Connections: data and innovation between art, science and technology

Data artist Jer Thorp told us that a geological map can become a work of art and migration data can be read through an urban installation (in this specific case made in Times Square). The results that emerge from predictive models that analyze large masses of data are not always easy to communicate to decision makers, explained Vittoria Colizza, director of the EPIcx lab: the risk is to be seen as “modern Cassandras.”

And then there is the infrastructure over which this data travels. Francesco Bonfiglio, CEO of Gaia-X, helped us imagine what the Old Continent’s infrastructures might look like in the not-too-distant future, and Eleni Diamanti, deputy director of the Paris Center for Quantum Computing, explained the importance of quantum cryptography in protecting the transmission of information.

Journalist and entrepreneur Massimo Temporelli provided the loom within which the narrative of Connections was woven. The event has been staged at OGR on the occasion of the 20th birthday of the TOP-IX Consortium. It was a journey into the world of innovation and digital data, with the intention of understanding their value and impact, through the lens and languages proper to technology, science and art.

An opportunity to explore the possible futures of a world in which data, connections and algorithms play a crucial role in shaping the experience of reality, from different perspectives. And so we talked about privacy and health, the impact and sovereignty of data, its protection and the evolution of the idea of digital citizenship.

Different topics, linked by a single thread, which guided the large audience until the end of the event, closed by the electronic music collective of SPIME.IM. With their performance Zero, they provided a reading of the present, through data, images, and music.