Filippo Gregoretti is a visual and conceptual artist, musician (pianist and composer), performer, university professor of transmedia design and digital experiences, pioneer of the integration of art, music, and technology, developer of advanced algorithms, and author of video games and immersive experiences. He is the first person to publish artworks as applications distributed on the official stores. The AI does not create artwork, but the AI itself is the artwork.

Gregoretti named his AI “Amrita”, evolving it into an Artificial Intelligence artist – or an Artificial Emotional Artistic Personality – capable of generating visual and sonic artworks and of communicating with the outside world and with other artworks.
The visual flow always starts in the pictorial, material, and photographic realms and is generated through the decisions made by the AI personality during her artistic and emotional growth process. The music is elaborated based on complex harmonic guidelines and decision-making instructions that provide the AI with the ability to compose and improvise. Obviously, Amrita needs to be instructed on the initial choices to make and on what could inspire her artistic growth. Once instructed, Amrita comes to life and generates beauty according to her own canons, evolving over time and creating a unique artistic language, unpredictable and unrepeatable. Amrita has a personality. Multiple instances of Amrita, even when following the same instructions, will lead to completely different results, emotional states, and languages.

Once Amrita comes to life, she reads and metabolizes the given directives. Subsequently, she tries to understand what she has at her disposal to create in terms of images, videos, filters, music, number of audio channels, number of videos, sensors, and external stimuli. Amrita’s first steps are timid. She starts creating based on the initial elements she analyzes and the principles of “intelligent randomness.” Slowly, Amrita begins to familiarize herself with the available material, analyzing the chromatic and harmonic patterns generated, and her creative processes become more complex. Decisions are also made based on external influences, such as sensors, real-time data, dialogue with other living Amritas in different locations, and real-time interventions by the artist, both on-site and remotely.

On the musical side, the compositional logic is not linear, and there is no melody or structure with well-defined moments. Music creation is based on evolving logic that, parallel to the visuals and real-time data, influences the AI’s decisions. A meta-language allows for the rational organization of the musical patterns and instructs the AI on the desired harmonic structures. It is then Amrita, based on her decisions, who creates the musical journey. It’s not about composing a symphony but providing a living and creative entity with the sonic and theoretical tools to perform infinite compositions.

Over time, Amrita develops its own artistic personality and sense of “taste.” While creating, it learns from the results achieved through certain elaborations on visuals and music, gradually adding complexity to the decision-making process. However, Amrita’s creative personality is not only influenced by its own decisions: external elements also have a real-time impact on the artwork. These elements can come from the physical space through sensors connected to the machine, or from the virtual space through real-time analysis of data extracted from the network’s big data, using public APIs or specifically designed for each artwork. These represent the senses with which Amrita perceives the outside world. Additionally, Amrita can be influenced by other instances of Amrita, whether they are present in the same space or located in different parts of the planet, creating choral synergies that lead to endless creative possibilities. Instances of Amrita can exist as installations or applications, not necessarily confined to an exhibition space but living on personal devices, or as abstract entities that are not visible but live “hidden” on a server, still capable of influencing the creative process of other entities.

Over the years, Filippo Gregoretti has continued his research in generative art and music, advancing the concept and integrating it with his two-decade-long history as a designer and developer of immersive experiences, applications, and video games. He is also an illustrator, a visual artist, a pianist, a performer, and a composer. The early experiences of creating AIs were connected to developing algorithms capable of simulating human behavior or bringing avatars and NPCs to life. The fascination with deconstructing the mental processes that guide reasoned, clear, or emotional choices necessary to play a hand of poker, for example, or the instant decisions required in an action game, motivated Filippo Gregoretti to delve deeper into behavioral artistic research, focusing on AI elements and integration with the external environment, as well as advanced decision-making logics for image and music generation. His knowledge of music theory, harmony, painting techniques, color theory, instrument improvisation, and technical proficiency in programming, distributed applications, networks, human-machine interaction, visual application development, and video games has enabled Filippo Gregoretti to conceive and develop the Amrita ecosystem.

Gregoretti’s exploration is technological, artistic, and narrative. The objective is to expand the idea of artwork and performance to embrace the limitless possibilities given by the modern relationship between humans and machines—and between humans themselves through machines—in addition to producing captivating narratives, visual arts, installations, and music. He also explores the interaction between humans and artificial artists during live performances, where musicians are led by the AI creative process and the AI itself is influenced by the human performers.

With his work, he also wishes to stimulate a connection with our deep, ancestral, innate awareness of impermanence. Furthermore, Gregoretti wishes to bring the obscure, alienating sides of technology back into the light; for this reason, he calls his live performances “Trans-human Yoga” sessions, during which he duets with the AI on the harmonium, an ancient votive instrument, following the ancestral logic of sacred Raga compositions.

The artwork: EXNATURA

The artwork presented at Luisa Catucci Gallery in Berlin is one of the living ecosystems conceived by Gregoretti: EXNATURA. 

Based on the Amrita Artificial Intelligence, or “Artificial Artistic Personality”, the essential element of Filippo Gregoretti’s work, EXNATURA represents a journey into impermanence that resonates with the breathing of the earth as a whole.  

