1 Edition Prize
1 edition prize
RE:HUMANISM Art Prize – 1 Edition
Art and Artificial Intelligence, a proactive vision of the future that awaits us
Opening April 16th 2019, 6.30 p.m.
17/04/2019 – 11/05/2019
Curated by Daniela Cotimbo
Powered by Alan Advantage
explore the exhibition
The idea of first edition of the Re:Humanism Art Prize is to offer a proactive vision of the future, through speculative reflection on AI as medium.
The ten projects that involve the use of artificial intelligence technologies, put the viewer a question on the relation between man and machine, trying to outline the increasingly opaque border between human and artificial. Art and human processes are rethought through the impact that artificial intelligence has on today’s society, to bring new perspectives and to develop a lateral thought, proper to art, in support of a technological advancement that is “on a human scale”.
ARTICLE 1- PURPOSE
The company Alan Advantage based in Rome and Boston announces the first edition of the Competition Re: Humanism – Alan Prize with the aim of investigating, through the languages of contemporary art, the scenarios linked to the advent and diffusion of technologies in the field of Artificial Intelligence and in particular:
- Natural Lanaguage Processing,
- Machine Learning,
- Robotics
Although the works do not necessarily involve the use of these technologies, they must reflect on their value and their social impact, and in any case, in general, they must be inspired by them.
Projects will be favored where multidisciplinarity and interventions that will present an important theoretical and critical apparatus will be rewarded.
The prizes are: a cash prize offered by Alan Advantage, a second cash prize offered by a partner company and two prizes in residence for an artist who wants to work in Rome with a specialized technical support in AI, finally, for the first 15 classified participants are expected to participate in an exhibition whose details will be communicated later.
The aims of the awards are in line with those of the company, where ample space is centre to creativity and to young people and above all to a healthy and proactive relationship with new technologies.
ARTICLE 2 – THE THEME OF THE COMPETITION
Participants are invited to present works which show the relevance to the mission “Artificial Intelligence and Art for a new Humanism”, in particular projects that foresee the use of these technologies will be judged positively.
ARTICLE 3 – ADMISSION CRITERIA
Participation in Re: Humanism – Alan Advantage Prize is free and is reserved for all artists present on the national and international territory, without age limits, will be given relevance to projects that involve the use of technologies related to the AI but these are not strictly required.
The deadline for participation in the call is scheduled no later than 24:00 on 24 September 2018.
Participation in projects in PDF format released on a cloud space shared by Alan Advantage that contain:
- descriptive text of the project,
- images, diagrams, drawings useful to view the project,
- detailed list of the necessary technical equipment,
- any notes related to the preparation of the ‘work,
- biography, cv of the artist and possible link to the website.
The selected 15 will then be asked to propose the project in creative form, through the use of various media on the occasion of the official presentation of the winners to be held in October.
All the selected projects will be presented in an exclusive evening in Rome at the end of October, attended by representatives of the network of companies and experts that revolve around Alan Advantage and important personalities from the world of Contemporary Art and Artificial Intelligence
ARTICLE 4 –AWARDS
The prizes will be broken down as follows:
- 1 prize – cash worth 3,000.00 €
- 2 prize – cash worth 2,000.00 €
- 3 prize – residence of € 2,000.00 each for an artist that includes the of the work made during the residence
- 4 prize – residence worth € 2,000.00 each for an artist that includes the of the work carried out during the residency
- 5 prize – participation for the first 15 classified (includes the previous 4) at the official presentation at the end of September and at the following exhibition whose details will be disclosed later.
The winners will be announced no later than 10 October 2018.
Furthermore, Alan Advantage undertakes to guarantee visibility to the finalist artists through its official communication channels dedicated to the initiative.
ARTICLE 5 – SELECTION METHOD
The projects will be selected by a technical jury within the company and by experts in the contemporary art world and new digital technologies.
A higher score will be given to projects involving the use of Artificial Intelligence technologies.
Below, please find attached some links useful to the understanding of the theme:
ARTICLE 6 – HOW TO PARTICIPATE
The deadline for submission of works proposed for the Prize has been scheduled for September 24 at 12:00 a.m.
