Will AI Kill the Exhibition Star? Interview with Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera

[00:00:09] Hi, thank you so much for tuning in. Welcome to this episode, which is a guest episode where I talk to a curating duo who specializes in new technologies. And I have to say, this conversation was really impactful. My perspective was shifted. And that was because we didn't come from a place of dread or from a place of fear and prejudice. We didn't talk about robot ladies with bad wigs that can paint.

[00:00:36] And we talked about the reality that is here. So while I'm recording this, an AI is cleaning my sound. It is producing snapshots and it is transcribing what I'm saying. So we talked about that. We talked about those tools, about the metaverse, about so many things that surround us or that potentially will very soon and that artists are already using.

[00:01:04] The exciting part about this episode is that Alfredo and Auronda, so my two guests, know about concrete examples of artists using these technologies in ways that are really compelling and really exciting. And there are real artistic experiences and it really will change your mind.

[00:01:28] Leave me a comment if it didn't. Leave me a comment if it didn't. This is kind of a dare, almost. I'm really, really happy to have expanded into video, into new guests, although Emily's coming back in March. And I'm very, very happy about the exhibition that we're going to talk about. I'm also on Substack, by the way, started writing shorter texts again, and it's really exciting.

[00:01:52] So there's lots of ways for you to financially help. You can use the link that I have in the show's notes or in my website, exhibitionisterspodcast.com. Whatever suits you. There are so many ways for you to help. And a small donation. I don't ask for big donations, although of course I'm not allergic to them.

[00:02:14] And to those who don't. And to those who don't. They will be supported by you because I want to create accessible content. That is my ethos and that's what I believe in. So episodes will always be there for everyone. So those who can contribute, well, you will be helping those who cannot. You will make them feel better in knowing that I am getting paid for my work. That's it. That is my duty done.

[00:02:41] So go ahead and listen to this wonderful and intriguing, compelling and exciting and impactful conversation with Alfredo Cramerotti and Auronda Scalera. Hello and welcome to Exhibitionistas, the podcast where we visit exhibitions so that you have to.

[00:03:11] Or where we invite guests that expand the notion of exhibitions. They are exhibition goers, exhibition makers and agents in the contemporary art field. So today I have a curating duo and they are going to answer the question, will AI kill the exhibition star? I know, I know this is a bit of a sensationalist question, but I do have to drive people to the podcast. Fair enough.

[00:03:42] Listen, we do what we can, but it is a fair question. It is a fair question. So I'm going to introduce my two guests. Auronda Scalera is curator of art and hypermedia. She is lecturer at ISA in Paris. She's the curator of Lumen Prize and Art Dubai Digital.

[00:04:05] She was named as one of the top 20 inspiring women to look out for in 2023 by the New York City Journal for attending the World Economic Forum in 2023 and 2024 as part of 100 Women for Davos speaking about Web3 and Metaverse and as a speaker for the AI House. So really, I'm a bit impressed.

[00:04:34] I'm a bit intimidated here, but very honored that you accepted to be here. Alfredo Cramerotti, I met you when you were director of Mostyn in Llandudno in Wales. Indeed. You have gone from the green, very humid, sea-facing landscape of Wales to the heat of the desert. Still sea-facing though. The sea is a constant.

[00:05:03] True. Still a different sea, but still with a seascape, which is wonderful. So you are now the director of MM, Museum of Art, Media and Technology, Media Miley's Museum, which I'm probably mispronouncing, at Northwestern Qatar.

[00:05:23] You were also involved in Arts Dubai Digital and co-curator of Nouri Art Festival, also curator for the Maxi Bulgari Prize for Digital Arts. All of this in 2024. There would have been much more to say about your curating activities, obviously, but let's stick to that one. So Alfredo is also chair of the Digital Strategies Committee for the International Association of Art Critics,

[00:05:50] advisor to the KSA Visual Arts Commission, UK Government Art Collection, British Council of Visual Arts Acquisition Committee and the Italian Ministry of Culture. So welcome. Thank you so much for being part of this conversation, for agreeing to be here. Welcome to Exhibitionistas. Thank you very much, Exhibitionistas. I'm very, very honored and glad to be here. Yeah. All right.

