The Artistic Studies Research Center (CIEBA) develops its activity in the field of Culture and Science, namely in the area of ​​Visual Arts and consists of the following research groups: 

• Research Group on Sciences of Art and Heritage – “Francisco de Holanda” 
• Research Group on Design
• Research Group on Painting 
• Research Group on Communication Design 
• Research Group on Drawing
• Research Group on Sculpture 
• Research Group on Multimedia Art 
• Research Group on Art Education

Research Group on Sciences of Art and Heritage – “Francisco de Holanda”

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coordination Prof. Luís Jorge Rodrigues Gonçalves | cieba.franciscoholanda@belasartes.ulisboa.pt

The Research Group on Sciences of Art and Heritage – “Francisco de Holanda” has as fundamental objective to support and complement the actions carried out in the institutional scope of the Sciences of Art and Heritage. The Francisco de Holanda Research Group encompasses ArteTeoria Journal, created by the master’s degree in Art on Art Theory of the Faculdade de Belas Artes, Universidade de Lisboa, a privileged vehicle for the publication and dissemination of essays, articles and other texts produced within its scope, activities and their specialties.

Design

Coordinator Prof. Paulo Parra | p.parra@belasartes.ulisboa.pt

The Design Research Group of CIEBA emerges from a culture of research in Design deeply sedimented since 1974, when the first superior courses of Design began in Portugal at the Escola Superior de Belas-Artes, in Lisbon.

The location of Research in Design in the context of Studies in Fine Arts reflects this origin and supports the continuity of the group of Design research in the current functional structure of CIEBA.

By understanding Design as an area of ​​knowledge of contemporary culture and creation, the research carried out in studies and projects in Design is characterized by its own epistemological contours, which translate into specific practices and high repercussion in the daily lives of the populations.

By following this heritage inscribed in the culture of Design and this vocation at the service of the community, the Group of Research in Design has as its central objective to foster research in Design and in its different specialties.

Painting

Coordination Professor Isabel Sabino | i.sabino@belasartes.ulisboa.pt

If transversality and a multi-operative character are undeniable qualities in a very visible part of contemporary art, it is also certain that these facts do not imply the ablation of specific disciplines, but rather their recontextualization and reconfiguration.

To think of the field of painting today is thus justified in the line of its understanding as a set of formulations which, starting from an inexhaustible specialized field in which there is still much to research in the verticality of the “discipline” and its own theory, the perspectives open up new challenges today. These can be expanded spatiality beyond conventional media and hybrid processes, the renewal of media and technologies that have integrated digital, the dialogues with science and the various areas of creativity into narratives and poetry without formal, conceptual or geographical boundaries, all these has reconfigured what was formerly understood as painting, intersecting with knowledge to unfold, changes in contemporary culture and thinking. Now, all this constitutes, therefore, motivations for inquiries based or motivated in the phenomenology of the pictorial, interrogating it ever more widely and deeply.

Communication Design

Coordination Prof. Victor M. Almeida | v.almeida@belasartes.ulisboa.pt

Areas of reference

• Editorial design

• Graphic design

• Information design

• Interaction design

• Multimedia design

• Typography

• Webdesign

The Communication Design Research Group has as main objective the production and dissemination of knowledge in its scientific area of ​​reference. The research group intends to contribute to the systematic extension of the conceptual body in the field of communication design, focusing on research oriented to the support of the project practice or its management.

The Research Group promotes communication design as a value-generating activity and aimed at improving the safety and quality of life of the population, taking on a particular responsibility in shaping the interface between people and things and in determining how their relationship is established. It also believes that the challenges for communication design result today mainly from the need to adapt to a digital and globalized society, where the internet and the advent of social networks generate new realities of scope and effects that are not yet fully predictable – principles that are dear to the design of communication such as consistency, stability or continuity, are today disputed by attributes such as flexibility, immediacy, universality.

As far as projectual practice is concerned, there is a present context that requires broader competences and simultaneously requires an inclusive view of different areas. The design of an effective communication strategy now implies an understanding of the ongoing dematerialization process, the prospect of its scope and the ability to anticipate situations that change in its function; it also implies the adaptation to the dynamics of virtual media, the transversal and synergic exploitation of the new media – co-opting audiovisual and multimedia services – and a creative use of information and communication technologies.

However, when there is a link between activity and scientific production in the field of communication design, there are still important gaps that need to be addressed. Although there are already a number of solid theoretical approaches, there are difficulties to transpose them into the projectual field and have proved to be of little use to those who need concrete tools to solve specific problems or to support decisions.

In this sense, the research group promotes the development of an academic – mainly focused on research of an empirical nature – that supports projects that translate innovative applications of knowledge and provide them with scientifically based support.

The research group is divided into three specific research lines: Information Design, Interaction Design and Design and Editing.

