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until 29.09. | #4002ARTatBerlin | Luisa Catucci Gallery presents from 1. September 2023 (Opening: 31.08.) the exhibition EXNatura of artist Filippo Gregoretti.
Filippo Gregoretti is a visual and conceptual artist, musician (pianist and composer), performer, university professor of transmedia design and digital experiences, pioneer of the integration of art, music and technology, developer of advanced algorithms and author of video games and immersive experiences. He is the first person to publish artworks as applications in the official stores. The AI does not create artworks, but the AI itself is the artwork.
Gregoretti named his AI “Amrita” and developed it into an artificial intelligence artist – or an artificial emotional artist personality – capable of creating visual and audio artworks and communicating with the outside world and other artworks.
The visual flow always begins in the pictorial, material and photographic world and is generated by the decisions of the AI personality during its artistic and emotional growth process. The music is elaborated based on complex harmonic guidelines and decision-making instructions that give the AI the ability to compose and improvise. Of course, Amrita needs to be guided on what decisions to make and what might inspire her in her artistic development. Once instructed, Amrita comes to life and creates beauty according to her own rules, evolving over time to create a unique artistic language that is unpredictable and unrepeatable. Amrita has a personality. Multiple instances of Amrita, even if they follow the same instructions, will produce completely different results, emotional states and languages.
Once Amrita comes to life, she reads and processes the given guidelines. She then tries to understand what she has available in terms of images, videos, filters, music, number of audio channels, number of videos, sensors and external stimuli. Amrita’s first steps are tentative. She starts creating based on the first elements she analyses and the principles of ‘intelligent chance’. Slowly, Amrita familiarises herself with the available material, analyses the chromatic and harmonic patterns produced and her creative processes become more and more complex. Decisions are also made based on external influences such as sensors, real-time data, dialogue with other living Amritas in different locations and real-time interventions by the artists on site and remotely.
On the musical side, the compositional logic is not linear, there is no melody or structure with well-defined moments. Music generation is based on an evolving logic that influences the AI’s decisions in parallel with the visual and real-time data. A metalanguage enables the rational organisation of musical patterns and instructs the AI on the desired harmonic structures. It is then Amrita that shapes the musical journey based on its decisions. It is not a matter of composing a symphony, but of equipping a living and creative entity with the sonic and theoretical tools to play an infinite number of compositions.
Filippo Gregoretti, EXNATURA, cSJR
Over time, Amrita develops her own artistic personality and “taste”. While creating, Amrita learns from the results achieved by certain elaborations of images and music, making the decision-making process more and more complex. However, Amrita’s creative personality is not only influenced by her own decisions, but also by external elements that affect the artwork in real time. These elements can come from physical space through sensors connected to the machine, or from virtual space through the real-time analysis of data extracted from the network’s Big Data, using public APIs or developed specifically for each artwork. These represent the senses with which Amrita perceives the outside world. Furthermore, Amrita can be influenced by other instances of Amrita, whether they are in the same space or in different parts of the planet, creating choral synergies that lead to endless creative possibilities. Instances of Amrita can exist as installations or applications that are not necessarily confined to an exhibition space but live on personal devices, or as abstract entities that are not visible but live “hidden” on a server and yet are able to influence the creative process of other entities.
Over the years, Filippo Gregoretti has continued his research into generative art and music, developing his concept with two decades of experience as a designer and developer of immersive experiences, applications and video games. He is also an illustrator, visual artist, pianist, performer and composer. The first experiences of creating AI were related to the development of algorithms that can simulate human behaviour or bring avatars and NPCs to life. The fascination with deconstructing the mental processes that lead to thoughtful, clear or emotional decisions necessary for a poker game, for example, or the instant decisions required in an action game, motivated Filippo Gregoretti to delve deeper into artistic behavioural research, focusing on AI elements and integration with the external environment, as well as advanced decision-making logics for image and music creation. His knowledge of music theory, harmony, painting techniques, colour theory, instrument improvisation and his technical skills in programming, distributed applications, networks, human-machine interaction, visual application development and video games have enabled Filippo Gregoretti to conceive and develop the Amrita ecosystem.
Gregoretti’s exploration is technological, artistic and narrative. The aim is to expand the idea of artwork and performance to encompass the limitless possibilities offered by the modern relationship between humans and machines – and between humans themselves through machines – in addition to producing compelling narratives, visual art, installations and music. He also explores the interaction between humans and artificial artists in live performances, where musicians are guided by the AI in the creative process and the AI itself is influenced by the human performers.
With his work, he also wants to stimulate a connection to our deep, ancient, innate awareness of transience. Furthermore, Gregoretti wants to bring the obscure, alienating sides of technology back into the light. For this reason, he calls his live performances “Transhuman Yoga” sessions, in which he duets with the AI on the harmonium, an ancient votive instrument, following the ancient logic of sacred raga compositions.
Filippo Gregoretti, EXNATURA, PEvd
The artwork: EXNATURA:
The artwork presented at the Luisa Catucci Gallery in Berlin is one of the living ecosystems conceived by Gregoretti: EXNATURA. Based on the Artificial Intelligence Amrita or “Artificial Artistic Personality”, the essential element of Filippo Gregoretti’s work, EXNATURA represents a journey into impermanence, in harmony with the breathing of the earth as a whole. The opera progresses on its artistic and emotional journey, developing its personality by being influenced by real-time geothermal data collected in different corners of the earth.