By this date, candidates must send an email to the following address: info@re-humanism.com with the following materials:
- data processing authorization card
- Project in pdf format attached to the e-mail and containing all the information previously indicated, in case of large formats it is possible to use a WeTransfer
ARTICLE 7 – EXHIBITION OF FINALISTS
The fifteen finalist and the winners of the other prizes will be exhibited in an exhibition whose details will be disclosed later.
Each artist will be given a space that takes into account the dimensions of the presented work.
The exhibition is organized by the Organization, which undertakes to guarantee the structures and materials strictly necessary for the exhibition of the finalist works.
Any additional expenses for the assembly of the individual works will be discussed with the Organization and, if not approved, will be borne by the participants.
The selected artists will be asked to send the work at least four (4) days before the exhibition, complete with all the necessary materials and any indications for the assembly. The costs of transport, sending and collection are at the expense of the artist. The Organization reserves the right to exclude the artist from the competition if the delivery of the work does not take place within the deadline.
The exhibition will be inaugurated with an event that will take place approximately at the beginning of 2019. Following the event, the works will be exhibited in the offices of Alan Advantage in Rome (if compatible with the spaces in question) for the duration of sixty days and can be admired by the public, without an official invitation through methods disclosed later.
At the end of the exhibition and the following period of stay in the company, it is the responsibility of the artist to withdraw the work presented and the cost of shipping is entirely at his / her expense. If the work is not withdrawn within fifteen (15) days following the closing of the agreement, the Organization reserves the right to consider it as a legacy and to dispose of it as it deems appropriate. The works remain the property of the artists.
ARTICLE 8 – RESPONSIBILITY
Alan Advantage, while ensuring the utmost care and custody of the works received, declines all responsibility for any theft, fire or damage of any kind to the works that may occur during the phases of the event. Any request for insurance must be signed by the artist himself and is at his expense or in special cases assessed with the Organization.
ARTICLE 9 – THE EXHIBITING AND COMMERCIAL NETWORK
The works may be purchased by the companies of the Alan network or by their customers. This network intends to offer the works and their authors a widening of their visibility and market opportunities that will go alongside those already offered by art galleries present on the Italian territory.
The Organization reserves the right to withhold 20% of the value of the work in case of sale. The selected works will be exhibited at the Alan Advantage office for at least three months.
ARTICLE 10 – THE COMPANY RESIDENCE
The two winners of the residence prize will receive an economic support of the economic value of 2,000.00 € and the possibility to develop their project directly in the company and supported by a team of experts in the field of Intelligence technologies. artificial. Also in this case the works will be acquired by the company (amount included in the prize).
ARTICLE 11 – COMPETITION SECRETARIAT
The competition secretariat is based at:
PROJECT
Alan Advantage
via Giulio Cesare, 14 00192, Rome
www.alanadvantage.com
ORGANIZATION
Re:Humanism Team
info@re-humanism.com
PRESS OFFICE
info@rehumanism.com
re-humanism.com
ARTICLE 12 – CONSENT
Each candidate expressly authorizes the company Alan Advantage as well as its legal representatives to process the personal data transmitted under the new European legislation on data processing (EU Regulation No. 679/2016) or GDPR, also for inclusion in databases managed by the aforementioned persons. Each participant in the Competition grants gratuitously to Alan Advantage and its legal representatives the rights of reproduction of the works and texts issued to the Prize, images and videos for the purpose of drafting a catalog, the publication on the web channels of the Prize and other forms of communication, promotion and activities of the Organization. The works will remain the property of the artist and in any case the name will be reproduced when reproduced. The material sent for registration will not be returned. The organizers of the competition will have the right of final decision on everything not specified in this announcement. The Organization reserves the right to make changes to the notice if the need arises. The adhesion and participation to the Prize implies the unconditional acceptance of all the articles of this announcement.
ALFREDO ADAMO
CEO Alan Advantage
Entrepreneur and manager with 30 years of experience in ICT and Innovation sectors. Expert in business processes, innovation management, technology scouting, business impact analysis, Artificial Intelligence impact on business strategies, Internet of Things and smart living. Professional of business development and executive manager. He is actually a startups Advisor and Business Angel Investor, personally supporting 25 startups.
