CTRL/SHIFT - 13 06 2026 PARTHENOPE STAGE - PRESENTAZIONE PREMIO VISIONS 2026

Hello everyone. For those who don't know, one of the features of our format is trying to create commissions between contemporary art and new technologies. This is a format called Visions, which is its second edition. Well, the first year we had an exhibition, this year we organized an award. Um, what I'd like to do with this short presentation is to give you an idea of ​​the copy of this award, so in quotation marks of the outline of what we, um, wanted to communicate and were interested in starting a discussion.

Okay, okay, I come from the tech world, I'm a person who talks like I eat and eats very badly, so prepare yourselves. Okay . So, first of all, why this award? What is the idea behind this award? We work as deeptech at the edge of new technologies.

by necessity we are often exposed to changes much earlier than many other people, let's say, people perhaps in common quotation marks, let's say. Well, in particular, when we see things like AI and other similar things, I don't know, we feel that probably the cultural discourse is stagnating a bit, in the sense that we see a lot of issues that seem crucial to us and relatively few people talk about them. In particular, we are very focused as Europeans on the European Union and we think that the European Union is in huge need of a new cultural perspective and as builders, as people who are used to creating products, to making things, we said: "Okay, let's try to do something about it". Ok, this is the European situation at the moment, as you can see. Um, let's go in order.

So, this is the situation in the US right now. Well, as far as we're concerned, we think it's in total decline. That's a still from about I think 2012, if not 2013, of Donald Trump on WWE and essentially, you looked at this still in 2013 and thought, there's no chance this guy is going to become president of the United States. Next thing you know, we are where we are. Okay.

Russia, well, we all know, we are exposed to the situation, to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China, many people say, "Well, China is our best ally, we can try to have a discussion with them." In reality, when you look at the details of the Chinese situation, you realize that this is not the case at all. We are a commercial competitor of China and China has no intention of creating prospects with us. Eh , okay.

Let's move on to the other two things that are the ones we deal with most, which are artificial intelligence and the crisis of values, in quotation marks. So, what we thought was that the best way to help create a discussion, to do empowerment, was to do it directly. Well, we are people who obviously work in deeptech, which is a, so to speak, capitalist environment, and so we think the best way we can do it is by creating a monetary prize. Again, we are not artists, we are not curators. what we are, we are builders and this is what we can do and we decided to create a prize that is quite, so to speak, courageous in terms of copy, at least that's what some of the people who have helped us on this journey have said.

Ok, what's the point? The point is that this award is inspired by the Sea Peoples who in 3000, about 3000 years ago managed to wipe out the Bronze Age, which was a system that had been working perfectly for more than 3000 years in the space of 75 years. This is a very famous bas-relief, if I'm not mistaken, of an Egyptian statue of Ramses chasing away, so to speak, the sea peoples. Okay? The Copy, for those who have read it, can be found on the site, it is written on purpose in the S of Nick Land, who is a very controversial person, he is a person with neo-reactionary ideas, but who also saw very far, he created the term, in quotation marks accelerationism.

This is crucial because we see a person who, on a moral level, we can probably safely define as abject, who, however, has enormous technological foresight and somehow understands very well where the world is going. So, again it was written in this style in a provocative manner. The important thing is that these ideas, which were totally niche until a few years ago, are now spreading like wildfire, especially among the US technocratic elite. Um, Elon Musk, Peter Teel, especially Jeff Bezos, they're all people who read this stuff and take it into account. The problem is that they are also very powerful people, obviously, so this gives a weight to these ideas that is, well, remarkable and, as far as I'm concerned, also frightening in some ways.

What's the point? The point is, if we see disinformation on Twitter, propaganda, etc., etc., the current trajectory is somehow that the European Union can transform from this to this. Personally, this idea scares me to the bone, to the point of being beastly, so what can I do, what can we do as people who, in quotation marks, are not powerful, are nobody.

We believe that the solution to this problem is not economic, it is not the European Union that must come down from above with an ambitious investment plan, etc. etc. We think the problem is cultural in some way. If we want to preserve our democratic values, which are values ​​I personally believe in very strongly, we need to start a new conversation. We are facing the new peoples of the sea, artificial intelligences, Pluto lobbies that are literally assaulting us.