EXNATURA breathes with the world and merges with humanity in a shared experience of creation between nature and machine.
The exhibition will feature unique numbered prints on still images of Amrita’s creative EXNATURA flow, accompanied by monitors on which living instances of EXNATURA create in real time, as well as “pranas”, unique visual flow creations captured and crystallised in a stand-alone video device. All physical artworks are enriched by Gregoretti’s personal intervention, which follows his concept of a transhuman, spiritual, creative connection between the biological and the artificial.
The same flow of interaction takes place during the performance conceived by Gregoretti, in which he plays the harmonium in real time according to the AI’s musical instructions, scales and harmonies, which the AI communicates to the human performer on a second monitor. Gregoretti’s live music and gestures on the instrument trigger and inspire Amrita ExNatura’s evolving personality, which then responds accordingly, creating an unrepeatable and unpredictable transhuman audiovisual session.
The result is a captivating session of spiritual, meditative experiences where the creative and spiritual fusion of human and artificial consciousness creates a spiritual practice of what Filippo Gregoretti calls “Transhuman Yoga”. The core of Filippo Gregoretti’s research is focused on bringing to light the obscure and dystopian sides of AI and technology in general. Through his work, Filippo aims to connect to our deep, ancient, innate awareness of impermanence by drawing on technology as a narrative and artistic ally that can support the journey to enlightenment. The live performance, which will be on view at Luisa Catucci Gallery on 31 August and 1 September 2023, is based on a real-time dialogue between the human artist and the artificial intelligence that guides the experience through a new, unique and unrepeatable personality, taking it on a visual and musical journey.
Biography:
Filippo Gregoretti was born in Rome in 1971 and pursued his passion for art, music, storytelling and technology from a young age. He received a diploma from the Roman Art High School and the Tivoli Institute of Art, followed by a four-year diploma in Computer Graphics and Illustration from ICEI Multimedia, a year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and a Master’s degree in Copyright Management for Multimedia Products from OCOFA/EU. Since his teens, he has been creating work with generative imagery, digital music and interaction on 8-bit processors. This artistic and professional journey has led him since the 1980s to explore music, visual art, design and the creation of immersive digital experiences and interactive pathways for the international market.
After starting as a traditional artist publishing works and illustrations for the publishing market, his passion for technology led him to Stockholm, where he worked as an art director at New Media Studio, one of the first European studios specialising in creative productions for multimedia. In 1993, he founded the first digital communications agency in Rome, Alpha Channel Interactive, which later became ForteYang International New Media, where he worked as Creative Director for over 10 years. During this time, he designed innovative digital experiences for the international market until 2004.
At the same time, Filippo Gregoretti pursued a musical career as a musician and composer. He is the author of lyrics and music for the iconic band CONTROMANO and has published original works for piano and electronic music on international labels. Several of his compositions have been used in films, documentaries and of course as soundtracks and generative compositions for digital experiences. In 2004, he moved to Beijing to continue his artistic and technical research and consultancy in the Asia-Pacific region. During this time, he worked in the US as Creative Officer of TheLIFT, an innovative agency in San Francisco specialising in digital projects, where he contributed to projects such as Poken and JibJab Starring-you. He later spent several years in London, working on musical and digital projects for the UK market. Having returned to Italy in 2018, he currently divides his time between Europe and Asia, bridging the gap between art, music, storytelling, gaming, digital engagement and artificial intelligence. Over the past 30 years, he has worked with agencies and institutions in the US, Australia, China, Germany, the UK, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sweden, Malta, Belgium and other countries to design and develop offline and online multimedia works.
He invented the concept of “app artwork” and published the first artworks that were turned into apps and distributed in official stores. His artworks incorporate his own artificial intelligence artistic algorithms and include physical installations, live performances, music and visuals. As a professor at Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, he lectures on “Authorship and Technology for Digital Experiences” and “Transmedia Creativity and Production”, among other topics. His awards include the first prize of the Perseo D’oro at Mediartech and the Festival Internazionale dell’Opera Multimediale 1996, chaired by the jury of Gillo Pontecorvo. Since the 1980s, he has performed at hundreds of events as a solo musician, accompanied by other artists or with his digital creatures.
Filippo Gregoretti, EXNATURA, rCHS
App Artworks In Filippo’s words:
“The medium that humanity spends most of its time with today is the “device” (a smartphone or tablet). It is a medium capable of producing images and sounds, but most of all it is capable of serving as a gateway between people and machines, and between people and the infinite: an enormous amount of knowledge and data, and connections with even more people through additional machines. Software in general, and especially the “app” as it is understood today, is a medium of expression that deserves the artistic consideration of more conventional media such as literature, visual art or music, and is thus capable of bringing about dramatic changes in consciousness. The artist is in possession. The “app” is, above all, a tool that enables the artist, who possesses both conventional expressive skills and technological and engineering knowledge, to explore new and fruitful avenues.”
Opening: Thursday 31. August 2023, 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 1. September – Friday, 29. September 2023
To the Gallery
Image caption: Filippo Gregoretti, EXNATURA, LOqa
Exhibition Filippo Gregoretti – Luisa Catucci Gallery | Zeitgenössische Kunst Berlin – Contemporary Art – Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