DANIELA COTIMBO
Art curator / President Re:Humanism
Art historian and curator based in Rome. Her research is focused on the present issues investigated through different expressive media, in particular new technologies. She recently founded and curated the Re:Humanism Art Prize dedicated to the relationship between Art and Artificial Intelligence. As curator she worked with many museums and galleries and wrote several critical texts for art magazines and catalogs. Among the most recent projects: 2020 – Allegra ma non troppo, Sonia Andresano, AlbumArte, Rome; 2019 – Complessità – Enrica Beccalli And Roula Gholmie, Romaeuropa Festival, Rome; Re:Humanism Art Prize, collective exhibition, Albumarte, Rome; 2018 – Ionian Archaeological Archives, Marco Emmanuele, Bivy, Anchorage She’s editor at Inside Art.
Giovanni Losco
Senior partner Alan Advantage
Senior executive, 30 years of experience in IT, marketing and financial. CEO and co-founder at Mediamobile Italia S.p.A., that provides solutions and services for Intelligent Transport System, Metro “Telecom” Systems and Digital Signage markets. Senior Partner at Alan Advantage from 2014, where launched the RenAIssance project, aimed to investigate and exploit the marriage between “Humanism” and “Artificial Intelligence”.
Elena Giulia Abbiatici
Art curator freelance
Art historian, author and curator of contemporary art. She turns her curatorial research into artistic experimentation that reflects the relationship between techno-capitalism and life, with an attention to the implications that globalization, Web 2.0, migration and climate change are having on the individual, collective identities and the spaces we inhabit. She started a traveling project DIGITAL PRIMITIVES. NEURONS ON THE CLOUD with the will to investigate the imagination and the computational artistic representation. In 2015 She co-founded the artistic-curatorial platform NATION25. She writes for Arshake.com
Cristina Dinello Cobianchi
Director AlbumArte
Born in Venice, she lives and works in Rome. Since 2004, she founded AlbumArte, an independent non-profit cultural association of which is currently President and Project Manager. After numerous Modern Art projects, from 2010 through AlbumArte she has exclusively produced and focused on Contemporary Art projects. Among others, she had collaborations with the MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, the La Galleria Nazionale in Rome, the Italian Institutes of Culture in Istanbul and Prague, the Institute Français, the Real Academia de España, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, the Galata Rum Okulu-Greek School of Galata in Istanbul, as well as with different independent spaces, artists and curators both in Italy and abroad. She collaborates with Exibart and she has written numerous texts for art books, monographs and catalogs.
Valentina Tanni
Art curator, Artribune
Contemporary art critic and curator. Her research is focused on the relationship between art and new technologies, with a particular focus on Internet culture. In 2002, she graduated in Art History from La Sapienza University in Rome with a master’s thesis on net art (Net Art.1994–2001), and in the following years she published a number of articles, reviews and essays for Italian and international magazines. She is the founder of Random Magazine and co-founder of Exibart and Artribune, two important Italian art magazines. She also directed the online version of FMR magazine. Since 2001 she has curated several solo and group exhibitions. From 2010 to 2012 she was a guest curator of the FotoGrafia International Photography Festival in Rome. She currently teaches “Digital Art” at Politecnico University in Milan.
Salvatore Iaconesi e Oriana Persico
Artists HER she loves DATA
Salvatore is a robotic engineer, hacker, TeD and Eisenhower Fellow. Oriana is an expert in communication and digital inclusion and cyber-ecologist. Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico observe the mutation the societies with the advent of networks and technologies ubique. Between poetics and politics, bodies and architectures, squats and revolutionary business models, the couple promotes a vision of the world in which art is the link between science, politics and economics. They are authors of global performances, publications and works exhibited all over the world. They teach Near Future and Design at various faculties, including the ISIA of Florence and the La Sapienza University of Rome, and are founders of HER – Human Ecosystems Relations, research center that uses art and design to create processes of cultural acceleration through data, as an existential boundary of human beings in contemporary societies.
