What happens when artificial intelligence meets art? Is it necessary to fix a point in space that delimits the boundaries between analog and digital? The debate on the evolution of science understood as a resource or threat to man is still ongoing. That's why the MAXXI Museum in Rome has also decided to follow this sector of art with an exhibition and a series of events.
We start with a question that originates precisely from how art has gradually structured itself over the centuries: first there were wall paintings, then charcoal, watercolours, tempera and oil colours. Then there were Warhol, Pollock, Dalì and experimentation in art has learned to follow the evolution of society and scientific discoveries. Today there are robots, machines, computers and artistic research has let itself be penetrated by technological research. Will it be possible to continue talking about art as it has always been understood or is a totally new form of expression being created now that it is filtered by the digital?
The exhibition - Low Form. Imaginaries and Visions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, open until 24 February 2019 – it is an immersive, multimedia and multisensory journey that inspired 16 international artists present a present and a future whose representation is the daughter of the technological unconscious and a dilated imagination, between computer-generated dreams, creative algorithms and avatars who question the meaning of existence.
The artists involved are: Zach Blas & Jemima Wyman, Carola Bonfili, Ian Cheng, Cécile B. Evans, Pakui Hardware, Jamian Juliano-Villani, Nathaniel Mellors & Erkka Nissinen, Trevor Paglen, Agnieszka Polska, Jon Rafman, Lorenzo Senni, Avery K Singer, Cheyney Thompson, Luca Trevisani, Anna Uddenberg, Emilio Vavarella.
On the sidelines of the exhibition, a survey on the new surrealism of the XNUMXst century has been published which explains the work of the artists involved who express a reality generated and transformed by technology. The one around Low Form is not just an exhibition intended as an exhibition space in which to confront the artists' intuitions, but a laboratory of study, comparison and reflection around the broader theme of man's relationship with technology and the possible scenarios that may emerge in the near or distant future, a possibility of allowing oneself to be invaded by the doubt that the individual's frantic rush to omnipotence delirium must find a brake or simply learn to manage progress by not demonizing it.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of events, such as the one on Wednesday 14 November entitled The consciousness of art. Mind matters which was the second meeting promoted by the museum and by the SPI - Italian Psychoanalytical Society, which starting from the themes of the exhibition program, presented a moment of confrontation between psychoanalysis and art around the great emergencies of contemporary society. The first meeting dates back to last October 4 with the title From trauma to forgiveness, while the final one of the series will be held on May 14th and will be entitled Identity crisis and the search for a centre.
"We have to start thinking about a new role for the Antitrust for the 15st century that deals with the centralization of power in the digital world", said the scholar Luciano Floridi during the event on Thursday XNUMX November Human Digital Transformation. Drawing a human project for the twenty-first century.
Another appointment that aims to reflect on the relationship between man and machine in parallel with the Low Form exhibition and in the context of artapes project – screening program in collaboration with In between Art Film – consists of a selection of videos by the most interesting contemporary artists who analyze the state of the art in an age of information and digital progress, investigating the socio-cultural implications of our present. The videos of the review curated by Eleonora Farina, made mostly digitally and through the use of computer-generated images (CGI), cross different and transversal cultural references, in a contamination between disciplines that restores variety and hybridity of globalized culture.
The next November 18 starting from the analysis of the building that houses the MAXXI and designed by the architect Anglo-Iraqi Zaha Hadid it will be possible to visit the exhibition for free and allow yourself to be pervaded by the discussion on themes and issues related to our relationship with technology and the incredible scenarios opened up by its evolution.
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