[00:06:18] So I want to ease into the topic. I want to know a bit more about you as young people, as children, teenagers, young adults. Can you remember when in an exhibition or in a gallery or I don't know, in a sculpture part, the first time you had a really strong encounter with an exhibition, with an artwork, like a really aesthetic experience and tell us about it.

[00:06:48] Oh, gosh. I have probably a fun story about, because my parents, they used to bring me every two years at the Art Biennial in Venice. And I remember that I was really young and at home, I still have this photo at home, my parents. But I was under this big horse made by wood, probably by Charlie.

[00:07:15] I don't know who was the artist. It was at the Giardini of Biennial or the Biennale. And I was under, because I was really short at the time. I was under. So this was very, very young. I was really under this horse because I wanted to be on, but was impossible, was not allowed to do that.

[00:07:39] And I started to cry, but I really loved this horse. I wanted to hug this horse. Talking about audience engagement here, right? I was already working in the arts. Okay. So I was 30-something. I had already a gallery in Italy. I moved to London. I had a residency.

[00:08:04] As an artist, I was about to kind of move to Berlin to study curatorial studies. So I was already immersed. There was one piece, one experience that really, really stuck with me. And it was, funnily enough, in London, an Art Angel Commission. Oh, of course.

[00:08:25] And it was the Steve McQueen descent stage underneath the St. Martens Hotel in that kind of concrete sloping auditorium. I didn't know really much about his work. I didn't really know about how Art Angel was working either. You know, I was a bit outside those kind of London-centric type of sort of arts sort of a world.

[00:08:54] And it really kind of blew my mind. Absolutely. So describe the experience and the work. People were actually going into the, which is next to Trafalgar Square. It's not far from me. The St. Martens Hotel. Apparently, St. Martens Hotel was built upon a former cinema auditorium or something like that. It was just reopened at that time. It was early 2000, I think. And, or 2000 even.

[00:09:26] Kate Modern opening, that kind of big push. It was a big moment, yeah. Yeah, it was a big moment. And then you enter the hotel and then you have to go down. I can't remember if it was a lift or some stairs. And you enter this super dark basement. And the basement is not just a simple basement. It was a sloping basement because it was the former site of an auditorium. Obviously, the seats were taken off.

[00:09:54] And people were just sitting on the concrete waiting for something to happen. And you waited for a bit of a long time. And then suddenly there was this kind of a screen pop up. And there was this kind of a rumor clanging metal cage descending something. And then at some point there was another screen on your back. So you had to turn around. And there was something else. So it was Steve McQueen.

[00:10:20] It's the journey of miners going underground to work. Right. So it was completely related to the content of the film, the place where you were. Obviously, you were in central London. You were not in a mine. But still, the fact, it was super powerful. And I still remember nowadays.

[00:10:42] And probably, you know, that is a moment actually that's kind of a so, okay, this is not just about looking at things. It is about how you perceive things, how you make things, how you create things actually involving more than a dimension. An experience, an immersive experience. Yeah.

[00:11:05] What was the exhibition experience that, while you were already on this path, confirmed this idea of yours that it's really important to focus on these new technologies? For sure, many. I mean, many experience and many exhibitions. For example, for me was the involvement of poetry and technologies.

[00:11:32] That was the first time ever that poetry now is part of the contemporary art with Ana Maria Caballero or Sasha Stile. And they match performance poetry with new technologies. And because I'm a big fan about poetry, I thought, okay, this is like my dream. And I thought, yes, I'm in the right track now. Interesting.

[00:12:01] So how does it, how does poetry, like specifically for our listeners, visually or in terms of experience, how does that work? This collaboration between advanced technologies, poetry and visual arts? In general, they use voice for interact with people. Or they use words to interact with people.

