IRCCS San Raffaele Hospital and Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, in collaboration with Art-Tech association and ETT SpA, return to the World Artificial Intelligence Cannes Festival WAICF with an innovative implementation of the NEFFIE Metaverse: a new way of accessing the artworld in the 21st century.
From Thursday 9 February to Saturday 11 February, 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 Art-Tech association and 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 World Artificial Intelligence Cannes Festival WAICF with an innovative and unprecedented 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 presentations 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 largely positive feedback received on these occasions, together with collaborations with new technical partners, led to an innovative implementation of the NEFFIE Metaverse as a dynamic and immersive environment, marking a first step towards the revolution of interactivity. 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, configuring itself as a new way of accessing the world of art in the 21st century, 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 art-historical 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 Center for Advanced Technology in Health and Well-Being and the European Research Centre for History and Theory of the Image ICONE, in partnership with the technological and digital expertise offered by ETT SpA, 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”.
Giovanni Verreschi, CEO of ETT, a SCAI Group company, comments:
“The NEFFIE project is an opportunity to demonstrate how the artistic and scientific spheres can converge to activate unprecedented possibilities for the enjoyment of works and the creation of new forms of expression. The Metaverse makes possible a further level of interaction with the work: if previously the visitor, through Artificial Intelligence, could leave an individual mark within the exhibition, this new step in the collaboration between ETT and the scientific partners allows users to access, with their own presence and ideas, a unique space of collective confrontation free from the limits of physical presence. It thus becomes possible, in line with the radical advances in scientific research we are witnessing, to bring together art and Artificial Intelligence, breaking down ideological fences, on the basis of the awareness that both can be used to develop hitherto uncalculated synergies.”