Fabrizio Pizzuto
Art curator/ Professor RUFA
Writer, exhibition curator and art critic. He graduated in Contemporary Art History at La Sapienza University of Rome. He is specialized in Contemporary Art History at the School of Specialization in Siena, directed by Enrico Crispolti. He currently manages the online art criticism platform Pensiero Meridiano, the Antonello Bulgini Archive and the communication company FoolOptional srls. He also collaborates with the itinerant project Le Stazioni Contemporary Art of Milan, of which he is co-creator. This year he also co-founded the 10 little indians project , which will each year include a selection of 5 artists and 5 critics under 30 of the international scene. He currently teaches at Rufa University of Fine Arts.
Giuseppe Chili
Manager iNEXT
Giuseppe is an Independent Management Consultant at iNEXT. His work experience led him to know directly several industry sectors, such as Software, Consulting, Healthcare, Textile, Food etc. He has a great experience as a freelance technical journalist and he was the author of three fiction books: “Mai stato nel Missouri” (Aracne press), “Addio Ragazze d’Avigone” Pendragon press, both available on Amazon, and “Sezione Bordiga”, currently in print with Pendragon press.
Matteo Cremonesi
Artist and curator Link Art Center
Matteo Cremonesi (1984, Brescia, Italy) focuses his interests on contemporary art and new media, studying the aesthetic, social and political impact of the Internet and new technologies on contemporary culture and art production. He is PhD candidate at Luephana University of Luneburg, Germany; he is lecturer of Cybernetics at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera – Milan; and works at Link Art Center as curator of the online exhibition space Link Cabinet. Since 2011 he contributes to Artribune Magazine writing about web-based art. He is a member of the art group IOCOSE that have been exhibiting internationally at several art institutions and festivals. IOCOSE’s art investigates the after-failure moment of the teleological narratives of technological development, in regards to both their enthusiastic and pessimistic visions. Ph: Nicola Tirelli
Giang Hoang Nguyen lives and works between Hanoi and Milan. His works are multimedia, with focus on identity, self-inscription and memory. His current research and practice are aimed to investigate failures in the relationship between human and machine, specifically in the process of learning. He has participated in various exhibitions, workshops, screenings and art projects in Vietnam, Italy, Portugal and France. In 2018, his work The Fall was performed at Museo 900’ in Milan, as part of Furla Series. Apart from personal projects, he has also contributed to community development. In 2016, he curated In_ur_scr!, the first online exhibition in Vietnam. In 2014, he founded The Black Hole – a community art project, in which he illustrated and published anonymous secrets from Internet users. He is currently pursuing a MFA in New Media Art at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera – Italy, with the Italian Government Scholarship for foreigners.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Giang Hoang Nguyen, The Fall, performance and multimedia installation (mattress, neon, headphones), audio 12’00’’, 2018. Courtesy the artist
1 Prize
GIANG HOANG NGUYEN
THE FALL
The Fall is composed of two complementary sections: a performance and an installation. The action of the performer consists into follow a tutorial that indicates the process to fall like a robot. The tutorial starts with an analysis of Boston Dynamics’ video, in which the balance of a robot is tested while it keeps on falling.
Giang Hoang Nguyen asked a choreographer to create the performance’s movements: the result is a slow and automated act. During the performance the repetitive motion makes the performer’s body increasingly artificial. The fall, that is something random and unpredictable from which learning mechanisms derive, becomes controllable and measurable in this performance. The technology is modeled according to biological processes and therefore the fall no longer belongs to the human being, but also to the machine. Human and art overlap without ceasing, leading the man towards an unknown future. The symbol of this future is the fall itself, able to lead to an advancement as well to a ruinous failure.
2 Prize
KLINGEMANN
BARQUÉ-DURAN – MARZENIT
MY ARTIFICIAL MUSE
These artists joint works give life to a performance that aims to reflect on one of the human archetypal concepts: the inspiring muse. The trio reflects on the semantic nature of the muse based on traditional art history models, creating an images’ dataset able to inspire an artificial intelligence to produce art.
This project explores how artificial intelligence can collaborate with the human being in creative processes. The work synthesizes the relationship between human and artificial: the algorithm learns from the dataset and generates new outcomes that are then reproduced in a pictorial key during a performance in which human and artificial work side by side, in a context unified by a music-set. An ancient and universal concept like that of the muse is re-read considering the relationship that can be established between human creativity and imagination and the artificial ones, giving the machine the opportunity to be an active collaborator in the definition of a new way of thinking about art and its language.