[00:12:28] And even technologies, because they collect, for example, gesture and they collect their voice. They collect sound. And they translate all this experience in an artwork. They generate text itself. Yeah, yeah. That is presented as a poetry through, well, you mentioned AI at the beginning. That's also one of the way.

[00:12:54] For me, the catalyst to work on art and technology. Funnily enough, actually, it was also the conversation we had when we met years ago. And we started to work together as a curatorial duo. That was that conversation, actually, that was the starting point. Because, I mean, I have a background in design and media.

[00:13:19] So, I did, you know, kind of a design, retail design and kind of a commercial design. And then I went into... How many lives have you lived, Alfredo? Oh, too many. From your biography, I would think you'd be like 95 years old. Yeah, well, I'm almost there, you know. You are not. You are not. And, you know, and then media, you know, the websites in the 90s. It was a fun thing to do. Yeah. And radio and TV, experimental TV.

[00:13:50] Actually, you studied digital arts in times where there was no such a thing to work on. Yeah. And so, this conversation, okay, that's interesting. Because for both of us, I think, it represents a bit of an expansion of the concept of art and the practice of art as well. And also, both the conceptualization and the realization of art.

[00:14:17] So, it wasn't really an exhibition or an event. You might argue that, actually, that sort of a descent from Steve McQueen, it was a bit of like that. Yeah. We had our career in contemporary art. Let's say pure contemporary art, if you want to use this word or this term.

[00:14:39] But then realizing that, you know, there is a way also to actually go expand it a bit and enlarge it. And both in terms of the artists that you meet and you have conversation with, but also the audiences that you might encounter and you interact with having this expansion.

[00:15:02] Because it's, at the moment, there's kind of a different audiences still, you know, on two sides of the roads. We're bridging them. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that one. But actually, when I kind of started in a more conscious way, thinking about these technologies was also a meeting with an artist. And it's interesting, Aaronda, that you said you mentioned poetry.

[00:15:30] Because, well, you have, I mean, poetry has been in the visual arts world with asemic writing and also with graphic poetry. But it is true that there's a real movement of writing into the computer. And I was visiting an incredible artist called Jan Hopkins. She lives in Sheffield.

[00:15:51] And I went to her studio and she does something absolutely incredible, which is to use ChatGPT as a collaborator. And so she used to draw. So she put in the drawing machine the pencil she preferred to use when she drew.

[00:16:09] And so the machine makes the drawing with a really typical, you know, kind of tool, like this sort of intemporal tool for us in the 20th and 21st centuries. And she writes with ChatGPT this incredible poetry. And I just remember reading the poems and how they interact with the work and the drawings. And she had this concept, well, they had together.

[00:16:37] It was ChatGPT3, I remember, at the time. And so ChatGPT wrote about bitmap bees, which I just had this aesthetic moment. Because bitmap is this very old software for graphic design that no one uses anymore. So there's this idea of like, as if you'd said the Egyptian pyramids.

[00:17:02] Like there's this kind of idea of old timey stuff and the bees who are disappearing and the alliteration. Beautiful. Bitmap bees. I think it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And I love poetry. I'm like you, Arunda. I'm really into the written word and language and sound. She taught me about ChatGPT. It was the first person and it was an artist who taught me about this technology, which I had a really hard time understanding, I have to say, at the time.

[00:17:32] And then a few months later, it was all over the press. All over the place. And she'd been using this for a long time, you know. So that's really interesting. I also wanted to ask you, Arunda, about your project that I didn't mention in the introduction. You work with, is it called Multiplicity? Yes. Right? So it's the correlation between women and advanced technologies.

[00:18:00] And I have a question, Arunda, very specific, which is, are these new technologies finally solved the problem of the invisibility of women in art? And please say yes. Well, Multiplicity is a project that we funded together with Alfredo. Because we saw that in new technologies, there were a lot of female artists. Really, a lot of them.

