Multiple co-creation practices between artists and artificial intelligence will serve as tangible tools to <\/b>explore the relationship between humanity and intelligent machines, offering new awareness to the <\/b>public. Alongside the exhibition, a series of events will provide the opportunity to discover the projects <\/b>together with their creators.<\/b><\/p>\n
Sculpture, performance, poetry, music, dance, video, and photography come together to reveal how\u2014and to what extent\u2014reality is already shaped by artificial intelligence. This is the aim of the exhibition “Prompting the Real – Artists-AI <\/b>co-creation<\/b>“, hosted on Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 November at the Museum of Palazzo Poggi, under the patronage of the FAIR Foundation, hub of the PNRR extended partnership dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence research.<\/p>\n
Organized by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DISI), the Alma Mater Research Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (ALMA-AI), and the University of Bologna Museum System, in collaboration with the National Research Centre for HPC, Big Data and Quantum Computing (ICSC) and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), the exhibition investigates what AI already does: its potential<\/b> and its limits<\/b>, the imaginaries it activates, the structures it replicates, and the forms of power it conceals or reveals.<\/p>\n
The exhibition<\/b>, curated by Sineglossa\u2014an organization active in the production of artistic projects and events exploring the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence\u2014engages in dialogue with the Museum\u2019s permanent collection<\/b>, through works that transform abstract concepts into tangible forms, acting as experiential devices and sensory totems. In this context, artificial intelligence becomes a tool to reinterpret cultural heritage<\/b>, fostering a dialogue between the history of science<\/b> and possible futures<\/b>.<\/p>\n
If for machines a prompt<\/i> is a command, here the perspective is reversed: “prompting the real” becomes a creative and critical act through which artists explore the relationship between humanity and artificial <\/b>intelligence<\/b>. Through art, AI moves beyond abstraction and reveals its complex and concrete connection with society.<\/p>\n
“AI War Cloud Database<\/b>” by Sarah Ciston (winner of the STARTS Prize 2025) unveils military infrastructures and automated decision-making systems, reminding us that every algorithm is a political act embedded within networks of power, technology, and material consequences.<\/p>\n
At the same time, “Silent Hero<\/b>” by Alexey Yurenev uses artificial intelligence to explore fragmented family memories and dismantle the heroic rhetoric of war: a generative neural network trained on thousands of soldiers\u2019 portraits produces distorted and unsettling human faces, making visible what has been excluded from official narratives.<\/p>\n
In “Water Clocks<\/b>“, Roberto Pugliese translates climate change data, processed through CINECA\u2019s supercomputing, into sound and fluid motion, making the slow progression of the global environmental crisis audible. Sound evolves with the data, allowing us to perceive transformations that normally escape our senses.<\/p>\n
Poetry also finds space in the vocal installation “I Am Code<\/b>” by Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, and Simon Rich. A form of generative writing that, through the voice of Werner Herzog (Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement \u2013 Venice Biennale 2025), explores the limits of language and questions the boundary between structure and meaning, between human authorship and algorithmic process.<\/p>\n
In the work “Cloud Gazing<\/b>” by Damien Roach, object recognition algorithms enter a state of cognitive overload as they attempt to interpret ever-changing clouds, ultimately \u201cseeing\u201d what remains invisible to the human eye. What latent potential can emerge by hacking the computational systems that shape our reality, challenging their intended use, implicit policies, and power structures?<\/p>\n
Michele Cremaschi explores the relationship between language and machines with “Macchine per dialoghi disobbedienti<\/b>“: Isotta<\/i>, a vintage typewriter connected to a digital interface simulating Twitter, and Alessia<\/i>, which integrates a Large Language Model into a 1960s reel-to-reel recorder, stage an ironic and precise encounter between artificial intelligence and obsolete media.<\/p>\n
Equally ironic is “Dear Chatbot<\/b>“, the performance by Silvia Galletti in which choreography unfolds in real time through interaction between performer, audience, and Charlie, a chatbot that becomes guide, obstacle, and provocation.<\/p>\n
“The Prompt<\/b>“, an animated short film written and directed by Francesco Frisari<\/b>, portrays an anticipated apocalypse, revealing the paradox of a technology that reproduces our own fears: we imagined dystopian futures in which machines would dominate us, and we trained them with those very narratives. Now they can only replicate them. Produced by Fantomatica.ai, with the support of AIxIA and Rai Cinema, “The Prompt” leads viewers into an uncanny valley where AI figures appear both spectral and digital, exploring the theme of the \u201cghost in the machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jerry Galle, meanwhile, constructs imagined archives and future artifacts in a form of archaeological science fiction with “AI Messages<\/b>” and “Deeptime<\/b>“: objects out of time that do not document the past but suggest possible futures. Not archives of what has been, but traces of alternative realities where memory becomes not reconstruction, but fabrication. Alongside the exhibition, over the two days, there will also be a series of events open to all<\/b> (registration required, subject to availability): the award ceremony and screening of the winning videos of the ALMA-AI Video Contest 2025<\/b>, created by the university\u2019s student community (Saturday at 10:00); Dear Chatbot<\/b>, Silvia Galletti\u2019s performance involving audience interaction with Charlie, a chatbot trained in choreographic composition (Saturday at 12:00 and 17:30, Sunday at 12:15 and 16:00); artist talks<\/b> (Saturday at 16:00 and Sunday at 16:45); and musical improvisation with AI<\/b>, a talk followed by a performance exploring the interaction between music, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality, based on FAIR-PNRR research on human creativity in immersive and multisensory environments, featuring researcher Aldo Gangemi, researchers Chiara Lucifora and Claudia Scorolli from the University of Bologna, and musicians Canio Coscia, Francesco Milone, and Sergio Mariotti (Sunday at 11:00).<\/p>\n