We see that there is no particular political discourse about the European Union at the moment, and we believe that what we should do is try to talk about this as much as possible and try to answer this question: what does it mean to be European today? What does it mean to be human, perhaps in the face of this technological upheaval? Again, a lot of people criticized us , they said maybe this format is too restrictive, but we had an incredible participation of incredibly talented artists and this made us think that okay, maybe there's a thirst for this kind of discussion, maybe having an award, a way of organizing things that isn't, so to speak, aligned with what are perhaps the dynamics that one expects to be the right thing to do. And so we started like this and once again we think it is still possible to save our values, to save what Europe represents, at least for me. And again, my message with this talk is that we have created a commission in this environment between artists and builders, so I urge everyone to look around, try to exchange opinions and talk to as many people as possible, to be brave, to subvert the patterns as much as possible, and to take action, that's all.

That's all. Thank you. Well, Fabri, thanks for this introduction. So, what we have is precisely what we are trying to do and to somehow bring into dialogue these two worlds that seem so distant, almost at opposite ends, right? this, this world of deeptech that Fabrizio and all the guys here represent and this world of contemporary art in which we and the others you will hear talking about now move in various forms and let's say we are a dialogue in which we deeply believe.

It's clearly all very much in progress, in the sense that what we're trying to do is extremely experimental and therefore with the pros and cons of things that are indeed experimental and yet let's say we believe in some way that the only possibility we have to somehow evolve is precisely trying to also clash with some—with some difficulties, with differences in thought, with—let's say— with situations that gradually occur and evolve. Well, as Fabrizio was saying, this is the first edition of this award and we will now present the winners to you. Um, and we were extremely happy with the response we had to this award, because it was a response from, let's say, the applications we received were not only very numerous, but all of them were of very high quality. And so this actually clearly made us very happy and it also gives us an idea of ​​the fact that sometimes, as Fabrizio was saying, making things a little more complicated , let's say, makes a sort of selection beforehand, so we avoided applications that we knew from the outset couldn't be taken into consideration, and indeed, with the jury, um, that I'll introduce to you shortly, even if they're not all physically present, we found ourselves having to discuss every project because there was no project that, regardless, wasn't valid, wasn't right, was out of line, right? And so this thing actually doesn't always happen for those of us who hang around in contemporary art .

well, let's say that for the awards, applications arrive from all over the world and often, well, we don't even say that they can't even be taken into consideration, and instead we say that we found ourselves in the exact opposite situation. Well, the jury we involved was made up of two curators and a collector and two people, precisely, the two curators are not present in the room, but they are Marco Bassan of Spazio Taverna and Daniela Zangrando who is the director of a museum in Belluno, an independent museum and while here in the room we have Fabia Govino who is one of the major Italian and Neapolitan collectors. certainly and so let's say clearly together with Fabrizio and Gianluca that clearly they were, how can I say, the least versed in contemporary art, but let 's say they gave us this opportunity and that clearly the vision of the prize is theirs. Um, okay , let's say, without going into too much detail, I'd just like Fabio, if you want to say just a few words to us and then we'll pass the floor to the winners of the award that we'll announce to you shortly. So, first of all, thank you for the invitation and it gave me, how can I say, enormous pleasure to participate and also because the winning artists who applied are artists I respect very much and so for me it was, how can I say, a reunion in this application with Andrea Bolognino who is an artist from the Neapolitan area and therefore my collection which has very deep roots in Naples, in the artists of the area and it was, how can I say, a very pleasant and welcome meeting.

I've been following Andrea's practice , I think, since the very beginning, so finding him on one side as a participant, a candidate artist, and me on the jury was truly an extraordinary meeting. Meanwhile, with Numero Cromatico, artists I respect greatly, we've known each other for a few years, and we've actually been talking to them for some time about doing an important project here in Naples, about working on an important project here in Naples, and we hope we can do it, right? So even having, so to speak, this opportunity for a new meeting thanks to the BN award was a reason to resume some discussions that had been put aside a bit. I want to follow up on Fabrizio's earlier point to tell you what's really going on. I'm a financial advisor, so I deal with finance and art has always been my traveling companion , so I ca n't divide my things.

