💥 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 contributing to bridging the Italian digital divide by promoting initiatives of an international nature in immersive spaces.
MEET explores and tells the stories of people, languages, creative ideas and innovative projects through a range of initiatives such as meetings, exhibitions, training experiences, performances and experiences that put the person back at the center of technological change.
🟠 The admission ticket gives access to the entire ongoing programming of the MEET Digital Culture Center🟠
Highlights
🌟 MEET Digital Week (from September 30 to October 4)
FREE ENTRY BY FILLING OUT A REGISTRATION FORM AT RECEPTION
From Wednesday to Sunday – Immersive Room, Gallery 1-2-3 and Lounge
On the occasion of Milano Digital Week 2026, focused on the theme "The generative city", MEET presents a double proposal that weaves together the history of the great pioneers of computer science with the most advanced visions of international digital art.
The Immersive Room, the third Gallery and the MEET Lounge will be occupied by the 2026 edition of the CITY DIGITAL SKIN ART FESTIVAL (CDSA), the international video art competition promoted by the China Academy of Art that brings the art of young talents from around the world to urban screens in major metropolises. The theme of the fifth edition, "The Liquid Commons", explores the role of the ocean as a fundamental element for humanity. During Digital Week, the works selected from the international open call, in addition to being visible on the large screens of the Galleria delle Carrozze at Milan Central Station, will also be visible at MEET throughout October, showing how digital art can transform the ocean from a remote concept into a shared and perceivable public space. From Milan, the works will become part of a global network connecting 10 cities in 5 countries (including Hangzhou, Changsha, Singapore and Hamburg), reaching a public of over 100 million people.
The first two Galleries of the Center, on the other hand, will be occupied by the exhibition titled "FROM 101 TO 1". 2026 marks two crucial anniversaries for the digital age: 60 years since the commercialization of the Olivetti Programma 101 (the first desktop computer in history) and 50 years since the Apple 1 (the machine symbolizing the birth of the modern personal computer). Created in collaboration with Fondazione 101, the exhibition project compares the two historic companies - the Olivetti of the 1960s and the Apple of the 1980s - retracing two decades of technological innovation, philosophical visions and memorable historical contexts such as the Cold War and the hippie revolution.
ONGOING EVENTS
🌟 2030: Collective Resonance (from September 16 to September 27)
From Thursday to Sunday – Immersive Room, Gallery 1-2-3, Living Staircase and Lounge
A 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 where past, present and future constantly dialogue. Through new media art, VR and immersive installations, the project investigates the evolution of Taiwan's cultural imagination 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, dedicated 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.
COMING SOON
🌟 2030: Collective Resonance (from October 7 to October 25)
From Thursday to Sunday – Immersive Room, Gallery 1-2-3, Living Staircase and Lounge
A 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 where past, present and future constantly dialogue. Through new media art, VR and immersive installations, the project investigates the evolution of Taiwan's cultural imagination 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, dedicated 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 (from October 29 to January 2027)
From Thursday to Sunday – Lounge, Gallery, Immersive Room
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 artwork in the Immersive Room, where the visitor wears an EEG headset that reads brainwaves and shapes a 3D form representing a human value with the mere power of thought. This model is recorded on the blockchain as an NFT and becomes the property of its creator. From this nucleus extends the entire exhibition path: the created values feed the Value Trading Room, a stock market where the creations compete with each other, and then are catalogued 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 expose our hierarchy of priorities and show what really matters for today's society.
PERMANENT CONTENT
🌟 Renaissance Dreams
Every Wednesday – Immersive Room
The famous Turkish media artist Refik Anadol, who first exhibited in Italy at MEET in 2020, created especially for the Center's Immersive Room "Renaissance Dreams", a site-specific work generated thanks to AI. Images taken from a dataset of artistic works produced in Italy during the Renaissance (1300-1600) run before the viewer's eyes, elaborated and revisited by algorithms that transform shapes and colors and create original sounds.
🌟 The roots of the future
From Wednesday to Sunday – MEET Digital Culture Center
The Roots of the Future is a project in progress that retraces, through the collection of posters, iconic objects and videos of key exhibitions, reviews and events from the Italian and international scene taken from the MEET Archive, the fundamental stages of the digital creative evolution. By visiting and exploring the three floors of MEET, it is possible to immerse yourself in a journey through the main protagonists and artistic movements that, from the last century to the present day, have initiated the process of research and expressive experimentation triggered by the advent of digital technologies.
🌟 Journey to Italy
From Wednesday to Sunday – Gallery 0
Journey to Italy is among the first web series entirely generated with artificial intelligence. A work that sits 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 creation of an experimental broadcast devised 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 very powerful artificial intelligence allows memory to be explored as a navigable space. The Italy we see is not documented but recreated: recognizable yet transformed, familiar yet alien.
GENERAL INFORMATION
🕒 MEET is open from Wednesday to Sunday from 2:30 pm to 7:30 pm. Last recommended entry 7.00 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 Museums Subscription can buy the ticket directly at the MEET box office by showing the valid card.