Albert Barqué-Duran is a Honorary Research Fellow In Cognitive Science and a new media artist at City, University of London and Lacuna Lab in Berlin. He leads disruptive projects at the intersection of art, research and technology with the aim of finding novel formats of generating scientific knowledge to reflect about contemporary and futuristic issues and its cultural implications.
Mario Klingemann is an artist who works with algorithms and data. He investigates the possibilities that machine learning and artificial intelligence offer by understanding how creativity, culture and their perception work. An important part of this investigation is his workwith digital cultural archives like the British Library, the internet Archives or the collection of Google Arts & Culture where is currently artist in residence.
Marc Marzenit is an audio engineer, composer, music producer and DJ with many years of experience touring the world. Besides his profile as underground musician, he also created shows like Suite on Clouds, a 3D mapping show with 8 violinists, 1 harp, symphonic percussions, synthesizers and a grand piano. These projects draw on his classical background and show his integrated vision of electronic music: combining acoustic, analogue and digital instruments together in the same show.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Albert Barqué-Duran, Mario Klingemann, Marc Marzenit, My Artificial Muse, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 200 cm, looped video 8’, 2018. Courtesy the artists
Enrico Boccioletti is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice is mainly focused on the consequences of technology encountering one’s intimacy, investigating structures of empathy existing in-between and beyond verbal communication, representations of the self in the digital realm, and the ghostly forces embedded in informational turmoil. Recent appearances, among many others, include: MAXXI, Rome; ZKM, Karlsruhe; OGR, Turin; La Quadriennale di Roma; La Plage, Paris; Parco Arte Vivente, Turin; Material, Mexico City; Operativa, Rome; Carroll / Fletcher, London; Live Arts Week, MAMbo, Bologna.
PHOTO CAPTION: Enrico Boccioletti, devenir-fantôme, audio installation and choreographed space, 2019. Courtesy the artist
3 Prize
ENRICO BOCCIOLETTI
DEVENIR-FANTÔME
The project presented by Enrico Boccioletti is the achievement of previous works resulted from the same research. These projects address the theme of empathy and its limits in the artificial intelligence age, through speech synthesis and algorithmic composition.
Boccioletti evokes through this software the perception of human emotions, showing the viewer the result of this process, that is most of the time alienating. In this work the human being is asked to understand the otherness finding himself both attracted and disturbed from this artificial dialogue. The sound installation is accompanied by spatial changes necessary for the creation of an environment that allows the audience to listen and to understand. The artwork is inspired by the uncanny valley, a theory developed by the robotic researcher Masahiro Mori, who stated that the feeling of familiarity that a man can have towards a robot increases when the robot looks like a human; when this resemblance became too convincing the man develops a sense of unease and disturbance towards the artificial. In this way, the project tries to define new ways of feeling human emotions.
Lorem is a music-driven multidisciplinary project by the italian musician and visual artist Francesco D’Abbraccio. His work was exhibited at London Design Biennale (Somerset House), Triennale Milano, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice), Scopitone (Stereolux, Lyon), Festival International du Graphisme de Chaumont. Lorem is an inquiry about human-computer interaction in the age of Artificial Intelligence. During the last two years D’Abbraccio built a collaborative platform, involving AI artists, video artists, information engineering researchers and musical instrument designers with the aim to produce original audio, visuals and lyrics. Deep neural networks, hacked hardware and programmed errors are used to drive machines toward aesthetical, autonomous behaviours.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Lorem, Adversarial Feelings: 1-5: Latent Selves, audiovisual installation on loop, 22’21”, 2019. Courtesy the artis
Finalist
LOREM
ADVERSARIAL FEELINGS: 1-5: LATENT SELVES
Lorem is a music and multidisciplinary project that investigates the complex relationship between man and computer in the artificial intelligence age.