Here, they are two very parallel tracks, they often come closer, through, how can I say, even my work I try to share this aspect with the people I work with, with the people I do business with, which for me, I repeat, is not just a passion, but a reason for meaning. my real personal research and I connect to his speech because obviously when talking about technology we talk about transformations, changes, innovation and I tried, how to say, to make a connection with what art, collecting has been for me and I think it has been a profound change. I had, like, this encounter, let's say, this big one from when I was quite young, so when you're young you're, like, full of certainties, right? Full of eh instead art started to raise doubts in me , so going around a bit eh galleries, I talk about contemporary art, because art has always fascinated me . And obviously, I come from such a beautiful, important city, full of art, so I began, so to speak, my first scholastic experiences when I was n't going to school, especially visiting the excavations of Pompeii, because I come from that Vesuvian area, so for me it was easy, you know, to pleasantly distract myself.

But going back to what you were saying before, Fabrizio, I think that contemporary art has brought about a big change in me. So, when we talk, and I often do this with my clients, when we talk about art as an investment, I always say that the first investment we need to pay attention to is precisely a cultural one, right? What you were saying before and it is perhaps the only chance to truly change, right? because technologies help us, they improve us, but they can often also worsen our way of living and understanding the meaning of life. Art, on the other hand, poses you, I repeat, questions, reflections, it gives you the possibility to see new visions, no, also referring to your beautiful project.

And so yeah, that's what I wanted to say. I am extremely grateful for this invitation to participate and I am delighted that the first edition of this award goes to Numero Chromatica, who are then guys who perhaps in my opinion best unite everything that is the world we are talking about and then Andrea's project was also particularly fascinating. I met Andrea's work the first time I met him, I have many media in my collection , but where I struggle is painting and drawing, because I really don't like them very much. And when I first came across Andrea's drawing , so to speak, it was a pleasant discovery because it was truly of the highest quality and then the quality was, so to speak, confirmed by the invitation to the exhibition at Capodimonte, no, in that period and so congratulations. First of all, thank you, because, well, I'm Dionigi, but I'm speaking here on behalf of the whole chromatic number.

Now I'll also tell you a little about who we are. Um, but let 's say I want to tell you the background to our participation in this award that we, let's say, didn't know about. And the thing that then pushed us to participate was—now I'm making a play on words because the prize is called Visions, but it was precisely the vision that this prize, in some way, even though linked to the connection with new technologies, brought to a, let's say, profound level, that of thinking about the Mediterranean, of thinking about such important contemporary issues, as well as, let's say, thoughts that come from the world of philosophy. Um, and all this is not a given, eh, because yes, chromatic number, I'll tell you now, he is an artist who also works through the use of new technologies, but that is not the focal point. The focal point is to try to bring to the world a vision, a modality, a cultural, artistic posture that is then expressed through the means that contemporaneity gives us, makes available to us.

Um, now here's a little picture. The chromatic number is precisely—to simplify, I could say—a collective, but we call it an organism. an organism because we are not singularities who carry out our own research and who then together, let's say, carry out common activities, but we are an artist in which all the parts in some way contribute to the function of this project, of this organism. We are artists, we have, let's say, different backgrounds in the world of art, communication, neuroscience, because, precisely, when we founded the group in 2011 we thought that, let's say, we started from this assumption, art as we were experiencing it, we were indeed experiencing it in that What was happening in the art system of the time, we were still even students, was not restrictive for us, it was emptied of the principles that for us were founding of artistic construction, that is, those of theoretical research before practice and so let's say we tried to activate first of all a debate, a debate through the theories of art. So trying to bring back to the center the idea of ​​artistic thought before artistic production in a context in which artistic production and therefore the market has become the primary language of art.

