Last week ended the COLORED exhibition, Pierre-Alain Giraud’s immersive experience hosted at MEET – Digital Culture Center in Milan which opened on Feb. 3.
Another great event, which reiterates the success of this venue, unique in Italy, created with the aim of “reducing the Italian digital divide and supporting the maturation of a new awareness with respect to technology as a resource for people’s creativity and the welfare of the whole society“.
We caught up with Maria Grazia Mattei, president of MEET and artistic curator of their immersive program, to discover her story and that of the Center she created and to find out more about the choices that have made this facility an example of an immersive venue capable of drawing international attention.
MEET at the crossroad of innovative trajectories
MARIA GRAZIA MATTEI – MEET, our international center for digital culture, was born around the theme of immersivity, the conceptual core on which we developed this physical and reflective space. Therefore, MEET is more than a venue where digital works of art can be shown. It is a place devoted to cultural, digital and narrative immersivity in its various aspects and modalities.
I started hanging out in the digital world in the early 1980s, so I was able to closely follow all the technological and language evolution that has accompanied the last forty years.
I call myself a “field researcher”-there were already festivals in Italy at the time, but I immediately started traveling the world, starting with Ars Electronica, in Linz, in 1988, and then following SIGGRAPH and Imagina, organized by the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) in Paris, for more than two decades.
I wanted to discover new expressive potentials, as well as new communicative and artistic directions, because art for me is to be found in the creative force even before than in the art market itself. I looked for cues, ideas, achievements, works, artists that would allow me to chart a new path on these issues. I wanted to delve into the subject by following the various events and major international festivals and then trying to bring what I was discovering to Italy, a country that at the time was a step behind the rest of the world.
In this regard, I also worked with the Biennale Arte and the Biennale Cinema in Venice and brought the first virtual set to our territory. All this is to say that I have a trained sensitivity to digital language in general, and the idea from the beginning was to find a way to connect all these discoveries and these worlds that I had encountered. MEET became a means to that.
With my colleagues we analyze possible international trajectories and themes, and from there we define our programming, always focusing on one thing: sharing knowledge of the new world that is currently being drawn and is taking shape around us.
We are not interested in discussing VR, XR, AR specifically. Rather we want to show new ways of building stories and engaging the audience. We are really talking about digital experience as a way to approach storytelling and immersivity
Maria Grazia Mattei
So on the one hand we present these directions of development to our audiences, and on the other hand we open them up to reflection, in a framework that gives space, of course, to Italian realities too, but within an international context, which is absolutely fundamental today.
Development of MEET as an immersive media
M. G. M. – In 2014 I first discussed the MEET idea with the Cariplo Foundation, and from the very beginning it was clear that it was necessary to create a structure in Italy that would work constantly to accelerate knowledge and facilitate change in our country-not only a technological change, however. First and foremost a cultural one.
In 2014 there were very few of us dealing with these issues, and the cultural digital divide was very wide. I wanted a space that was consistent with its content. I was not interested in a beautiful museum, with digital paintings on the walls and monitors to view them. With Carlo Ratti, who designed the spaces, we immediately thought of a place that was itself an immersive media, a place to set the senses and experientiality in motion.
I wanted a venue that would single-handedly take you inside this new atmosphere related to a topic, that of digital culture, still to be debated, to be metabolized, but strongly connected to how society is evolving, to the direction we are taking as humanity.
So, the concept came at the time, but then, between Covid, renovation and other factors, we were able to concretely launch MEET in 2011, placing it, among other things, in an early 20th-century building that we “forced” to transform into a contemporary communicative device.
A place that memorializes the past but looks to the future
M. G. M. – So, MEET is a place of experience: experience of content, of ideas, of meeting people – hence the name, MEET, encounter. But MEET is also a place of history, with a strong heart: our archive, called “The Roots of the New.” Inside it is all the material that I have collected in my years of exploration and research, which I believe is fundamental to the understanding that the theme of contemporaneity should be looked at in relation to its evolution, to a past, to a history.
We have recently obtained recognition as a regional museum, and it is very important for me to open up more and more of this public service to young people, to schools, to scholars, just to show how history interfaces with what is new.
Next to the archive, we have a whole series of devices that aim to recreate immersivity of content around the user. At MEET, I invite artists who can provoke people’s imaginations, artists who try with their works to open our minds to the change taking place in our world.
