AB INFINITE 1 | Andrea Bonaceto at MEET

Punctuated by verses from the artist’s poems, the exhibition itinerary-which will enliven MEET in December and January-includes thematic nuclei of works that highlight some of the milestones in Andrea Bonaceto‘s work and culminates in the Immersive Room with AB INFINITE 1, an Immersive and interactive work powered by Artificial Intelligence.

The itinerary-curated by Luisa Ausenda-begins inside Gallery 1, dedicated to portraits created by the artist and those born from the collaboration with Sophia the Robot, a humanoid robot created by Hanson Robotics. Alongside, a selection of the artist’s physical works is exhibited including those that pay homage to such important figures to the artist as Eugenio Montale and Leonard Cohen. Next are projected digital portraits of pop culture figures such as Elon Musk, George Floyd, Queen Elizabeth II, as well as friends and family of the artist. In the same style as the digital portraits, Bonaceto has created scenes from real life: one of them depicts singer-songwriter Cohen and a group of friends playing guitar on the Greek island of Hydra.

On the Oled screen, there are also portraits of the astronauts Bonaceto included on the front page of the Corriere della Sera he artistically interpreted: Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and Neil Armstrong.

In the second Gallery, Visioni Digitali await you. Some of these works juxtapose figurative subjects with abstract forms in a kind of continuous frieze, while others stand out for their strong narrative potential through the use of colorful backgrounds. On the second Oled screen, before arriving inside Gallery 3, the work commissioned to the artist by Corriere della Sera is on display. Bonaceto has in fact interpreted a page from the newspaper from 1969, specifically the one announcing that “Man is on the Moon.” Two versions exist: as programmable art, the NFT of the work will change when Andrea Bonaceto goes to the Moon. In the third and final gallery, the two poems to which the artist has dedicated visual works created with NFT on the Nifty Gateway platform are projected.

The exhibition culminates in the Immersive Room where AB INFINITE 1, a living narrative open to different interpretations, awaits you. As in a kind of colorful mosaic composition, it combines figurative images with abstract forms. It depicts the artist’s story by portraying both vicissitudes and milestones of his life. Bonaceto’s parents are portrayed sitting around the table with the artist, each with his own placemat in their Tuscan home. There are also his grandchildren, his partner and some of the highlights of his career such as when he started playing guitar on the streets of London thanks to a street musician’s license. Monsters, a cemetery enclosed in a fetish frame, Death and other other otherworldly presences also stand out.

Through an artificial intelligence mechanism created for this project, the public on Instagram and Twitter can help edit AB INFINITE 1 using the hashtag #abinfinite1. Images using this hashtag are processed with AI technology and incorporated into the visual vocabulary of the work. Through the same process, texts posted with this hashtag become part of an evolving poem within the work. The AI image generator designed by the artist uses PyTorch, OpenAI, VQGAN and DeepAI to produce visual responses to images uploaded by the public on social media. The new program was “educated” using a set of the artist’s pre-existing works, royalty-free images, and a color palette taken directly from AB INFINITE 1.

To complete the experience, visitors to AB INFINITE 1 are greeted by Brian Eno‘s An ending (Ascent), a track remastered in 2005.
The track has appeared in numerous media, including the television series Jam, Top Gear and Nip/Tuck, the films Traffic, 28 Days Later and Drive, and David Firth’s animation Salad Fingers.

The title of the work echoes the artist’s ideal of generating a cycle that goes “ab” (from the Latin da) the infinite to the origin, symbolized by the number 1. In other words, it goes from self to all and vice versa!

***

MEET is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Buy your admission ticket here

With the collaboration of Art Corriere, starting with Andrea Bonaceto’s exhibition, MEET offers the community a new way to participate in its initiatives. NFT tickets, real “Artist’s posters”, give access to the exhibition and all the services and events that MEET offers during the period. In addition, by purchasing this NFT ticket, you are entitled to an exclusive meeting with the artist and a reserved seat in the Theater at his Meet the Media Guru talk scheduled for Thursday 26 January 2023, 7 pm.

To purchase the NFT Ticket for AB INFINITE 1 by Andrea Bonaceto: artcollection.corriere.it