So artists unfortunately respond first and foremost to the language of the market which somehow allows artists to move forward. When I talk about the market, I'm not just talking about the buying and selling of works of art, but also about building paths based on CVs, residencies, and a whole series of tools that the art market puts in place. in this, in this dynamic, it takes away, no, it takes away the freedom of artists to build a unique path and puts them in the position of having to respond to the demands of the art system. I would then, let's say , decline into what I was saying before, the market, right? So not just an economic market, but also a market of cultural thought, and so neuroscience at the time seemed like philosophy to us, but neuroscience specifically seemed to us, let's say, the disciplines that could best give us insight into how we approach reality, works of art, aesthetic experience, and our relationship with the world.

Because today, as we know, all disciplines, most disciplines, are actually becoming neuro, right? Because we go and try to understand what's going on in our brain. And so chromatic number, as I was saying, is an artist. In recent years we have worked on various modalities, let's say, expressive, increasingly on large installations. Over time, this has become increasingly central, but the foundation, the foundations on which we work are mainly two: the activation of the public's creativity, I would say to the detriment of the artist's artistic creativity, that is, we try to create the conditions whereby everyone can, let's say, somehow activate their own creativity, which is always different from person to person and always different in people at different moments in their existence.

a work when from a single message, from our point of view it becomes an operation that wants to edify in some way, to say things directly about the world and that is not what interests us. Let's say it's plausible, in the art world, it happens, but for us the work must be an open instrument. And we have done this and we do it in different ways, we do it by trying to activate the audience, let's say works that activate the audience from a physical point of view, from a psychological point of view, from a synesthetic point of view. Many of the things we see behind me are environments, environments in which here in the images we only see, let's say, what the object itself is, but usually there are sounds, there are smells, there are other modes of sensory activation. And they are works that also speak and try to speak in very different contexts, from artistic contexts in the direct sense, but also works that speak to the city.

What you see is an image of an installation we did in a newsstand in Rome and this is also an important thing, that is, we are also trying to defuse that idea of ​​the work of art that must speak exclusively to a specialist audience, that is, the work of art. One of the questions we ask ourselves today is whether the work of art is in some way what we have imagined and constructed in our imagination up until now. That is, to say, I ask a provocative question, the work of art tomorrow will still be a um the artists of tomorrow will still have to question the production of images in a moment in which we have lived and are living an overproduction of images. Actually, it's a completely new world compared to what it was 20 years ago. That is, the world is changing, and so the context, the idea, the image, the concept of a work of art is still what we've been discussing up until now, and so we have different mediums.

You see, we work with images, we work with text in this sense, and then we get to what was also the object of reflection for the work submitted for this award. Since 2018, we've been working with generative algorithms, and we've been working with generative algorithms not to aestheticize technology, not because time-lapse chronology is necessary to use today, but because technology, at that time and still is today, because we're continuing to use it, is a tool that needs to be challenged. to problematize, to analyze and understand how that technology that gives us so many possibilities, let's say, even in artistic production, can be seen with different eyes than the one that big tech, contemporary culture places before us. M there is that, but we can use it in a different way. Precisely, when we started using generative algorithms, we had, let's say, now I say it in this context, a nefarious act, but let's say to simplify, we aired them, we did some tuning, we tried to make something that was born for a specific function do something non-functional and so we have, let's say, three different creative artificial intelligences that generate texts, generate poems, love poems, epitaph poems, poems about death, poems about the future.

of humanity and therefore the texts you see in the images here come from these our poetic anthologies, not these. This is a work on the dream that we brought to various cities, including Rome and Bologna. And so you see, there are different ways, I'll put some images to help you understand, urban context, what could be advertising in this case becomes something else, murals, this is Via della Conciliazione in Rome, um and also, let's say, collaborations and this comes back to what we were saying before. From our point of view, artworks shouldn't just fit into contexts that we, let's say, imagine as artistic, but they must increasingly fit into contexts that we don't see as strictly artistic, contexts that are different from the city, but also into collaborations with major brands in contexts that, let's say, take into account other themes, design, architecture, etc. This is a project we did for this year's Fuorisalone, and it was one of the main installations of the Fuorisalone, and this was an oracle.