Already when you walk in the door, you begin to find yourself in the midst of content, even ancient content, that no one has ever seen. Then you slowly move into the immersive room, with projections everywhere, all over the walls. We also have a program of virtual reality productions, but we are not interested in discussing VR, XR, AR specifically. Rather we want to show new ways of building stories and engaging the audience. We are really talking about digital experience as a way to approach storytelling and immersivity. These are concepts that have been discussed by very important artists, such as Jeffrey Shaw, the father of interactivity, whom we had the opportunity to host just at MEET as part of our “Meet the Media Guru” live meetings.
Artists, on the other hand, have this force, this creative power that is really able to chart new paths, to recognize in a new technology possible uses that even those who thought of that technology had not guessed. This is precisely why the lens through which I have always looked at and understood the world is artistic research. In the 1990s I met people like Jeffrey, like Maurice Benayoun and so many others who were already following different narrative trajectories: for them, two-dimensional cinema was already outdated.
But I’m also thinking of one of our research groups, Studio Azzurro, which has been looking beyond the two-dimensional narrative screen since 1980. These are all experiences that over the years have been able to benefit from advancing technologies-the improvement of headsets, projectors, motion capture, etc. – and that over time have led to the construction of an environment that increasingly involves sensory immersion and interaction.
Artists, on the other hand, have this force, this creative power that is really able to chart new paths, to recognize in a new technology possible uses that even those who thought of that technology had not guessed.
Maria Grazia Mattei
Audiences between the “Wow” effect and understanding new narrative forms
M. G. M. – Over the years I have also been able to see an increase in interest on the part of the public around the communicative and expressive innovations generated by new digital technologies-first the audience made up of experts, then people who were just curious about new things.
Despite this, I believe that the audience has not really fully grasped their potential. The “wow” effect is undoubtedly there: just think of how many people went to see the immersive exhibition on Van Gogh, which represents the first level of mass access to this immersive digital universe.
But the public’s relationship with the new dimensions of digital artistic expression is not yet fully developed. However, space has been made for the idea that there is more than just the experience of the movie theater: as much as it too represents an immersive and narrative space, you are beginning to understand that immersivity can involve your whole body and all your senses, which are activated by an experience that you never forget.
If you combine this general activation with stories like Noire (Colored) (a/n: read XRMust’s interview with Pierre-Alain Giraud of Novaya at this link), that has an impressive emotional power, that’s when this kind of experiences can really create a short circuit between body, brain and experience itself that results in actual changes in people’s heads.
It’s something I see firsthand here at MEET: when users come in to see a work like this, without really knowing what it’s going to be, not only they leave the room amazed. They are literally captivated by the experience.
To reflect on the offer of immersive content today
M. G. M. – Unfortunately, there are not many spaces that offer this kind of experiences. Some present events on the topic, but with products closer to the world of marketing and communication rather than new authorial and narrative experiences. And it is not solely a matter of money. It is more a matter of insights into how to do things and where to find content.
The real bet, I believe, is precisely this: I may have the space of MEET, but I have a hard time finding content that is more than digitized art to be enjoyed passively and that represents true immersive digital creativity.
When I go to see the Immersive Exhibition on Klimt or Van Gogh I am definitely inside a story, physically immersed in it, above, below, on all sides. Companies who build these shows do it with great professional skill.
What is missing, however, is that added creative and artistic value that we instead try to offer in our immersive space, showing experiences that go beyond projected multimedia on a wall and make you take a quantum leap into completely different communicative patterns.
But, as I said, content like that is not that widespread, there is no catalog, there is no real distribution, and even if immersive spaces do exist (I’m thinking of the Atelier des Lumières in Paris), the wow effect for works like that wears off very quickly.
If you combine this general activation (of the audience) with stories like Noire (Colored), that has an impressive emotional power, that’s when this kind of experiences can really create a short circuit between body, brain and experience itself that results in actual changes in people’s heads.
Maria Grazia Mattei
If we instead pushed the research in the direction of new narrative, immersive and even interactive forms, extraordinary things would come out that would not age immediately. I am thinking, for example, of the work Renaissance Dreams that Refik Anadol brought to MEET in 2020 and which has now become a permanent work in our immersive room: it still has a unique emotional power!