[00:18:29] But at the time, I mean, five years ago, they were not so much visibility. Then we thought, okay, we have to work with them to support them. So we, during all this process, we discovered a lot of them. Even, I don't know, like, um, um, um, um, um, oh gosh. Um... Genesis Sky? No, Genesis Sky. No, Florencia.

[00:18:58] Ah, Florencia Brook. Yeah. Uh, she was one of the first coders. Oh, yeah. And, yes. I mean, and no one know about her. And she is an amazing artist. We work with her for Art Dubai, some festivals. And we try, you know, to support her in her practice. And, uh, Genesis Sky, for instance, uh, she worked with, uh, an avatar that represents herself.

[00:19:27] It's a raw avatar. Then the avatar grew with her. Oh, yeah. And many, many other. I mean, there are some gems there that need to be discovered, need to be promoted. And what, this is the purpose of multiplicity. Okay, well. But you haven't, you haven't answered the question, though. Uh, yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, yeah. New technologies. Are they finally...

[00:19:54] I mean, I'm not saying like putting women at the top, but just kind of creating a shed. An equality. That would be great. Yes, yes, yes. Because, for example, if we think about Krista Kim, for example, is one of the top artists, uh, on Art New Technologies and, uh, many others are there. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. There is a trajectory in that sense. Yeah. Um, I mean, we, we started Multiplicity as a, as a publishing platform to, we, we made

[00:20:24] a lot of interviews with women artists working with technology. And we, and then, yeah, we published everyone. And then we published the first 15 and we ran out of time, obviously, because it was, they started to invite us to curate exhibition about this, these artists. And, uh, but we started because, I mean, the, especially at the boom of the, um, digital art market, you know, 95% of, uh, the artists in the market were male.

[00:20:54] And, uh, and, you know, nine out of 10, the top digital art, the top selling digital art, they were male. So the only one was, um, the singer. Um, uh, Grimes. Grimes is not even a visual artist, but you know, that's really frustrating. You had the historical patterns of women artists in the seventies in New York with the big American

[00:21:23] abstraction, American expressionist movement. There was an incredible amount of female artists working incredibly hard, completely invisible. And they got the solo show and the retrospective 60 years later when almost them, they're kind of dead. There was a bit of a pattern repeating really. And so that's why we started. And I think, you know, I don't know, personally, I wouldn't say that is equal still.

[00:21:53] No, it's more equal. I mean, but for sure it's more equal. I found a video on YouTube. Um, there was quite recent talk that you did that you participated in at Spark Vienna, the art fair with Thomas Roucher, who is an ethics, AI specialist. And his interventions were really interesting to me because he kept talking about the menace

[00:22:19] on the notion of authorship, which for me, you know, in our generation, uh, we grew up with the conceptualists, with Roland Barthes and, you know, all of these authors who were kind of trying to negotiate or replace or shift perspectives on the idea of authorship. And now we're in a market that's that became really conservative in that sense.

[00:22:45] Again, we're looking at a lot of painting, we're looking at a lot of stuff on the wall, let's say, to, um, simplify things, which is obviously tied into authorship, which is obviously not, um, anathema in the in, in, in, let's say, avant garde art, but it is discussed in some ways. And I was surprised to see that that was kind of the point that was picked up by the ethical aspects of AI.

[00:23:15] I would be interested in knowing what your position on that and also your experience, because you actually have the experience of working with artists who are developing, um, aesthetic projects in, with those advanced technologies.

[00:23:31] Yes, I mean, uh, for the artists, for example, um, they use all these, uh, advanced technologies and, um, AI or all, all the other new technologies are tools. They use these, uh, advanced technologies as tools.

[00:23:50] And then the question about the authorship is more by, uh, outside as philosopher, as curator, as museum director, as general audience that ask to themselves, because you see like the AI, like devil, something that is an alien thing that can steal your creativity.

[00:24:16] But in general, the artists, uh, they integrate, uh, all these new technologies with their practice, with, with their artwork. It's more about us that we ask to our ourselves about something that we cannot handle because we don't know how, how to build an AI, what there is inside an AI.

