• State Library of Lucca
Friday 15th November, 17.30-19.00
Synthetic Sources
Libraries in the age of artificial hallucinations
Public workshop by Guido Segni – new media artist, lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara
The workshop
A workshop that explores the hallucinatory power of artificial intelligence by challenging our relationship with sources and knowledge.
‘Fonti Sintetiche’ (Synthetic Sources) is a project curated by Guido Segni for GIUNGLA and the State Library of Lucca. The workshop investigates the complex relationship between history and fiction in the age of artificial intelligence, in which the most advanced technologies create hallucinatory visions that challenge our ability to distinguish the real from the imagined.
Through the use of tools such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, participants will explore the archives of the Biblioteca Statale di Lucca, experimenting with linguistic models capable of generating texts and images that reinterpret and distort history. The objective is the creation of a book that recounts a historical episode of Lucca, which is plausible but never happened. The concept of unhappening, introduced by Guido Segni, is at the heart of this process: the AI generates a narrative so believable that it makes an event that never happened seem real.
This book, a simulated ‘source’, will be included in the library’s collection, inviting readers to reflect on the power of AI to rewrite history and create new collective memories, pushing the boundaries between what happened and what never happened. An immersive journey between reality and fiction, an exercise in fiction design in which memory and artificial imagination come together.
Timeline
Monday 28 October from 14.00 to 17.00
Lucca State Library
Introductory meeting with a visit to the Library and its heritage.
Monday 4 and Wednesday 6 November from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Lucca State Library
Research meetings.
Friday 8, Monday 11 and Wednesday 13 November
Polo tecnologico di Lucca
Project idea development.
Friday 15 November from 17.30 to 19.00
Lucca State Library
Public presentation.
Guido Segni
With a background in hacktivism, net art and video art, Guido Segni lives and works between online and offline, exploring art, Internet culture and digital ‘hallucinations’.
His work mainly focuses on the everyday use (and abuse) of the Internet, characterised by minimal interventions on technology, combining conceptual approaches with a hacker attitude, creating strange, useless and dysfunctional works.
Co-founder of Les Liens Invisibles, he has exhibited in galleries and museums such as the MAXXI in Rome, the New School in New York and the KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn, while also participating in international art and media-art festivals such as the Venice Biennale, the Piedmont SHARE Festival and Transmediale.
He is currently in the middle of his five-year ‘lazy’ plan. In his spare time, he co-directs the Green Cube Gallery, teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara and directs the imaginary project REFRAMED.