OVERTON WINDOW is a project by Matèria gallery, curated by Re:humanism, sets out to explore the possibilities stemming from our rapidly evolving symbiotic relationship with technology. The project seeks to champion artists and concepts that illuminate the intersection of art and technology, with the overarching goal to harness the disruptive potential of AI and blockchain technologies, paving the way for new artistic production models. Additionally, OVERTON WINDOW serves as a catalyst for reimagining cultural production, markets and ownership models by providing artists with a platform and a support structure to experiment with the evolving technological landscape.
XXYY by Numero Cromatico is a dialogue between two generative artificial intelligences, contemporary chatbots, that reflect on scientific and technological progress from two radically opposing perspectives.
On one side, a technophobe expresses conservative, nostalgic, and apocalyptic views; on the other, a technophile voices boundless faith in technological advancement and, in particular, artificial intelligence.
Like a theatrical performance, the two purposefully trained algorithms enact the key narratives that animate the debate between the apocalyptic and the integrated, while opening a broader reflection on our relationship with technology and its possible futures.
Statements of enthusiasm and fear alternate across the screen. As the conversation flows uninterrupted, we find ourselves before a stream of words that gradually seem to dematerialize, to lose consistency. The principle of reiteration upon which current AI systems are based feels increasingly distant from any real understanding of the world.
At the same time, the tireless ability of automated systems to pursue their task indefinitely prompts us to ask whether it is conceivable that they might one day generate truly meaningful responses to our questions.
The work also investigates the material processes behind the development of large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or DeepSeek, revealing them not as neutral oracles, but as products shaped by logics of profit embedded in the very structure of their computational architectures.
If, since ancient Greece, dialogue has been conceived as an ontological device for accessing knowledge of reality, today, in the context of technological mediation, it becomes a site of polarization and crystallization of partial and individual truths.
In this scenario, the artist becomes an activator of alternative trajectories, capable of guiding the electronic collective unconscious toward new and unexplored horizons of meaning.
With XXYY, we witness a silent exchange between two alien entities. The subject of their discussion is our future, and we, as fleeting spectators, watch from the margins.
Numero Cromatico is a collective artist, a research centre and a publisher, composed of researchers from different disciplines, from art and design to neuroscience. Founded in 2011, its main aim is to redefine and expand the boundaries of art research, integrating theories, methodologies and technologies, including scientific ones.
In its artworks and installations, Numero Cromatico hybridises visual art with scientific knowledge, with the aim of exploring new forms of art creation, in which human beings, nature and technologies find a new coexistence and in which the public can be an active part in the interpretation of the artwork.
For years, it has also been promoting a debate on the relationship between art and neuroscience through Nodes – Journal of Art and Neuroscience, a journal on neuroaesthetics that is today a point of reference for researchers worldwide.
Numero Cromatico has exhibited in galleries, national and international institutions, including MAXXI Museum (Roma and L’Aquila), Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Museo Nazionale Romano, Centro Arti Visive Pescheria (Pesaro).
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