[00:24:40] I mean, there are, there are some data that is kind of a big black hole of unknown things. It's true. Yeah, this is very true. Actually. I, I, I agree. The, the, there are two aspects, the ethical and the authorship. I think that a bit also difference.

[00:25:00] I mean, the, the, Thomas in his talk was pointing to the authorship part because he was very keen to say, you know, without human, there wouldn't be technology type of thing. Mm-hmm . So that let's bear it in mind that we, we created them. So somehow we need to control them or we will have the possibility to control them.

[00:25:27] So it was very time in the conversation back to, to the human. Um, I'm not super sure about that. I have to say personally. Um, and, uh, but it's true that, you know, the, the authorship is, is for sure is, is fluctuating. Um, to say the least, because our artists recognize also that there is a form of authorship in machine learning. Mm-hmm .

[00:25:57] They do recognize, I mean, they, I mean, to, to, we were discussing yesterday, uh, with our own, on the phone, was, unless, you know what it's the AI. What, what is it? It's like a combination between, I don't know, the, the yellow pages, photography and the steam engine. You know, something that really changed the way we live and the way we, we, we, we create things. We, for work or for personal life.

[00:26:23] So you cannot really deny there are some sort of authorship aspect on it because that's, it's ingrained in the mechanism. And I think good artists, good artists, artists who really study the matter and they know the technology, they kind of recognize that. Yeah. And they're fine. You know, they, they can, they can, they can write, they can code and they can somehow measure the way they want.

[00:26:48] And some of them, they don't want to measure because they're kind of enjoying the, the, the ride, so to speak. Yeah. And be surprised at what comes back and integrated that kind of in their own creative process, which is not only their process. It is, but it is not. So the, the, the authorship is fluctuating. It's to me, it's quite clear. And I don't think we need to be scared about that. No.

[00:27:16] And it's probably happened the same at the same time when photography was introduced 150 years ago. What's that? No, the book, the book. Oh, the book, the Gutenberg. Yes. The Gutenberg. Yeah. If you go back to that history, it's beautiful to read the texts. I think humans would no longer be able to focus on anything outside of the written word. They would lose memory. They would lose their relationship to experience.

[00:27:43] So we've always been afraid of technologies. And there's even a really interesting theorist, Wilhelm Flusser, who connected the book with the idea of technology. And it is the first phone, if you think about it. I mean, it's a very small device that you open and suddenly opens new worlds. I would, I would push it even further, Joanna. The book is the first version of the metaverse. Yeah. There we go. Okay. Okay. I have so many questions now.

[00:28:14] I have. Okay. Let's do this. Let's do that. Let's play the game. We have to now help our listeners because we need to help ourselves or help me, which is tell me what the metaverse is. You've already explained what AI is in a very surrealist Dali-like painting. How would you explain the metaverse?

[00:28:41] And then I have an example of an AI powered artwork that I experienced recently and that I would love to discuss with you. So metaverse, the platform is yours. Go ahead. You want to go first?

[00:28:58] I can explain something maybe about, maybe a bit provocative, but I would say that AI and the metaverse are both world building technologies, just like Dante built his divine comedy.

[00:29:17] I mean, the AI allows how to create new realities by simulating intelligence and can generate art, new process, interact with us and with feeling human. And that's it. I mean, maybe.

[00:29:35] I love that idea because we all know that a book is not a computer, but I think it talks a lot about the desire of worlding, of creating worlds that we have as humans and how scary the idea of literature and storytelling in images has always been to theorists.

[00:29:58] I mean, since Plato, since this idea that you can suddenly double and multiply what we know reality to be for philosophers is really scary. But for us, spectators or readers or whatever you want to call it, it is incredibly exciting. And so I love that relationship with Dante's Inferno or Heaven. I don't know. It can be. It's very true.

[00:30:23] I mean, the thing you said about doubling and multiplying, that's a good definition of the metaverse. And the book is precisely that. Don't do that to me. You're going to have to do that. No. No. Okay. Maybe the metaverse as a concept always stayed with us. It's just, it's the format of the metaverse that's changing. Yeah. You know, you have the cave and then you have the book, the printing press, you have the video, film, you know, film.

