European Meeting | The new Atlas of Digital Art

MEET Digital Culture Center, in collaboration with the National Museum of Digital Art (MAD) recently established by the Ministry of Culture, presents a wide-ranging reflection to promote and investigate the jagged scenario of digital art in Europe and highlight the potential of “digital native” artistic experiments as drivers of societal innovation.

The initiative

Through a series of testimonies, the Meeting will offer an overview of the developments of Italian and European digital art, suspended between past and present, to explore the different trajectories of contemporaneity, as keys to reading the future.
Through multiple technologies and expressive languages chosen by the artists (from new media art, to multimedia installations, up to metaverses and recent experiments with Artificial Intelligence), the Meeting aims to recompose an Atlas of Digital Art starting from its roots to activate a new awareness capable of interpreting the present by looking ahead, not only through a cultural perspective but by opening to scenarios of economic and social transformation. The visions of artists who experiment with technology often turn out to be pioneering and bearers of social and economic innovations.

The European scene, rich in institutions, cultural centers and creative realities that have been active in the field of digital art for decades, represents the reference horizon for the analysis, reflection and presentation of different creative experiences. Indeed, the European Union has pointed to digital art as a source of social as well as cultural and economic innovation to inspire and push young people to gain new perspectives and visions through creative and technological experimentation.

The Meeting will coincide with the Strehler 100 celebrations. Just as Strehler after the war had looked at Europe and the European theater as a possible scenario for rebuilding common cultural perspectives, hopes and futures starting from Milan, in the same way the Meeting wants to make its own contribution to explore a possible process of European “reconstruction” of the future, after the pandemic and international political crisis we are experiencing.

The Meeting is also being developed as part of the S+T+ARTS initiative with the Regional STARTS Centers Repairing the Present Project promoted by the European Commission specifically to promote cross-fertilization between Art/Science/Technology through the activation of short-circuits of thought capable of stimulating processes of change.
Paraphrasing, “Repairing the future” will be the interpretative key of the Meeting to look at digital artistic research as an experimental expression capable of triggering transformations and changes.

The program

The program will be spread over three days-June 23-25-and will involve participants on three thematic tables that will address key issues, such as the relationship between art, science and technology, the digital art market experimenting with NFT and Blockchain new cultural and economic models, and the development of immersive art from virtual reality to metaverses and beyond.

The discussion will be introduced by an initial plenary meeting in which the aims and program under discussion will be presented, and a final moment to return the results of the work to the audience.

Here you will find the full program of the speeches.

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Access to Saturday morning’s plenary and live sessions is free, subject to registration.