Accessibility Tools

Search
Close this search box.
Search
Close this search box.

Argo at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa

Art and Technology
October 4, 2024
visual mostra Argo Palazzo ducale genova

Share on

Cosa trovi in questa news

What is Argo

Argo is an exhibition project by artist Paolo Bufalini. Argo is the result of the application of generative artificial intelligence tools to a series of datasets consisting of the digitalisation of the artist’s family albums, dating from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Once the datasets were built up, the artist used them to train text-to-image generative models capable of reproducing the likenesses of the people represented in the albums. 

The family albums become the occasion for a deeper reflection on archives and their power to open windows into parallel worlds through dizzying knowledge that redefines the linearity of time. The exhibited syntographies show the artist’s family members at different ages of their lives, posing as sleepers. The ambiguity of sleep, in which the subject is both present and absent, reflects the more general indeterminacy of the image and recalls the dreamlike dimension behind the whole project.

From its title, Argo is intended as a journey – a journey through time and into the artist’s personal history, but also a journey into the technological unconscious, the space containing data that cannot be directly interpreted (latent space in computer science) on which generative models process images through associations precluded to humans. The result is the generation of an augmented past, a photographically credible representation of something that has not been, but could have been, in an ambiguous overlap between factual and imaged.  

Customising generative models with biographical and emotionally affected materials, Bufalini makes a poetic re-appropriation of the technological tool, submitting those same materials to the associative unpredictability of statistical correlations. The sculpture that completes the exhibition displays a similar idea of latency on a more process-oriented level, presenting ampoules containing a stirring acid solution in which second-hand gold jewellery has been dissolved. The chemical process places gold in a condition of ambiguous presence – it is physically present but invisible and reversible in its original state – and opens up a hypothetical dimension of new generative possibilities.

Program

The exhibit will open to the public Saturday 9 November in the Spazio Aperto room of Palazzo Ducale (Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 9, Genoa) according to the following timetable:

OPENING

 9 November at 11.30
 Ducale Spazio Aperto, Genoa

PROGRAM

 9 November – 5 December, from Tuesdayto Sunday, from 10 am to 7 pm
Ducale Spazio Aperto, Genoa

From 12 to 15 December, Argo will be staged in Bologna at the Fondazione Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia (National Archive of Family Film), the first in Italy entirely dedicated to the preservation, restoration and valorisation of Italy’s private, family, amateur, industrial and experimental film heritage (Istituto Storico Parri, Via Sant’Isaia 20, Bologna). The exhibition is part of The Next Real | Art, AI & Artificial Intelligence, curated by Sineglossa in Bologna from September to June 2025 and realised with the contribution of Regione Emilia Romagna.  

Credits

Curated and produced by

In collaboration with

Supported by

Read also