Through neural networks, hacked hardware and AI systems, the artist constructs an algorithmic intimacy in which the machine is called to simulate complex human emotions starting from emotional datasets, classified according to Robert Plutchik’s “Wheel of Emotions”. The intent of Adversarial Feelings: 1-5: Latent Selves, which consists of an audio-video installation and a book, is to observe the intricate states of consciousness through the alien gaze of the machine. Music and images mark its timid progress, in an attempt to speak the language of human emotions, creating a complex but fluid path, made of expectations and scissions. The artwork counts on the participation of artists (Mario Klingemann, Yuma Kishi), designers (Karol Sudolski, Mirek Hardiker), researchers (Damien Henry, Nicola Cattabiani, Paolo Ferrari).
Finalist
MICHELE TIBERIO IN COLLABORATION WITH DILETTA TONATTO
ME, MY SCENT
Michele Tiberio’s work is realized in collaboration with Diletta Tonatto and consists of two parts, one tangible, the other impalpable. The tangible part of the project is represented by a book in which the digital identity of the artist was collected, requesting his own data from big digital companies such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, then included in this textbook, without any kind of censorship.
The intangible part of the work is perceived through the sense of smell: the pages of the book emit a perfume, an olfactory portrait of the artist’s digital identity. This portrait was realized by an algorithm that, by analyzing the collected data, created a profile. The algorithm was programmed starting from the capacity and experience of Diletta Tonatto, producer of the fragrance of which the pages of the book are impregnated, translating in olfactory notes the patterns obtained through the algorithm. In this artwork the corporeality and the digital, whose facets often diverge, are united by the same perspective, that of identity. The two authors reflect on what “exist” means in a period in which the boundary between real and virtual is increasingly blurred, showing how an ancestral sense, such as the olfaction, can be profoundly actual today.
Born in Palermo in 1987, Tiberio studied photography and design in Italy and then continued his studies at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College of London in the United Kingdom. He began his career as a designer and engineer before dedicating himself fully to sculpture and installations. Tiberio has exhibited in Rome, Palermo, and London. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Welcome Collection in London, Palazzo Costantino in Palermo and at Istituto di Cultura Austriaco in Rome. In 2017 he had his solo show at Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea. His last project, conceived with Niccoló De Napoli, is Misconception: a way to misunderstand reality: it had been part of the Manifesta 12 Collaterals in Palermo. Michel Tiberio has been selected by the Fondazione Merz for Meteore in Giardino, 2019, that will take place in Turin in summer.
Diletta Tonatto is an academic researcher and artistic director of Tonatto Profumi maison. Her work and studies focus on perfumes and the sense of smell in today’s society. Living perfume as a liminal experience, an in-between the past, the present and the future, Diletta is fascinated by the silent yet emotional and powerful stories carried out by fragrant volatile molecules in their explosion of reminiscence once inhaled. Artistic perfumery award winner (Cafleurebon 2016, 2018), her work meets with art and design to create modern olfactory portraits and rituals as antidotes to today’s stressful life.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Michele Tiberio in collaboration with Diletta Tonatto, Me, My scent, publication (1619 pages) and perfume, 2019. Courtesy the artist
Enrica Beccalli is an interaction designer and Fulbright scholar. Fascinated by the interaction between humans and new technologies, between individual and collectivity her projects are all about complexity, emotions and behavior. Selected by the Italian Fulbright Commission and financed by the department for International Affairs of the Italian Ministry of Education to earn a MFA in Design and Technology in Parsons, which awarded her further Scholarships for demonstrating ability in combining design and new technologies. Alongside her academic career she worked for multiple design research Labs and for ESPN+NYC Media Lab, on the future of live sport consumption. Her work Complessità has been showcased at the NYC Media Lab annual Summit, Tribeca Film Festival, NYC Creative Tech Week e Digital Design Days. Enrica’s work has been featured on The Creators Project, Agenda Culturelle, Loves by Domus. Awarded of the “Extraordinary Abilities in the Arts” American visa, she has been working for three years as Interaction Design Lead for a tech company specialized in online Identity verification, computer vision and machine learning and she recently joined Johnson&Johnson Design studio. Roula is a Lebanese Brooklyn based digital artist, designer and architect. Her work is at the intersection of arts and technology, ranging from installations for physical spaces to interactive objects and digital experiences. She focuses on the playful and unexpected; always pushing the boundaries of traditional narratives through the melding physical and digital. Roula holds a MFA in design and technology from Parsons NY and a BA of Architecture from the American University of Beirut. Her work has been exhibited at the Tribeca Film Festival Interactive, Creative Tech Week, SXSW and NYC Media Lab.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Enrica Beccalli in collaboration with Roula Gholmieh, Complessità: a human at the mercy of an algorithm, video, 9’, recordings of Boids (bird-oid object), 2019. Courtesy the artist
Finalist
ENRICA BECCALLI IN COLLABORATION WITH ROULA GHOLMIEH
COMPLESSITÀ
Complessità is a cybernetic dance performance that, through the exploration of complexity and our role within it, investigates the potential of technology in modifying and altering the human body.
