FOOD DATA DIGESTION is an artistic research and production project born out of the collaboration between Play with Food and Sineglossa and some questions: if artificial intelligences are machines created to reason, express themselves and act like human beings, then how does an AI feed itself? What does it eat? The answer we gave ourselves is that the nourishment of a machine is data, but then the questions multiplied: how does the machine react to a certain nourishment? Is there such a thing as toxic data? Can an artificial intelligence be intolerant?
From these questions, which aim to stimulate an unsurprising reflection on our relationship with AI, first came And we thought, a work by the multidisciplinary artist Roberto Fassone; then Metabolo, an interactive performance by Valerie Tameu, and finally Nexus 23-24, the first dramaturgy written by an AI and a group of playwrights, with director Mariano Dammacco.
The training programme on AI and Artificial Intelligence
The artworks came from the project
And we thought, by Roberto Fassone
And we thought, by Roberto Fassone and AI LAI, produced after an artistic residency open to the public and a masterclass aimed at young artists, experiments with an unconventional use of technology to explore the potential of altered perceptions of reality.
The work stems from the idea of investigating the phenomenon of hallucination, a scientific term used in natural language processing to define the production, by machines, of contents that do not correspond to reality, over-interpretations perceived as distortions that do not produce the effect for which the AI was programmed.
These lysergic visions, produced by neural networks, do not seem far removed from those of human beings, the result of altered perceptions of real phenomena. To correct them is to steer a machine (or man) towards efficiency. Analysing these ‘errors’ means, on the other hand, activating a relationship with artificial intelligences that also allows us to better understand ourselves and our intelligence, to question ourselves on the future of collaboration between man and artificial intelligence.
Metabolo, by Valerie Tameu
From the 8 project works resulting from the masterclass on Body, Art and AI, Sineglossa selected Bolo, by Valerie Tameu, to curate its production. Bolo is a format that lies between immersive experience and imaginative practice, a research on the transformative process inherent in the digestive pathway, from an ecosystemic and interrelated perspective. I
f an artificial intelligence could imagine the journey of a bolus, in its infinite possibilities of transformation and existence, what would it say? What would the term ‘digestion’ mean?
AI, fed with a vast dataset of information, not neutral but culturally given, turns into a privileged observatory to shed light on the biases and patterns of thought it learns from our cultural context. References in this first study include Vandana Singh‘s planet-bodies and Octavia Butler‘s corporal communities, the questions posed by David Cronenberg in Crimes of the Future, and Ursula Le Guin‘s subversive recipes.
Thanks to the collaboration with creative technologist Michele Cremaschi and the research pool of the Human Technology Lab of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Bolo turned into Metabolo: a techno-spiritual ritual inspired by the ecofeminist positions of Hannah Landecker (‘Multiple Metabolisms. From capitalism to daily digestion’) and Nnedi Okorafor Laguna’s science fiction and Afrofuturist novel (Zona42, 2017), and which uses machine learning models fed by data from underwater webcams for a post-anthropocentric dance.
Related artworks
Nexus 23-24, the AI for playwright writing
How is a co-creation process between a playwright and an artificial intelligence? What will be the product of a machine trained, with a targeted choice of datasets, to produce texts for the theatre? The third stage of the FOOD DATA DIGESTION project starts from these questions and from the desire of Mariano Dammacco, director and author of the Ubu Prize 2020-21 for the best new playwright text, to explore the potential of post-anthropocenic collective playwriting.
The result is the first text for Italian theatre ever produced by a collaboration of this nature, a multi-voice dialogue on the possible coexistence of different intelligences on Planet Earth.
Events
Residenza artistica And We Thought
Aprile 2022
Libreria Bodoni – Spazio B, Torino
Roberto Fassone incontra il pubblico per raccogliere gli input da dare in pasto ad Ai Lai: suggerendo il titolo di una canzone o di un brano, Ai Lai produce una storia.
Presentazione e prototipizzazione And We Thought
Giugno 2022
Combo, Torino
And We Thought accoglie chi vuole interagire con AI LAI: le parole fornite dalla macchina diventano lo spunto per ideare video, performance, poster e installazioni
Masterclass “Corpo, Arte e intelligenza artificiale”
Giugno 2022
Combo, Torino
A partire da And We Thought i docenti Roberto Fassone, artista visivo, Andrea Zaninello, creative technologist, e Federico Bomba, artscience designer, guidano un processo di prototipazione per formare i partecipanti sui possibili utilizzi dell’IA nello spettacolo dal vivo.
And We Thought I Exhibition
Settembre 2022
Ars Electronica, Linz
Roberto Fassone presenta le prime produzioni create in collaborazione con l’intelligenza artificiale Ai Lai
Bolo Exhibition
8 Ottobre 2022
Combo, Torino
Valerie Tameu presenta l’esperienza immersiva di Bolo, il progetto selezionato dalla Masterclass di giugno 2022
And We Thought III Exhibition
Febbraio 2023
Art City, Bologna
Roberto Fassone presenta tre cortometraggi creati in collaborazione con l’intelligenza artificiale Ai Lai
Workshop per drammaturgia
Febbraio 2023
Libera Università di Bolzano
Mariano Dammacco e il gruppo Human Technology Lab dell’Università di Bolzano avviano il progetto di scrittura drammaturgica Nexus 23-24 | FOOD DATA DIGESTION
Masterclass “Il corpo delle parole”
Giugno 2023
Circolo dei Lettori, Torino
Il regista e Premio Ubu 2020-2021 Mariano Dammacco conduce un laboratorio intensivo di drammaturgia aperto a 10 persone utilizzando i testi provenienti dal progetto di ricerca drammaturgica Nexus 23-24 | FOOD DATA DIGESTION
Presentazione Nexus 23-24 + talk “Il lavoro degli artisti all’epoca di ChatGPT”
17 Giugno 2023
Circolo dei Lettori, Torino
Mariano Dammacco e il gruppo di partecipanti della masterclass su teatro e IA porta in scena i testi di Nexus 23-24.
Metabolo Exhibition
6 – 10 Settembre 2023
Ars Electronica Festival 2023, Postcity, Linz, Austria
Valerie Tameu presenta l’installazione e la performance di Metabolo
Metabolo site-specific
3 Novembre 2023
Lavanderia a Vapore, Collegno, Torino, Italia
Valerie Tameu presenta una pratica collettiva ispirata alla performance di Metabolo
Credits
FOOD DATA DIGESTION is a research and production process combining art and Artificial Intelligence produced and curated by Sineglossa.
And We Thought is a project by Ai Lai, Roberto Fassone and Led Zeppelin, produced and curated by Sineglossa, in collaboration with Play with Food and Alchemilla, promoted by Istituzione Bologna Musei /MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, supported by Compagnia Di San Paolo. The dataset used for the training of Ai Lai comes from Shroomery.org, available in Creative Commons.
FOOD DATA DIGESTION is supported by the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation as part of the call for proposals “ART~WAVES. For creativity, from idea to scene” which looks at the consolidation of the creative identity of territories through the support of programming in the field of performing arts and contemporary creative production, combining research, production, supply and distribution in an ecosystem logic to strengthen the artistic vocations of the territory.
