\ Innovazione \ Regenerative Symphony: innovative materials, twin (or green) transformation and artificial intelligence for the new artists’ residency in Area Science Park

After the latest positive experience with the Danish artist Sissel Marie Tonn, Area Science Park repeats the experimentation of artists’ residencies, moments of the physical presence of artists within scientific institutions to give life to contaminations of ideas and quality planning in art and science.

Again this year, thanks to the collaboration with MEET Digital Culture Center of Milan, Area hosted Studio Above&Belove, the artist duo, winner of challenge no. 6 of the “S+T+ARTS in the City” call on December 6th and 7^th. The challenge launched to artists from all over the world, in fact, asked them to investigate and narrate, through their own language and poetics, one of the most critical passages that the world must face at the moment: green and digital transformation require the use of an imposing amount of resources that the EU has defined as critical raw materials, i.e. a series of raw materials that are difficult to find or that have a high environmental impact when extracting or recycling them. With the Regenerative Symphony project, Daria Jelonek, German, and Perry-James Sugden, English, from Studio Above&Below were the winners of the residency in Area Science Park. Their project is to create an interactive audiovisual installation generated by an artificial intelligence model that uses self-analysis, monitoring of minerals and market analysis of the northern region of Italy as input data, to recognise, decide and predict the output of an immersive modular installation. The public will have the opportunity to interact by creating new objects starting from the recycling of others and thanks to sustainable energy sources. The AI model reacts to requests, identifying different solutions, including recycling critical materials from unused e-waste or alternative design decisions. During computation, the digital experience in space is reorganised, leading to a new immersive environment.

“Our Regenerative Symphony project focuses on critical materials, various artificial intelligence systems and e-waste recycling. – explain Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden – We are particularly interested in using a variety of artificial intelligence tools useful for identifying new materials or new ways of recycling electronic waste, an issue that currently represents a major problem. Ours will be an audiovisual installation made up of a computational system and a variety of 3D-generated elements that we will create, with the idea of working on different minerals or critical materials, imagining how they can be reorganised and reused. What will be of key importance is sound, which is why we called the project Regenerative Symphony, creating a special soundscape. The visit to the laboratories of the Area Science Park will help us learn more about innovative materials and the different types of databases that can help us become familiar with innovative materials, thanks to discussions with scientists and researchers”.

Area Science Park, as co-host institution of the residency, has the task of inspiring artists through access to resources, open data and technological platforms focused on material, data and life sciences. In the first two days of live residency, Daria Jelonek and Perry-James Sugden visited the laboratories and had discussions with researchers working as part of the Innovative Materials Platform, which includes the Electron Microscopy Laboratory and the Data Engineering Laboratory, and with expert technologists who deal with research and innovation projects in the field of the circular economy and the enhancement of research. The discussion with the artists was then also extended to researchers from other entities in the Area Science Park system, such as Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, where the artists had the opportunity to visit and learn about the main ongoing research on the topics of “critical materials” and their importance for the green and digital transformation we are facing nowadays. The artists will have 9 months to create the work which will be exhibited at Sonar in Barcelona and by Ars Electronica in Linz.