[00:30:52] It's kind of a bring you somewhere. If it is a good film. The metaverse is not really much different from that. It's a form of other reality that you can, you can be, you can do things that you cannot really do, practically speaking, in this room. Our room is always a very good advocate about the fact that our experiences, it will be through technology will be very, very individualized.

[00:31:22] They will be almost internal experiences as we progress. And the metaverse will. So, well, there is a lot of wearable devices that are coming up. Now there are this new trend about wearable device, wearable computer, wearable phone. Yeah. And they will expand your perceptions, basically.

[00:31:51] There is this new trend and all the experience with this wearable computer, phone, lens, whatever. Everyone is going to have their own experience, their own artwork inside this kind of metaverse. And with this new wearable computer, even with microchip that they are going to insert in your skin. We had some friends that they, they, they have this, they use it.

[00:32:21] It's going, I mean, it's happening now. They pay for the metro. Wait, wait, wait, wait. They pay for the metro. Yeah. No, when you go onto the subway or the tube or the metro, you just put your hand. Or your watch. It goes deep and it, oh. The watch is fine. I can live with that. But the hand, like a microchip under your skin. Yeah. Wow. Anyway. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah.

[00:32:48] We have this notion of the metaverse that is a bit of a like Second Life in this kind of a virtual platform. I mean, Second Life is a tiny version of a potential metaverse. So what is Second Life? A book is another one. Second Life, it was, I think it was from the nineties. It was a website basically where you could, you could log in, you could have an avatar, you could buy land and then you could buy properties. Yes.

[00:33:17] I remember actually the, an article from a newspaper. I remember actually the, an article from a newspaper. There was a Chinese lady who spent a million dollars to buy a plot of land on the metal. Naturally. On Second Life, I think. I did my first virtual exhibition there. Wow. You're joking. No. So I'll raise you in regards to the question of authorship.

[00:33:42] At the Serpentine North Gallery, a show called The Call by Holly Herndon and Matt Dryhurst. And it is a really interesting exhibition because you go into the space and you have these sculptures that are white and gold, like Christian church sculptures that don't look exactly like the ones you would find in churches.

[00:34:08] And the project is that they worked along with the digital specialized team at the Serpentine Gallery with different choirs across the UK to train the AI to sing in the same style as the choirs. And so the experiences you have is that you have two rooms that you go into. There's a microphone.

[00:34:36] Suddenly you're in either a funereal home or in the really unknown episode of Twin Peaks. So there's that microphone like solipsistically standing there. And so you walk towards it and you sing and the AI sings back to you through the learned experience of having the data of the choirs put into it, I guess. I don't know what the term would be.

[00:35:06] So the notion of skill of the artist and authorship has moved from creating the framework and no longer being the makers in terms of a sort of a craft. The craft is someone else's and they create the framework and bring the device, let's say, or the software or the advanced technology that will allow them to create that situation.

[00:35:36] Did you experience that show? Did you see it? What did you think of it? 18 choirs all across the UK from the south to the north. Something like that, yes. And they train, they basically ask them to sing one piece. Yes. The same piece for all the choirs. And basically they train machine learning to learn the style of the different choirs on that piece of music, basically.

[00:36:06] And I found it fascinating because it's a good example of how you can expand your work as a contemporary artist and creating also some, weirdly enough, creating some form of a community through these technological experiments, if you want.

[00:36:27] And also not only through the participants, but the audiences as well, because it's a very traditional, it's almost the static canons for that show. They're very traditional. Yes. You have the choir song that, you know, everyone recognize the codes are very known to the general audiences. At least in Europe. Yeah. At least in Europe. And you have the ornaments. They designed the ornaments and in 3D, they printed everything in 3D.