The idea was that this object would speak to the public, spark a reflection within the individual, but then with the possibility of, let's say, look, there are these texts, people could take one and donate it to the community. this idea of ​​activating a generative mechanism in the public. Installations of various kinds, I continue, public contexts, performances. These are this is a show with Etro from last year, another Etro show from this year. Um, I'm coming to the project that we gave this name to, they hear exchange healed, which translated is they hear, they share, they produce no.

and it was kind of the reflection from which it all started, that is, we have been working for some time on some, let's say, for 2 years now, artificial intelligences that talk to each other. These are simple experiments that can also be done at home, let's say, with some chatbots that we have available. Ours is a slightly more complex project, but if anyone wants to try it, they can. And when we started doing this thing, we saw that now it's a fairly simple thing to see that artificial intelligences try to, um, accommodate the interlocutor, right? And so we tried in every way to push them against each other.

So we built artificial intelligences that start from different assumptions and enter into discussion and we did it on fundamental themes for the human being, but also on art, on the relationship with the world, etc., as we did with poems on themes that are fundamental to the human being, death, love, etc. And so we have built these conversations that start and lead us in a direction that is that of reflection on our being human. Because if we say we don't take into consideration one thing - I'll continue - and this is something fundamental for us , first of all that art must not look at technologies as something to be aestheticized, right? as something to be made beautiful, to be made beautiful as they would say in school, but it must make perceptible both its material conditions and its blind spots, as well as the problems that this thing activates, but not because it is evil or because it is good, but because art must ask questions, it must help us ask questions, as Fabio rightly said , right?

Art is the most beautiful thing it does for the public, but also for ourselves, it raises questions. And the other thing that is important for us, yes, for us, is that showing the limits puts us in a position to operate a mechanism of change that also brings about change in society and also in those who use those technologies. Here, in fact, there were some images that reveal a little about what the installation will be like, but not in a definitive way. And at the end I had a quick video to show you, um because what we are what we will do that will then be presented is a sort of outline of a series of conversations that we have set up . Yes, you can go.

Yes, it goes. while as I close, um, of all these conversations, there are about six conversations that will build a sort of swarm, which was one of the concepts of the prize of um thoughts that yes come from chatbots, but in reality represent what the chatbot has learned from us and therefore one of the things we need to reflect on, which perhaps this project can help us reflect on is that we must never think of artificial intelligence as something that, let's say, builds its own thoughts. It probably will soon, who knows, but it is the instrument that comes, that has been trained and is trained day by day with our thoughts, with what we are, with what we have been. And so if our, let's say, our culture goes in one direction, this thing learns what we are and therefore the direction we can give is what art can do: try to imagine and construct alternative directions that in some way do not just give an idea that others then have to follow. This is a fundamental thing for me and I'll end with this, that is, artists don't see something before others or scientists or builders, right?

they see something before others and others follow. From my point of view, from our point of view, artists, before others, ask themselves questions about reality, before others, they open doors, and together we can and must provide answers to those doors. So, thanks and bye everyone. Thank you for inviting me and I thank Fabrizio, Fabiola, Fabio for the beautiful words earlier and him um and everyone here who came, it makes me very happy. And well, I'll just say a few words about what I'm telling you.

Yes, okay. well, on those that represent the research I'm carrying out at the moment. I am currently pursuing a doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples and am working on a project I have called Pictorial Hyper Objects for an eclectic expansion of landscape painting that focuses on the genre of landscape painting, trying to distance itself from what has always been perceived as scenery painting, a painting primarily dedicated to the observation of the landscape around us from an extreme distance and mainly with the aim of objectifying that surrounding environment and to the point of creating the concept of nature as something totally distant from us and outside of city life. eh dichotomy that in my opinion today is totally eh makes no sense eh since the soils on which we walk have been contaminated, since the cities eh have eh developed naturally, there is no other way to say it. and so I connect to the concept of hyperobject coined by the philosopher Timothy Morton to try to expand painting as something that represents an example of how visual art in particular can be the representation of extended relational fields without any hierarchy and which focus on perceptual differences because in the end the goal is always to share, to talk to each other, um, and which however bring into play the presence of all other living beings.