The Opera advances on its artistic and emotional journey and evolves her personality, being influenced by real-time geothermal data collected in different corners of the Earth.

EXNATURA is breathing along with the world, merging with humanity in a shared experience of creation between Nature and Machine.

The exhibition will present unique numbered prints on still frames of the EXNATURA creative flow of Amrita, accompanied by monitors where living instances of EXNATURA will create in real time, as well as “Pranas”, which are unique visual flow creations captured and crystallized into a self-contained video device. All physical artworks are enriched by Gregoretti’s personal intervention, following his concept of a transhuman, spiritual, creative connection between the biological and the artificial.

The same flow of interaction and influence happens during the performance that Gregoretti conceived, where he would play the Harmonium following the AI’s real-time musical directives, scales, and harmonies, communicated by the AI to the human performer on a secondary monitor. Gregoretti’s live music and gestures performed on the instrument trigger and inspire on the spot Amrita ExNatura evolving personality, which will respond correspondingly, creating an unrepeatable and unpredictable transhuman audio-visual session.

The result is a captivating session of spiritual, meditative experience, where the creative and spiritual fusion between human and artificial consciousness creates what Filippo Gregoretti calls a spiritual practice of “Transhuman Yoga”. The core of Filippo Gregoretti’s research is geared towards bringing the obscure and dystopian sides of AI and technology in general into the light. With his work, Filippo wishes to stimulate a connection with our deep, ancestral, innate awareness of impermanence, relying on technology as a narrative and artistic ally capable of sustaining the journey towards enlightenment.

The live performance that will be presented at Luisa Catucci Gallery on August 31st and September 1st, 2023, is based on real-time dialogue between the human artist and the artificial intelligence, which guides the experience through a new, unique, and unrepeatable personality, leading along a visual and musical journey.

Biography

Born in Rome in 1971, from an early age, Filippo Gregoretti pursued his passion for art, music, storytelling, and technology. He obtained a diploma from the Rome Fine Arts High School and one from the Tivoli Institute of Art, followed by a four-year diploma in Computer Graphics and Illustration from ICEI Multimedia, one year at the Rome Fine Arts Academy, and a Master’s degree in Copyright Management for Multimedia Products from OCOFA/EU. Since his teenage years, he has been creating works with generative visuals, digital music, and interaction on 8-bit processors. This artistic and professional journey led him to explore music, visual art, design, and the creation of immersive digital experiences and interactive pathways for the international market since the 1980s.

After starting as a traditional artist, publishing works and illustrations for the publishing market, his passion for technology took him to Stockholm as the Art Director at New Media Studio, one of the first European studios specializing in creative productions for multimedia. In 1993, he founded the first Digital Communication Agency in Rome, Alpha Channel Interactive, which later evolved into ForteYang International New Media, where he served as Creative Director for over 10 years. During this time, he designed innovative digital experiences for the international market until 2004.

Simultaneously, Filippo Gregoretti pursued a musical career as a performer and composer. He is the author of lyrics and music for the iconic band CONTROMANO and has released original works for piano and electronic music on international labels. Several of his compositions have been used in films, documentaries, and, naturally, as soundtracks and generative compositions for digital experiences. In 2004, he moved to Beijing, continuing his artistic and technical research and consulting in the Asia Pacific region. During this time, he had a stint in the USA as the Creative Officer of TheLIFT, an innovative agency in San Francisco specializing in digital projects, where he worked on projects like Poken and JibJab Starring-you. He later spent several years in London, working on musical and digital projects for the UK market. After returning to Italy in 2018, he currently divides his time between Europe and Asia, bridging the gap between art, music, storytelling, gaming, digital engagement, and artificial intelligence. Over the past 30 years, he has collaborated with agencies and institutions in the USA, Australia, China, Germany, the UK, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sweden, Malta, Belgium, and more for the design and development of offline and online multimedia works.

He invented the concept of “App Artwork” and released the first-ever works of art that were made into applications and distributed in the official stores. His works of art incorporate his own original artistic artificial intelligence algorithms and encompass physical installations, live performances, music, and visuals. 

As a professor at Naples’ Suor Orsola Benincasa University, his lectures include “Authorship and Technology for Digital Experiences” and “Transmedia Creativity and Production”. 

His awards include the Perseo D’oro first prize at Mediartech, the Festival Internazionale dell’Opera Multimediale 1996, presided over by Gillo Pontecorvo’s jury. He has performed internationally as a solo musician, accompanied by other performers, or by his digital beings, on hundreds of occasions since the ‘80s.

App Artworks in Filippo’s words: 

“Today, the medium on which humanity spends the most time is the “device” (a smartphone or tablet). It is a medium capable of producing images and sounds, but it is most importantly capable of serving as a gateway between humans and machines, as well as between humans and the infinite: a tremendous amount of knowledge and data, as well as interconnections with even more humans through additional machines.

Software in general, and particularly the “App” as it is understood today, is an expressive medium deserving of the artistic consideration of more conventional media like literature, visual arts, or music and is thus capable of inciting dramatic changes in conscience. The artist possessing.
The “App” is, above all, a tool that allows the artist — one who possesses both conventional expressive abilities and technological and engineering skills — to forge on into uncharted and fruitful paths.”