Drawing

Coordinator Prof. Américo Marcelino | a.marcelino@belasartes.ulisboa.pt

The Research Group in Drawing is a research group of CIEBA that promotes research in Art Studies from the comprehensive field of Drawing. Its main objective is to develop activities and projects that contribute to the production, stimulation and dissemination of scientific, artistic and academic knowledge in its various fields and areas of reference. Anchoring itself in the scientific and disciplinary areas of Drawing at the Faculdade de Belas Artes, its fundamental and applied research axes, whether artistic, scientific, technical or technological, stand between the diversity and inheritance of the historical legacy of the drawing, the singularities and pluralities of its manifestations and the reconfigurations and challenges of contemporary art and culture. The characterization of its specific areas of research covers areas that comprise, for example, Analog Design, Digital Design, Artistic Design, Editorial Illustration, Scientific Illustration, Comics, Concept Art, Geometry, Artistic Anatomy , Didactics of Drawing and History and Theory of Drawing. The core of the activities of the Drawing research involved in these domains is organized according to three fundamental thematic lines of investigation: “Practices of the Drawing”, “Sciences of the Representation” and “Drawing in Theory”. The strategy to carry out these activities, in line with the mission of the Research Group on Drawing, is to promote and support the contributions that are developed in those lines, either through joint coordination in the outline and structuring of initiatives of dissemination actions and advanced training, including conferences, exhibitions, organization of events, editorial lines with publications, organization of doctoral programs and seminars, as well as other forms of postgraduate training, and also through the contribution of proposals for research projects, individually, jointly or in partnership.

Thematic lines:

The Research Group on Drawing is characterized by the plurality and diversity of approaches in specific areas of research and development, unfolding in fields that, despite overlaps and possible transversality between them, cover initiatives grouped according to three fundamental thematic lines of research:

1 – Drawing Practices

It includes initiatives with special focus in these areas: Drawing of artistic expression; Design in drawing; Analog Drawing; Digital Drawing; Practices, media and graphic languages; Illustration; Comics; Concept Art; among other related matters.

2 – Representation Sciences

It includes initiatives with special focus in these areas: Representation of the body; Representation of space; Analog Drawing; Digital drawing; Geometry; Artistic anatomy; Concept Art; Scientific Drawing; Archaeological Drawing; among other related subjects (in articulation with the Transversal Thematic Lines of “Artistic Anatomy” and “Geometry”)

3 – Drawing on Theory

It understands initiatives with special focus in these areas: History of the Drawing (authors, schools, periods); Theory of Drawing (texts, treatises, ideas, thinking on Drawing); Didactics of Drawing; Didactics of Geometry; Art education and Drawing; Geometry; Artistic Anatomy; Practices, Media and Graphic languages; Heritage, Inventory, Museology, Drawing Museography; among other related matters.

Keywords: Artistic Drawing; Analog Drawing; Digital Drawing; Illustration.

Sculpture

Coordination Prof. João Castro Silva | j.castrosilva@belasartes.ulisboa.pt

As a scientific community we are interested in exploring the ways in which Sculpture is constituted ontologically in the present and the repercussions that this constitution has not only in the arts, but also outside the artistic scope. Over time there has been a plurality of artistic practices that on several occasions call for the questioning of the limits of Sculpture as a self-determined category or discipline, but which have led it to follow a path of continuous transformation and expansion. In this way, Sculpture has opened up more and more to new interactions that make it have today the potential to be a way of producing innovative, experimental and creative knowledge. In the Sculpture Group of CIEBA we seek to explore this potential as a way of looking through multiple perspectives on fundamental issues of sculpture and art, as well as the repercussions that such issues and problems have (and may have) on the sciences and the humanities. Multiple perspectives, which in their heterogeneity, constitute a complex whole that we can call the making and the sculptural look. 

The group assumes itself as transdisciplinary as an act of integration and interaction of different types of knowledge and knowledge, focusing on the transversality of problems. We seek the development of methodological frameworks that cross and transform society, facilitating the emergence of ideas, knowledge and interactions that could not be foreseen or anticipated. We are open to both theoretical and practical production, but above all to experimentation at the intersection of these two poles and a speculative inquiry. A space where new and traditional techniques, materials, tools and knowledge complement and complement each other, in a manner adjusted to the specificity of each subject and researcher

Keywords: Space; Materiality; Morphology; Mimese; Plasticity; Reproduction; Technique; Three-dimensionality.

Multimedia Art

Coordinator: Prof. António de Sousa Dias | a.sousadias@belasartes.ulisboa.pt   

The New Media Art Research Group (GIAM) positions within a perspective that assumes new media as a privileged vehicle for reflection on the role of the creation and the work of art in contemporary society.

Through a close and interactive relationship between art, culture, science and technology, GIAM welcomes and integrates artistic processes and practices that renew and change constantly, in an intermedia perspective (Higgins), and where practices such as crossmedia, mix media, multimedia, among others, coexist with digital multimedia and the hybridism of post-digital practices.

GIAM, in articulation with the Department of New Media Art, thus promotes research, privileging artistic experimentation and creation, in domains traditionally linked to the department, such as Animation, Photography, Moving Image and Performance, to which are added Interactive Arts and Transmedia Practices.​

Artistic Education

Coordination Prof. Ana Isabel Tudela Lima Gonçalves de Sousa | a.sousa@belasartes.ulisboa.pt