So I focus mainly on cartography and microscopy and on how and to what extent the microorganisms that will also fill this classroom where where we are all here together um they tend to also shape our idea of ​​landscape and for I went back clearly. Okay. And for this reason I'm working with organic and inorganic matter and I'm trying to put them together in order to create micro-worlds, because I believe that every artist can be compared or can have a practice, let's say, comparable to that of scientists, like the guys before were very inspired by neuroscience, we just heard. I am extremely fascinated by biology and by the possibility that art has of creating microworlds, of giving shape to the imagination and studying one's own imagination in such a way as to create this world that speaks of itself. And so we come in a few words to the project I called Ghosts from the Inner Sea.

This project stems mainly from the study I'm doing together with the guys from the microbiology laboratory, Federico II, who focus mainly on microalgae, they have one of the largest microalgae archives in Europe called ACUF, I like to call it, which unfortunately are not very well known. Um, together with them I discovered how algae and especially microalgae are the very first, one of the very first microorganisms that existed and which then gave rise to life on Earth, since microalgae clearly originate in the deep sea, but then they are the first unicellular and multicellular organisms that manage to colonize the mainland and then become plants. etc. etc. In the unicellular reproduction mechanism of some microalgae, this phenomenon can be observed, which is called gosell and which represents the first level of this case that I imagined producing for this prize and which is composed of a resinous plastic membrane, ahem, and which tends to translate what this unicellular reproduction mechanism is.

What happens? In some microalgae, when the process of mitosis occurs, the cell doubles, triples, quadruples, etc. etc. and the mother cell does not disappear completely, but remains as a backdrop, precisely, to return to the previous term in the background which serves both as protection for the continuous growth of the spores which can be called autospores or zoospores depending on the type of algae and will then serve for the morphological identification of this species and therefore represents a real mother. That's why some scientists have called her Mother Ghost, Mother Gosell, etc.

etc. Um, because it serves as protection, but it also serves as a distorting screen of reality, as mothers in general sometimes represent, the idea of mother, that is, something that from the moment we are born serves to make us reflect, to make us recognize our first emotions, but which then, in the development of life, could also begin to distort our identity and therefore the whole project is precisely dedicated to the creation, damn it, excuse me, of identity and it develops in this way. There will be, there should be, in the event that this work is done, three different levels that will constitute this display case. I don't know how to speak anymore, sorry. Um, the first in depth is another connection with my passion for biology and it is an experiment that is done especially in the laboratory in Naples, but it has been done for many years by many biologists and it is called precisely the Vinograzi column.

The Vinograzzi column is an experiment that serves to study how the soil and especially the nutrients and microorganisms that inhabit the soil exchange nutrients with each other and, er, aesthetically it is very interesting because, depending on the type of soil and the nutrients within it, different chromatic bands can develop and therefore this is precisely the plastic representation of how the landscape is something that feeds on infinite relationships and which never die because a Vinograzzi column can last for hundreds of years. There's one in the Amsterdam museum, fantastic, huge, it's been there for 100 years, so, so precisely for this reason. So the first level is the connection to the Earth itself, to microalgae, to microorganisms and to the fact that the sea peoples were born precisely in those conditions. The second level, on the other hand, damn it! The second level, on the other hand, is, um, a more personal level, both from a collective point of view and from an individual one, since, in the idea of ​​the project, there should be an LCD screen that will show a video, a self-generating video, which I will build with the intervention of software, clearly self-generating artificial intelligence, and which will be composed partly of my drawing practice, of an archive of drawings that has been going on for a very long time now, and for the second part, of those who are, if you like, culturally the true peoples of the sea, so those who first colonized the Mediterranean, and who then used the art of mosaic as their main visual art decoration, and not by chance, mosaic, because the tiles that make up a mosaic are precisely a metaphor, a perfect metaphor for the cultural exchange of peoples that has developed within the Mediterranean and then arrived, precisely, No, to then arrive, this is an example of how the two languages ​​could merge together and then arrive at the last layer, at what I was explaining.

first, which is also inspired by diatoms, which are other microscopic organisms that inhabit the ocean depths and which serve as the ultimate filter of our, if you like, construction of identity and which would then represent this, let's say, the final version of this work. Um, I wo n't go into more detail and I was very pleased. A thousand thanks. Bravo!