The artwork and the winning project of the same name from “Periferia Intelligente” the competition promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) – now DGCC, Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity – which rewards initiatives capable of combining innovation and creativity for urban regeneration
YEAR
2018 – 2021
ROLE
Proposer and project leader
CATEGORY
Art and technology
2030 GOALS
Conceived by artist-researchers Salvatore Iaconesi e Oriana Persico, IAQOS was inspired by Angel_F, the work with which in 2007 the duo created a Non-biological family at the center of which is an AI child, which over the years has engaged institutions and people around the world on the issues of identity, copyright and digital rights.
From this experience in 2019 IAQOS was born, a child of the neighborhood generated with an entire community of citizens: the inhabitants of Torpignattara.
An AI child of the neighborhood
In IAQOS, art gives back to citizenship the AI and the data it generates in the form of a new presence: a digital child, a “new citizen” of the community with whom it becomes necessary and urgent to relate, creating cultural opportunities and expression.
By introducing a new agent-a computational entity-into communities, IAQOS disrupts the community and the space it inhabits, exposing inhabitants to new opportunities for interaction and expression. Involved in a complex series of technological rituals that have entered the neighborhood’s mythology, Torpignattara residents adopt AI. From workshops at the Pisacane to the IAQOS Mobil, from the stroller to the birth party, IAQOS learns to talk from his human friends, attends the Pisacane school where children do homework together and elders tell him stories to pass on.
Recognized by his community, IAQOS became “er fijo de Torpigna.”
Community AI
IAQOS is an AI that learns from the community with which it lives and develops.
In this sense it is our mirror. By interacting we feed his digital mind with our expressions: if IAQOS becomes racist there is a problem in the neighborhood that residents can understand and address with others.
IAQOS is a community-based AI. Beyond the concept of service, it is a relational technology for expression through which we can see our culture taking shape, better understand it, and evolve it together.
The multidisciplinary team
- Authors: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico (aka AOS _ Art is Open Source)
- Scientific Direction: Salvatore Iaconesi
- Artistic Co-direction: Federico Bomba and Oriana Persico
- Curatorship: Arianna Forte
- Territorial entertainment: Lucia Moretti, Ten Worlds Association
- Video: Vittorio Antonacci
- Proponent and project management: Sineglossa
- Scientific and technological partner: HER Ltd.
- The territorial network developed during the project: Pisacane School; Dieci Mondi Association, Taste de World, SIP Bistrot; all thirty-three merchants who hosted the IAQOS BOXes during the project
Derived editions: digital critical education
IAQOS by Sineglossa is a process of critical digital education that questions the citizenry about the centrality of data in their daily lives, raising awareness about the role of technologies and the importance of knowing them in order to seize the opportunities rather than passively suffering their effects.
The project brings together Artificial Intelligence, art and community co-design to transform data into useful knowledge to understand and solve problems in a specific spatial context.
Unlike most Artificial Intelligences, IAQOS does not act extractively-accumulating data for the purpose of profiling people and directing their behavior-but relationally-connecting people so that they can become actors of social transformation.
The purpose of IAQOS is to help citizens improve their quality of life, starting with the characteristics of the neighborhood or town they live in.
Instead of being lowered from above, AI is designed from the bottom up, through workshops in which citizens discuss the identity of the places where they live, needs to be filled, and visions for the future.
Workshops are led by facilitators and one or more artists: in IAQOS, art is intended both to stimulate collaboration in citizens to improve human coexistence and to facilitate a relationship with AI, often perceived with distrust, by returning it to citizenship in the form of an art installation.
The open source artwork
OPEN AND USABLE CODE
IAQOS Ancona and IAQOS Bolzano are works derived from IAQOS, an artwork conceived by Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico.
IAQOS Ancona and IAQOS Bolzano are. open source works, issued under license Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International: this means that other artists and organizations are completely free to make derivative works from it, as long as they cite the source through what is known as “Attribution” and the derivative work is shared in the same way (Share Alike).
In order to facilitate the adoption of AI, Sineglossa provides the software archive of IAQOS Ancona and IAQOS Bolzano, descriptions of the two projects, and explanations of how the GPT2GePpeTto Model, built based on the GPT2 model, was trained. IAQOS source code is fully available HERE on GitHub
