About
On November 15th and 16th at the Palazzo Poggi museum in Bologna we are hosting Prompting the real, two days of exhibits and events open to the public that explore multiple practices of co-creation between artists and AI. The works on view, spanning sculpture, performance, poetry, music, dance, photography, and audiovisual media, reflect radically different approaches: some artists recognise AI as a co-author, while others use interaction to expose its mechanisms of power and systems of control. For machines, a “prompt” is a command that directs generation; in this exhibition, the perspective is reversed. Prompting the Real becomes a creative and critical gesture through which artists question our present, and our evolving relationship with intelligent machines. The aim is not to predict what AI will be able to do, but to observe what it already does: its potential and its limits, the imaginaries it activates, the structures it reproduces, and the forms of power it conceals or unveils.
Beside figures already established in the international scene such as Jerry Galle (KASK School of Arts, Ghent), present at Ars Electronica, Wiels and Bozar; Roberto Pugliese, one of the paramount italian sound designers, awarded by Ars Electronica and Fundación Telefónica; and Damien Roach, London artist who exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Tate Modern and Swiss Institute of New York, the exhibition unites a new generation of artists and researchers experimenting with hybrid languages between art and science.
Among them Sarah Ciston, winner of the S+T+ARTS Grand Prize 2025 di Ars Electronica and author for MIT Press; Alexey Yurenev, professor at Columbia University and author of Seeing Against Seeing (2025); Michele Cremaschi, artist in man-machine interaction with works presented at Ars Electronica, CHI and DIS; and Silvia Galletti, choreographer and dancer active between the MilanOltre Festival, Festival Danza Estate and IN\VISIBLE Cities.
Closing off the journey, Francesco Frisari, author of the film The Prompt (produced with AIxIA and Rai Cinema) and the documentary Quale Allegria (Fantomatica, 2025); and the Katz–Rich–Morgenthau collective, authors of the generative poem I Am Code, interpreted by Werner Herzog, Golden Lion to the Carrier of the Venice Biennale 2025.
Prompting the real is a project by the University of Bologna – Department of Computer Science, Science and Engineering (DISI), Alma Mater Research Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, University Museum Network; curated by Sineglossa, in collaboration with High-Performance Computing, Big Data e Quantum Computing Research Centre (ICSC), National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), with the patronage of European Union – NextGenerationEU | Ministry of University and Research | Italia Domani | FAIR – Future Artificial Intelligence Research.
The event is part of The Next Real, the festival on arts, IA and society promoted by Sineglossa through exhibitions, workshops, talks and performances scattered through the city of Bologna.
Programme
PROMPTING THE REAL | Exhibition
The exhibition, designed in dialogue with the permanent collection of the Palazzo Poggi museum, can be visited on both days, according to the museum opening hours:
November 15 – 16, 2025, 10.00 – 18.00 (last access 30 minutes earlier)
Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Via Zamboni 33, Bologna
Free access
PROMPTING THE REAL | Public program
During the opening days of the exhibition, the public will be able to meet the artists, learning about and delving deeper into the works on display, will also be able to attend dance and music performances featuring AI, as well as the award ceremony of the ALMA AI VIDEO CONTEST 2025.
November 15 – 16, 2025, 10.00 – 18.00
Museo di Palazzo Poggi – Sala Ulisse, Via Zamboni 33, Bologna
Limited seats, booking required
ALMA AI VIDEO CONTEST 2025 | Award ceremony and showing
Saturday, 15th November at 10:00
Presentation of the contest, arrived at its second edition, that awards the six best short films on the impact of AI on society, produced by students of the University of Bologna.
Dear chatbot | Performance
Saturday, 15th November at 12:00, 17:30
Sunday, 16th November at 12:15, 16:00
An interactive performance by Silvia Galletti that unites dance and AI. On stage, performers and public dialogue with CHARLIE, a chatbot created for the project and mouthpiece of an algorithmic omniscience that practices exercises of choreographic composition.
Meet the artists: Jerry Galle (BE), Roberto Pugliese (IT) Alexey Yurenev (RU), Sarah Ciston (US) | Talk in inglese
Saturday, 15th November at 16:00
A talk to explore five works on view in the exhibition Prompting the Real: Water Clocks (Roberto Pugliese, international premiere), AI War Cloud Database (Sarah Ciston, Italian premiere), AI Messages and Deeptime (Jerry Galle, Italian premiere), and Silent Hero (Alexey Yurenev, Italian premiere).
Musical improv with AI | Talk & Performance
Sunday, 16th November at 11:00
Drawing on research findings from the FAIR-PNRR project on human creativity in immersive, multisensory environments, we present a talk and musical performance exploring the interaction between musicians, AI systems, and virtual reality technologies. The performance features an interaction between an AI system and two seasoned jazz improvisers. With researcher Aldo Gangemi, researchers Chiara Lucifora and Claudia Scorolli, and musicians Canio Coscia (sax), Francesco Milone (sax), and Sergio Mariotti (double bass).
Meet the artists: Silvia Galletti (IT), Michele Cremaschi (IT), Francesco Frisari (IT) | Talk in italiano
Sunday, 16th November at 16:45
Un incontro per conoscere e approfondire tre opere in mostra a Prompting the real: Macchine per dialoghi disobbedienti (Michele Cremaschi), Dear Chatbot (Silvia Galletti), The Prompt (Francesco Frisari).
Featured artists
The works function as experiential devices, sensory and cognitive totems that translate abstract concepts into tangible forms. In Cloud Gazing by Damien Roach, artificial intelligence looks at the sky but fails to recognise the shapes of clouds: where the human eye projects imagination, the algorithm is unable to assign meaning. Through an installation conceived specifically for the exhibition, Water Clocks, Roberto Pugliese transforms climate data into sound, making the slow advance of the global environmental crisis audible. With Macchine per dialoghi disobbedienti, Michele Cremaschi stages the relationship between human thought and machine-generated language through hybrid analogue-digital interfaces that restore body and friction to computational processes. On a performative level, Dear Chatbot by Silvia Galletti explores the choreographic potential of language models, while AI War Cloud Database by Sarah Ciston uncovers the unsettling ties between military infrastructures and everyday technologies. I Am Code explores the boundaries of untamed generative language and synthetic consciousness, themes that resonate dystopically in The Prompt, a short film by Francesco Frisari. The works of Jerry Galle, AI Messages and Deeptime, construct imaginary archives and future relics in a form of archaeological science fiction, while Silent Hero by Alexey Yurenev uses artificial intelligence as a tool to probe fragmented family memories and to dismantle the heroic rhetoric of war.
Francesco Frisari
Roberto Pugliese
Michele Cremaschi
Silvia Galletti
Jerry Galle
Alexey Yurenev
Damien Roach
Sarah Ciston
Credits
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