In 1968, Waldemar Cordeiro began exploring computer art at the University of São Paulo (USP), becoming the first artist in Latin America to do so. He developed a method for digitizing images at a time when scanners did not yet exist. Derivadas de uma Imagem: Transformação em Grau 0 [Derivatives of an Image: Transformation in Degree 0] is based on the digitalization of a young romantic couple taken from a Valentine’s Day poster. In a second stage, he processed this image using algorithms designed to trace its outlines, giving rise to new versions such as Grau 1 [Degree 1]. The entire process depended on the mathematical function known as the derivative.

Later, in A Mulher que Não É B.B. [The Woman Who Is Not B.B.], Cordeiro used the image of a Vietnamese woman – a victim of war – as a counterpoint to French actress Brigitte Bardot, then one of the most celebrated film stars in the world, thereby offering a critique of consumer society. Gente Grau 0 [People Degree 0] was likewise created by digitizing an image of a crowd.