[00:36:56] Oh, so the sort of furniture slash structures. They use, there is also a beautiful etching of the child that you, when you, when you enter, you see that one. If I'm not mistaken, it's, they use their son to do that. So it's also, it's a very kind of a, almost a romantic type of approach where you, you create a piece of contemporary art, very, very rooted in what is a classical tradition.

[00:37:25] And, but you really went beyond the tradition and use super advanced technology and machine learning to re-experience that way in a, in a different way. And it's true. When you enter, you have the two rooms and the microphone and you sing or you say, or you, uh, whistle. Yeah. You produce any kind of sound. You produce any kind of sound and, and that responds back. And that also goes back into the database, by the way. Oh, does it?

[00:37:54] Oh, I didn't realize that. I sang the Beastie Boys, one of the Beastie Boys. Fantastic. That's, that's it. It's in there now. It's in there now. So, um, I'm interested in that project because, um, there's this, um, mixture of religious iconography. And particularly the child, you're very right in pointing that out because there is this philosopher in Portugal called Oxting da Silva.

[00:38:23] I mean, he passed away a long time ago and he had this idea that machines would liberate, um, humans and that they would end our, um, the, the, this, this condition of being slaves to the grind, if you will. And he also compared, uh, the, let's say, uh, Christian narrative. Let's put it that way.

[00:38:48] And he interpreted it in the way that now we, we are in the era of the child. We finally achieved. So it's a teleological, obviously relationship to time and history. So when you mentioned the child, I thought of him cause I did re I didn't notice that was the, the, this kind of the, the figure of the angels, let's say was kind of taken in that exhibition.

[00:39:09] And I, and I, and now that you mentioned it, I, I thought of that philosopher and the idea is that the child is the openness is the, um, absence of, um, demagogic ideologies of frontiers of, um, cruelty. So, yeah, I, I found that interesting that the iconography was, was present there.

[00:39:34] And I thought it might be a bit shocking for some people to take something so traditional and associated with AI, but it can also be convincing in the sense that it can tell you, listen, this can expand and can continue to exist in some other form. What I, what I, what I like about the project is also that they make the whole experience very, very accessible to anybody who steps into the gallery. Yes.

[00:40:01] Because you can even not read the thing, cannot really, you know, just experience the sound and the, and the iconography, the ornament, if you want, and still get a good experience, even without knowing the background and the, and the process of it. Yes. And that's something else I wanted to discuss with you because I, so I went with a friend and we, she reads the texts at the entrance of exhibitions.

[00:40:29] I don't always do that. I tend not to do it. And so I read the text with her and I just felt her cringe. Like she was, and she, she used that word. It's explained in the way that it puts AI at the front of the experience. And I would love you to tell me about that, about how to manage people's expectations, anxieties, excitement as well, in regards to these new technologies and exhibition spaces.

[00:40:55] And my friend was saying, AI is not that complicated. It's easy to understand. I was like, okay, well, you tell me what it is then. But you know, we all have an idea by now. I think she's quite right. We all kind of know what that's about. I mean, everyone's curious about it.

[00:41:43] But there is, what is the kind of thought that you're not just thinking about it. You know, what I mean, what is the kind of point of view that we're trying to, you know, to just think about it. where AI is very, very present

[00:42:10] and you're not in control of your data for sure. But how to mediate to an audience in art and cultural context? Sorry, it's a bit kind of an auto-celebration maybe, but I think it does to the curator. Go for it, yeah. I agree. I think there is a big curatorial gap still

[00:42:37] in the curator who works in staging, exhibition of contemporary art or modern art or classical art and curator who actually work with a digital and advanced technology because the two set of skills are not really bridged. So you have digital art curator, I have no clue how to create an interpretation plan for an exhibition or a non-disengagement plan

[00:43:07] or whatever. And conversely, museum curators, they don't even touch someone working with blockchain because that's a scam. So you have this kind of very two sort of side, let's say, of the curatorial practice. And the scholarship, so far at least, there are some people who can bridge.