Refik worked with GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) algorithms, hence artificial intelligence from the first era. However, his creation rests on a unique conceptual framework, on a sensibility that, in capturing the memory of a past art, that of the Renaissance, so strongly connected with science, was able to transform it into a new language that promises new Renaissance Dreams.
The viewer enters a dimension that is historical, but at the same time is contemporary and looks to the future. And I call this fresco my Sistine Chapel, a Sistine Chapel that is dynamic, beautiful, which I have been looking at every day since it came to us, even if only for a minute a day. Renaissance Dreams is a work of art that stands the test of time and has storytelling specifically created to be immersive, consistent with the medium it uses and able to bring people to really experience the story it tells.
Exploring content before technologies: the fluidity of MEET
I don’t have a fixed physical space, but because MEET is immersive by its nature, the space is also shaped consistently to the principles of digital culture and therefore absolutely fluidly.
Maria Grazia Mattei
M. G. M. – Our program, for which I am artistic curator, is ongoing and exploratory: we touch all technologies but explore them in terms of content and not the technological component.
Soon Rasa Smitee & Raitis Smits’ Atmospheric Forest Exhibition, adapted for viewing with headsets, will start: we are reorganizing our VR Corner to bring it to the ground floor of MEET where we will develop a reflection on the theme of nature and technology.
This is possible because our VR Corner is not a fixed lounge in which to view virtual reality productions, but it is composed of three mobile cubes: by sitting on them you can have the experience with the headset, but the advantage is that we can easily move them depending on the current exhibition in the area of MEET that best suits the event and the need we have. We can put them in the lounge, near the theater, upstairs. I don’t have a fixed physical space, but because MEET is immersive by its nature, the space is also shaped consistently to the principles of digital culture and therefore absolutely fluidly. From this point of view, MEET has also become a bit of a model, and I was recently invited to NUMIX LAB in Brussels precisely to present the concept.
Also with a view to a constantly evolving and content-connected space, I fought to make sure that our immersive room was also a place to host artists and live meetings. Again, Gilles Jobin was with us with Cosmogony (2022) and we held the event in the theater area, where there is a giant screen, in a kind of telematic happening. So even the theater is not just a theater, just as the VR corner is not just a virtual reality room. What remains is the content and the context.
The success of Noire (Colored) at MEET
M. G. M. – Noire by Pierre-Alain Giraud was presented at MEET on February 3, and the exhibition closed yesterday: it was a great success with the public! For the past month, every day, every slot (lasting one hour) has always been booked! The people who visited MEET were very impressed: not only by the story behind this piece, but by the experience itself. Indeed, it is a work with powerful immersive storytelling and created by an exceptional team.
The biggest difficulty we encountered in planning the experience was economic/technological. They came with numerous tools to set it up, and our immersive room for a month has been dedicated to just that piece. It is also an experience than can be visited by no more than ten people at a time. All this implies expensive costs for production but also expensive costs for distribution, yet I am determined and I definitely want to propose artistic pieces like this one. I really think we are on the right track and MEET will continue to offer original, digital and immersive experiences, like this one.
However, it is certainly important to find a way to make choices of this kind sustainable, and in my opinion this is the real problem that needs to be addressed today: on these new forms of expression there is still not enough investment from agencies, from associations, from the government, both for those who have to produce and for those who have to host these works.
To show a film I need a projector and it will always be just that. But with immersive technologies I need a not inconsiderable technological parterre, which always have to be updated, and a very large number of people working on staging. Fortunately there are places like festivals or like the PHI Centre in Montréal that make fruition possible … but still, they remain almost unique experiences that are difficult to replicate in other contexts.
We need to start from the the creation of a real network: improve and strengthen it, so that we can find the right push and directions to make operations like this more feasible.
If you missed your chance to see NOIRE (which sold out), fear not! MEET has numerous events planned between now and the next few months.
Let us mention for the moment the new exhibition in collaboration with Le Cube Garges titled Forever Young: The Dorian Gray Syndrome hosted at MEET from Thursday, March 14 until Sunday, June 2, 2024.
Then, on Wednesday, April 3, at 6:30 p.m., we will have a chance to see 21-22 CHINA and 21-22 USA by director Thierry Loa, whom we met at GIFF Festival in 2023.
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