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AI4FUTURE | 16-18 September at MEET
From 16 to 18 September, we present at MEET AI4FUTURE, a digital art exhibition presenting the works realised during the Urban Labs activated in four European cities: Moving Forward by Nino Basilashvili in Cagliari for Sardegna Teatro; Divide by Bernat Cunì for the Esprocenda institute of art and culture in Barcelona; Rosetta Mission2022 by Luca Pozzi for MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan; Being a Cat, Being a Fish, Being a Dog by Chunju Yu in Rotterdam for the V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media space.
Using contemporary art and the tool of artificial intelligence, the ‘Artificial Intelligence for Future’ project proposed that participants work on the meaning of mobility understood not only as the possibility of movement, but also as the relationship between the physical and virtual worlds, the relationship between public and private spaces, and social mobility.
These ‘urban workshops’ – sections of the broader AI4FUTURE project launched in October 2020 – acted as platforms for meeting and collaborative work between local communities and artists. Each workshop involved groups of activists working directly in the area of intervention at all stages of development, both in the early stages of identifying the issues to be addressed and in choosing the artistic project to be developed. The synergic work activated, with reference to the specific slant chosen and tackled by each workshop, aimed to generate awareness on crucial issues of contemporary society with the intention of imagining possible alternative urban models capable of responding to the concrete needs of the community. Each work has declined the keyword “mobility” in one of the various borderline aspects between the physical, digital, social and cultural spheres that the contemporary world triggers.
A preview of the projects, then still in the works, was presented as part of the Digital Awareness exhibition last June at ISEA2022 in Barcelona, the most important International Symposium on Electronic Arts. The event was part of the programme of the New European Bauhaus Festival, the new paradigm of thought and action with which President Von der Leyen invited Europe to re-imagine living with a view to multidisciplinarity and co-design, combining beauty, sustainability and inclusion.
The project, financed by the European Community within the Creative Europe Programme, coordinated over these two years, in addition to the Urban Labs residencies, a series of panels and workshops open to the public. The AI4FUTURE team unites international organisations that have long been active in the field of innovation. The lead partner is Sineglossa, a cultural ecosystem based in Ancona and Bologna that shapes new models of sustainable development in response to global challenges by applying contemporary art processes. The partners involved are Espronceda/Lemongrass, an art and culture institute based in Barcelona; MEET Digital Culture Center, the International Centre for Digital Art and Culture in Milan; V2_Lab for the Unstable Media, a Dutch organisation for art and media technology based in Rotterdam; and the associated partner Sardegna Teatro, among the 19 Italian Theatres of Relevant Cultural Interest, with offices in Cagliari and Nuoro.
The projects
> Moving Forward by Nino Basilashvili
by Sardegna Teatro, Cagliari
Category: AI and common mobilisation in public space
> Divide by Bernat Cunì
by Esprocenda/Lemongrass, Barcelona
Category: AI, phygital worlds and digital barriers
> Rosetta Mission 2022 by Luca Pozzi
By MEET Digital Culture Center, Milan
Category: AI, urban and social mobility platform
> Being a Cat, Being a Fish, Being a Dog by Chunju Yu
V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
Category: AI and gender inequality issues
