IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital and Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, in collaboration with ETT SpA, return to the 12th edition of MIA Milan Image Art Fair with an innovative and novel implementation of the NEFFIE Metaverse
From Thursday 23 to Sunday 26 March, the Research Centre for Advanced Technologies in Health and Well-Being of the IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital and ICONE, the European Research Centre of History and Theory of Image of Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, in collaboration with ETT SpA, SCAI Group company leader in Italy in the design of visual and immersive experiences for museums and exhibitions, will be present at the 12th edition of MIA Milan Image Art Fair with an innovative and novel implementation of the NEFFIE Metaverse.
In the course of 2022, the Metaverse was experienced by more than 500 people in the context of the first presentations1 of the NEFFIE Neuroaesthetic Photography project as a virtual exhibition space for so-called Cognitive Photographs (COFFIE): particular images produced by a technologically revisited photo booth that, through specific biosensors and an Artificial Intelligence algorithm, re-processes our emotional-cognitive responses in front of an image, giving rise to the Virtual Exhibition in Real Time as a contemporary re-actualisation of Franco Vaccari’s iconic wall in his Exhibition in Real Time no. 4: Leave a photographic sign of your passage on these walls, presented at the 1972 Venice International Art Biennale. The Cognitive Photographs produced during the four Real-Time Virtual Exhibitions in 2022 will be both physically displayed on the walls of the NEFFIE stand and digitally interconnected in its new Metaverse, this year implemented as a dynamic and immersive environment thanks to the collaboration with ETT. Specifically, the virtual environment designed by ETT, a leading company in Digital Innovation part of the SCAI Group, on the Spatial.io platform allows an immersive enjoyment of NEFFIE’s digital artworks, enriched by the possibility of interacting in real time with other visitors through their avatars: up to 50 users can move freely among the works, communicating with each other through the activation of microphones and webcams. Accessible via a link from one’s own desktop, IOS or Android smartphone, or Virtual Reality visor, the new Metaverse is configured as a “real time” experiential laboratory that gives life to renewed immersive, interactive and inclusive creative horizons, capable of generating an increasingly widespread and shared awareness of our neuro-aesthetic experiences and thus contributing to the Health of the Human Being understood as a state of physical, emotional and relational Well-Being. Engineer Alberto Sanna, both author and director of the Research Center Advanced Technology in Health and Well-Being of IRCSS San Raffaele Hospital, and Francesca Pola, associate professor of Contemporary Art History at the Faculty of Philosophy Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, and arthistorical curator of the NEFFIE project with ICONE, the European Research Center in History and Theory of the Image of Vita-Salute San Raffaele University directed by Andrea Tagliapietra, comment: “The fruitful interdisciplinary collaboration between the Research Centre for Advanced Technology in Health and WellBeing and the European Research Centre for History and Theory of the Image ICONE, in partnership with the technological and digital expertise offered by ETT S.p.A, offers the possibility of exploring our stratified techno-aesthetic horizon as a place of creative experimentation of avant-garde technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Metaverse and NFT: crucial horizons for a possible evolution of human, experiential and artistic relations, in a key that can be increasingly participatory, relational and conscious. The active cooperation between the two Research Centres highlights the importance of a multidisciplinary research, capable of proceeding to the dialogic and integrated elaboration of different semantic and symbolic inputs interacting and connected with each other (from visual to textual, from cognitive to behavioural), concretising the fundamental mission of the San Raffaele Hospital and University to promote and guarantee the Human Well-Being in its widest and most authentic meaning: personal, social, cultural, through an innovation not only of research tools but also and above all of contents and methodologies of interpretation and knowledge sharing”.