowadays, the computer devices that we use are great tools that we depend upon, but also places of braindead entertainment, usually littered with advertisements and annoying intrusion. It's perhaps fair to say that they have became the equivalent of hammers and TV sets.

At Oficina Cosmos we believe computers can be truly incredible things, capable of creating entire universes. That they can create profound meaning, and be like secret gardens or personal shelters, places that one can return to as needed. And that they can enrich our lifes in ways that only art can. So, where are those devices?

We're looking to work at the junction between software, hardware and physical materials. Meaningful physical materials, limited hardware and electronics, generative algorithms, graphics or sound, minimalism, simplicity. Our first object Fireworks embodies these intentions, with other gradually more matured ideas to follow.

We are believers in the maxim that "art is in the resistance of materials". So our projects often start with the simplest materials, computer hardware or algorithms, and then we accompany their derailment, looking for the surprises. And frequently watching the demolition of our initial intentions and presumptions.

The name "Oficina" means "Workshop", while "Cosmos" has the same meaning in many, many languages. Can we breed many universes inside our objects?

I'm Jorge Diogo and we're based in Ribamar - Lourinhã, in Portugal. Thank you for your interest in our work.