The human loses ownership of its movements and we enter a new dimension where the machine computes the moving human body. Complessità features an algorithm which, through a wearable device, controls a dancer’s movements, synchronizing it to the weaving of a flock of digital birds. The flock’s direction is transposed to the performer’s body through an electrostimulation of a specific nerve that maintains balance, forcing the dancer to sway either to the left or the right according to the flock’s movements.
Finalist
GUIDO SEGNI
DEMAND FULL LAZINESS TODAY
Demand Full Laziness, today. is a project by Guido Segni, started in 2018, which will continue for another five years, until 2023.
During this period the artist delegates and automates part of his artistic products, using deep learning algorithms. In these five years various products can be made (images, books, objects …), witnesses of the experiment carried out through the automated processes. Through DFL Guido Segni reflects on the relationship between work, automation and rest. In a historical moment in which work has become an obsession, the artist embraces the opposite current: he indulges into the exploration of sleep, laziness and creativity.
Guido Segni lives and works in Italy, abroad and in Internet, at the intersection of art, new media culture and digital hallucinations. Co-founder of Les Liens Invisibles group, he exhibited in galleries, museums (MAXXI Rome, New School of New York, KUMU Art Museum of Talinn) and contemporary art and new media festivals (International Venice Biennale, Piemonte SHARE Festival, Transmediale). Recently he has been selected for the 20th Japan Media Arts Festival’s Art Division (2017), he was a Prize Arte Laguna’s finalist (2016) and he won a honorable mention at Berlin’s Festival Transmediale (2011) with Les Liens Invisibles. Currently he teaches at Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara and runs the online space Green Cube Gallery.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Guido Segni, Demand full laziness today, video installation 7’41” on loop, flags, 2019 (2018-2023). Courtesy the artist
Antonio “Creo” Daniele is an Italian visual and media artist living and working in London, UK. He is currently a PhD student in Media and Art Technology at Queen Mary University of London, investigating human and artificial expressivity through drawings and artificial intelligence. He holds a MA with merit in Computational Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London where he graduated in 2015 with a thesis project “This Is Not Private”. The work has been defined by Antonio as an interactive empathic portrait which uses cutting edge technology, such as face tracking and affective computing, to explore the phenomenon of empathy as a meta-language. The installation was featured on WIRED US, WIRED Japan, The Creators Project Italy and Prosthetic Knowledge among the others. This work has been selected for the XXI Triennale Milano and for the CHI2016 Art Exhibition. Antonio experience cuts across art and commercial. He has been working in the digital industry between Italy and UK as director and motion graphic designer, for well known brands such as Nike, Samsung, Nokia among others. On the other hand, his personal works have been shown at film and art festivals around Europe and the USA.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Antonio “Creo” Daniele, Grammar #1, interactive installation, tablet, dataset 300 images 12,5 x 12,5 cm each., 2019. Courtesy the artist
Finalist
ANTONIO “CREO” DANIELE
GRAMMAR #1
Grammar # 1 by Antonio “Creo” Daniele is an interactive experience that reflects on the relationship between human and artificial expression, exploring drawing as a form of symbolic language.
