Saturday, October 31st, 2020 will mark the first day the MEET Digital Culture Center is open to visitors (you can book a visit here). The centre, located in Milan in the heart of the elegant Porta Venezia district, was created with the support of Fondazione Cariplo, strategic partner of Re-Imagine Europa. MEET was born out of Meet the Media Guru, the platform of thoughts, ideas and events focused on innovation and digital technology that the art critic and digital culture expert Maria Grazia Mattei, member of the Re-Imagine Democracy Expert Committee, founded in 2005. Designed by architect Carlo Ratti, MEET includes over 1500 square meters of space on three floors, which will be used for exhibitions and cultural events.
“The challenge besides the MEET project, which Fondazione Cariplo supported since its start, is to carve a new path: to be a place – both physical and virtual – for cultural innovation, focusing on the human factor and enhancing it by creating new digital connections,” recently stated.
One of the main features of the building is the spectacular “Living Staircase“. This flexible space can become a theatre or a workspace from time to time, proposing novel interpretations for the concepts of interconnection and participation. Other essential elements of MEET are the “Immersive Room”, equipped with fifteen projectors showing bright 4k images at 270°, and the 200-seat “Theater” with three projection surfaces. From October 31st the “Immersive Room” will host the site-specific installation “Renaissance Dreams” by Refik Anadol. The author created the art installation specifically for MEET using an artificial intelligence trained to generate dynamic and changing forms: the man-machine creative process started with thousands of open-source images of Italian Renaissance works of art and architecture.
As can also be understood from the centre’s claim “Humans meet Digital”, MEET was conceived over the belief that innovation is a cultural fact. It aims to bridge the gap between people and technologies. In these difficult times, we believe it is essential to create similar spaces for cultural sharing, to provide public access to opportunities for culture and learning.
Taking up the words spoken by Maryia Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, during the Democracy in a Digital Society conference in Berlin “How do we define what the future of Europe in a digital era will look like? We want a digital future where core European values, such as freedom of expression, privacy, democracy or data protection, are fully respected. We want an inclusive digital future where all our citizens will benefit from the digital transformation, where humans will continue to be at the centre of our action”.
MEET – Digital Culture Center
Viale Vittorio Veneto 2 – 20124 – Milan (Italy)
+39 02 36769011 | info@meetcenter.it
