The Floating Collectionwith works by Alex Ayed, Rä di Martino, Cevdet Erek, David Jablonowski, Miao Ying, Alexandra Pirici

Museum Group Exhibition

MAMbo - Museum of Modern Art of Bologna

Bologna

Italy

28 Oct 2022 – 8 Jan 2023

MAMbo presents The Floating Collection, a group exhibition curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Caterina Molteni, that starts from the desire to study the relevant collections of the Bolognese museums, from the Settore Musei Civici Bologna and other city museum systems, through the gaze of six of the most prominent contemporary artists: Alex Ayed (Strasbourg, 1989), Rä Di Martino (Rome, 1975), Cevdet Erek (Istanbul, 1974), David Jablonowski (Bochum, 1982), Miao Ying (Shanghai, 1985), Alexandra Pirici (Bucharest, 1982).

Miao Ying, who is currently based in New York City and Shanghai, is part of a generation of Chinese artists who bring video game aesthetics and internet culture to their work. She has participated at shows at MoMA PS1, New Museum, M+ Museum, Gwangju Biennale, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, and the Chinese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Surplus Intelligence is a film that was written by Artificial Intelligence, simulated on a game engine, and directed by the artist. Using Machine Learning Text, Generation Neural Networks and Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, the artist trained the AI to study different styles of writing, including behavioral psychologist, B. F. Skinner’s utopia novel, “Walden Two”. The artist was able to develop a quest style romantic story between a citizen roach and the AI “The Sophisticated King of the Night, Brain L1t3rat1”, who is monitoring her behavior. The allegory taking place in a medieval magical fantasy land—Walden XII, is where a medieval papal indulgence system is used with digital bitcoin.