[00:43:35] And we try to bridge very much as a curatorial duo. Like you say, you were saying, I mean, now you have to mediate with a lot of different things like AI, artists, curator. And our philosophy now is like about co-curating things, co-creating things, co-designing, co-experience.

[00:44:06] As curator, we try to bridge all these different aspects, mediating with different actors. The players, yeah, actors. Yeah. And that's because, even because we decide to be a duo, not to make less of our ego and to share more with the world. When you are in front of a laptop

[00:44:35] or you are in front of the entrance of a gallery, what's the journey? What do you get away from? At the end of it, what did you take away? And sometimes, well, sometimes, often is the very job of the curator. Imagine yourself in the very first viewer who comes in and you don't know who this person is. It could be a child. What do, where do you bring them? What do they do?

[00:45:05] What do they see? What do they perceive? What do they take away at the end? Because with new technologies, it's more fluid than you can choose. You can create your own path in general. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. There's also this idea, the aesthetic impact of these devices. I remember when I was curating the show of Ida Mablanck,

[00:45:34] who you showed, by the way, in Mostyn. She was this very minimalist artist, German artist based in Italy, who worked with sound. So she recorded the sound of the making of her drawings and we included that in the exhibition. And I suggested the sound showers. Everyone was appalled, including Irma herself. She was shocked. And I just said,

[00:46:04] but headsets are much worse. And that because we wanted the sound to be in the environment, but then we didn't want it to, you know, we were kind of talking about how to place the sound and how for it not to be cumbersome in the experience of other areas of the exhibition. And yeah, it was received with the utmost disgusts. And now you see them everywhere. There are some directional speakers now.

[00:46:33] They're quite amazing. They're super, almost invisible. And you have this kind of a cut through space where you hear the sound and then you step out and you don't hear it anymore. It's incredible. But I do love the showers. I love the idea of a sound shower, first of all. And I like them and I think they're interesting because the thing is that it takes us so much time to accept technologies. When I curate shows, you know, I don't hide the cables. If there's video, if there's any sound,

[00:47:03] it's part of the device. What would be your dream exhibition, an exhibition you haven't experienced that you would love to experience in the future? As a duo or individually? If you can answer as a duo, I'm going to be really impressed. I can reply for sure, Alfredo, if I'm wrong, it could be a mix between plants,

[00:47:33] mutual plants, or real plants, and music, for sure, because this is our passion and maybe mixing all these things together. Interesting. For sure, plant, poetry, and music. That's a perfect try. Fantastic. Love it. Beautiful. I love that. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming to the podcast. Do you have anything that you want to mention

[00:48:01] that you're involved in? Any projects? Any things that we should be on the lookout for? Maybe two things. At the Media Maginist Museum, talking about AI. You have to stop banging your table. That's the only thing you need to... Especially when you're advertising your projects. Do with me. Look at me. Look at me. Like this. I'm holding my hand. Sorry. Dear listeners, we're all holding our hands

[00:48:30] except for Alfredo, who keeps gesticulating. I'm Italian. And he still is. I was saying that at the Media Maginist Museum, we had an exhibition on the relationship between AI and investigative journalism, which is called ARNA. And it's very interdisciplinary. There are 20 artists, communication specialists, journalists, obviously, technologists.

[00:48:59] It's kind of an interesting take on what we knew, what we currently know and what we might not know about the future. So it's like a speculative part of it. That's why I'm... It's really, really interesting. With a lot of digital flows, but also a lot of objects, loans, actually, from museums. We are organized this massive congress in the Arab world and between Doha, Dubai,

[00:49:29] Sharjah, Abu Dhabi. And the topic will be gender empowerment. That is one of the top topics here in this country. And it will be the second week of April for like 100 curators, seven days, four cities. Pretty intense. Quite intense. Yeah. You are globetrotters, for sure. Yeah, well, thank you so much. Thank you for doing this. Thanks a lot, Joanna. It was a pleasure.

[00:49:59] Oh, likewise. And let's do this again somewhere in the metaverse in the future. Well, take care and thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thank you.