MEET Digital Culture Center

MEET Digital Culture Center is the first International Center for Digital Art and Culture in Italy. Born in Milan in 2018 with the support of Fondazione Cariplo and founded by Maria Grazia Mattei, it formally opens to the public in October 2020 with the aim of helping to bridge the Italian digital divide by promoting initiatives of an international nature in immersive spaces.

MEET explores and tells the story of people, languages, creative ideas and innovative projects through a programme of initiatives such as meetings, exhibitions, training experiences, performances and experiences that put the person back at the center of technological change.

A retrospective dedicated to Rebecca Allen, a pioneer of computer animation, who has been investigating the relationship between body and technology for over fifty years. The exhibition explores how the digital can become a space of presence and not just abstraction, where the body becomes language and identity. From the first animations of the 1970s to virtual reality installations, the exhibition highlights the evolution of the representation of the human body in the digital world, conveying a radical message: that technology is not neutral and that the digital needs a physical perspective. The exhibition also addresses a political dimension: the presence of the body, often female, in the digital challenges the idea of a neutral, disembodied technology. Synthetic Creatures thus provides a contemporary reflection on identity, perception and the transformation of the self in the age of virtual worlds.

An group exhibition of works from Taiwan imagining a near future in which technology and culture are deeply intertwined. The exhibition explores how cultural memory is transformed and regenerated in the AI era, shaping a collective resonance in which past, present and future constantly dialogue. Through new media art, VR and immersive installations, the project explores the evolution of Taiwan's cultural imaginaries within a global technological context and how cultural memory can translate into digital forms. The collective is organized into three thematic sections: Memory as Portal, which conceives memory as a space to traverse; Ritual as Technology, devoted to the reinterpretation of Taiwanese ritual practices through virtual reality and digital media; and Digital Skins and Future Bodies, reflecting on body and identity in AI-generated environments, where the skin becomes an interface between data, memory and imagination.

Value of Values (VoV) by Maurice Benayoun was born by combining neuroscience, art and blockchain to transform our thoughts and ideas about values such as love, freedom or compassion into something visible and concrete. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the Neuro-design Factory installation in the Immersive Room, where the visitor wears an EEG headset that reads brainwaves and shapes a 3D form representing a value with the sole power of thought. This model is recorded on the blockchain as an NFT and becomes the property of its creator. The entire exhibition path branches out from this core: the created values fuel the Value Trading Room, a stock market where the creations compete with each other, and then are cataloged in the Periodic Table of Values. The 3D models then take physical form and are analyzed by Artificial Intelligence. Finally, Fusion VoV unites the thousands of minds involved in the project since 2018 and shapes a single collective work for each value. An exhibition path that aims to lay bare our hierarchy of priorities and show what really matters to today's society.

Famous Turkish media artist Refik Anadol, who first exhibited in Italy at MEET in 2020, has created "Renaissance Dreams" especially for the Center's Immersive Room, a site-specific work generated with the help of AI. Images taken from a dataset of artistic works produced in Italy during the Renaissance (1300-1600) scroll before the viewer's eyes, processed and reworked by algorithms that transform shapes and colors and create original sounds.

The Roots of the Future is an ongoing project that traces the key stages of the digital creative evolution through the collection of posters, iconic objects and videos of exhibitions, festivals and key appointments of the Italian and international scene from the MEET Archive. By visiting and exploring the three floors of MEET, it is possible to immerse yourself in a walk through the main protagonists and artistic movements that, from the last century to the present day, have started the process of research and expressive experimentation triggered by the advent of digital technologies.

Journey to Italy is among the first web series entirely generated with artificial intelligence. A work that lies at the intersection of documentary, fiction and meta-narrative, and represents one of the most ambitious attempts to bring cinematic language into the realm of AI video generation. The series tells the story of the creation of an experimental broadcast conceived by a group of inventors from the University of Pisa and Olivetti in the 1960s. The crew documents a reality produced by a computing laboratory: a simulation of Italy generated by a machine. The story starts from real elements and then opens up to a parallel timeline in which a powerful artificial intelligence allows exploring memory as a navigable space. The Italy we see is not documented but recreated: recognizable yet transformed, familiar yet alien.

🕒 MEET is open from Wednesday to Sunday from 3 pm to 7 pm. Last recommended entry at 6 pm

⏳ Visit duration: approximately 60 minutes

📍 Location: Viale Vittorio Veneto 2, Milan

👤 Age requirements: none

🌐 Language: Italian/English

♿ Accessibility: MEET is accessible to people with disabilities and reduced mobility. There is an elevator inside the center that connects all floors

❓ For more information, you can consult the official website

🪪 Holders of the Lombardy Museum Pass can buy the ticket directly at the MEET box office by showing the valid card.