The artist produced three hundred drawings through “Let It Brain” (LIB), an automatic drawing technique developed by himself. These drawings were then reduced to their structural marks that were in turn merged into a dataset, the Human Grammar, with which the SketchRNN algorithm was trained. In this way the algorithm created a new group of marks known as the Artificial Grammar. The experience is designed as a Turing test: the viewer is in front of a screen, having to answer a single question “What is Human?”. Drawing as an aesthetic language is investigated in its most current implications: the role of art within today’s society is re-thought through the most recent technologies; this opens up a new series of questions regarding gesture, artistic sign and artificial intelligence role in this dialogue.
Finalist
DANIELE SPANÒ
URGE OGGI
Urge Oggi by Daniele Spanò is a reflection on game’s nature, declined within the world of computers and artificial intelligence. Two computers play rock, paper, scissors.
The project shows the viewer a software that plays against itself, raising a series of questions that lead to reflect on the relationship between human and machine and how they can approach the same area, in this case that of the game. In the machine’s game dynamics, the properly human components such as, for example, strategic considerations are missing. The viewer is led to wonder if fun can be part of the machine’s skills or if the game’s result is just “an intelligent and boring multimedia installation”.
Daniele Spanò, after set designing studies, begins to work as director and visual artist. His video-installations, commissioned by institutions and individuals, bring him to the most beautiful squares in Italy. Among the most important interventions: Giardino dei sogni, realized with Luca Brinchi for the Giorgione’s exhibition at Palazzo Venezia, in Rome; the multimedia show to present the Gucci autumn/winter 16/17 collection in collaboration with Luca Brinchi; Linea di Fuga, multimedia installation annexed to the MAP collection (Museo Agro Pontino – Pontinia, 2016); Pneuma, site specific installation exhibited at the 56th edition of Festival dei Due Mondi (Spoleto, 2016); Atto Primo, at Church of the Artists (Piazza del Popolo, Rome, 2013); Rifrazioni permanenti (2011) in Piazza Colonna, Rome, promoted by Presidenza del Consiglio, Ministero del Turismo and MiBAC. In February 2011 he was selected by the famous director and artist Takeshi Kitano, to represent Rome’s artistic ferment. Since 2009 he has worked as a set designer with Piazza Vittorio Orchestra. As a visual artist he exhibited in museums such as Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Centrale Montemartini in Rome, MAP of Pontinia. He also works for individuals and non-profit associations. From 2012 to 2015 he was artistic consultant for Romaeuropa Foundation.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Daniele Spanò, Urge Oggi, multimedia installation, 2019. Courtesy the artist
Adam Basanta’s work explores technological practices as active, participatory, multi-sensory performances which are distributed throughout a variety of human, cultural, material and computational agencies. Born in Tel-Aviv (ISR) and raised in Vancouver (BC), Basanta has lived and worked in Montréal since 2010. Originally studying contemporary music composition, he has developed an artistic practice in mixed-media installations. Since 2015, his works have been exhibited in galleries and institutions including Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Arsenal Art Contemporain (CAN), Galerie Charlot (FRA), National Art Centre Tokyo (JPN), V Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (RUS), Serralves Museum (POR), Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst (GER), The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA). He has been awarded several international prizes, including the Japan Media Arts Prize (2016) and the Aesthetica Art Prize (2017). In 2018 he was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award. He is currently represented by Ellephant Gallery (Montréal, CAN). Remaining active as an experimental composer and performer, his concert music, live performances, and sound recordings are presented worldwide.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Adam Basanta, A Brief History of Western Cultural Production – International Gold Standard 001, giclée print, database painting, 60 x 60 cm, 2019. Courtesy the artist
Finalist
ADAM BASANTA
A BRIEF HISTORY OF WESTERN CULTURAL PRODUCTION
The A Brief History of Western Cultural Production project reflects on the nature of the image at the time of the digitalization of the world’s largest cultural institutions collections.
The first part of the project consists in collecting images and data regarding the works contained in the open-source collections of some of the most famous museum, such as the Prado, Louvre, MET. The second step involves the use of a software and the mosaic technique: an empty “canvas” is divided into digital mosaic tiles, then filled with information coming from one of the many images with the aim of creating an internally original image. In the exhibition, the first result of the process described above: a print (International Gold Standard 001) whose image is composed of segments of pictures of 14 ancient European coins showing rulers’ faces on their surfaces. The coins derived from the MET collection in New York.
