"Hélio Oiticica is one of the key figures of Brazil's tropicalia movement. During his stay in new York, and together with film-maker Neville D'Almeida, Oiticia [sic] conceived Block experiments in cosmococa, program in progress (1973-74), a series of nine 'supra-sensorial' environments, each incorporating slide projections, soundtracks, cocaine powder drawings and instructions for visitors. The work is the epitome of what Oiticica called his 'quasi-cinemas', and of his desire to merge individual 'life-experience' with art. In this book, Sabeth Buchmann and Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz consider the effect the New York underground scene and Brazilian avant-garde cinema had on the Cosmococas. They draw together the influence of concrete poetry and the writings of Marshall McLuhan, Henri Bergson, and others, to present a rich analysis of the work and its experimentation with duration, its blurring of formats and languages, and its modes of spectatorship"--Back cover.