Investigating a new relationship
for humans & tech

Fondazione Spazio Vitale is a nonprofit organization that carries out activities of general interest marked by the investigation of the relationship between human and technology. According to its founding charter, Fondazione Spazio Vitale “was established with the aim of disseminating to individuals and the community, with special attention to young people, a wealth of knowledge and experience gained by its founding members in the different fields of the symbiotic relationship between human and technology” and to identify, through critical reflection and artistic research, “a new sustainable vision” of this relationship, marked by a harmonious and balanced co-evolution.

Our Mission

We are used to thinking of our relationship with technology as a simple user-tool relationship, but intuitively we know that this is not the case. Technology-particularly digital communication technologies-solicits dependence; it changes, constantly and inexorably, the way we think, live, and relate to others and the world; it transforms our perception of reality; it conditions our emotional states; it takes over from the human in a number of functions, tasks, and roles that were previously exclusive to him or her, transforming the realms of work and creativity. All this has been happening, in recent decades, at a steady and unstoppable pace.

The contemporary human being perceives themselves as the guinea pig in an experiment of which we know the actuality but not the long-term consequences; an experiment of which technology dictates the pace and direction, and in which the human is forced to trudge along, oblivious to the body and its basic needs.

A more appropriate metaphor to describe the complexity of this relationship is that of symbiosis. In biology, the term “symbiosis” is used to refer to a close relationship of coexistence and mutual benefit between two different species.

 — Giuseppe O. Longo 2003 

According to information theorist Giuseppe O. Longo, the symbiosis between human and technology gives rise to a symbiont, which Longo calls homo technologicus and which others have called cyborg or post-human being. In this symbiosis, the human uses technology to extend its physical and mental capabilities, its grip on reality, its impact on the world; technology uses the human as an active agent of its own evolution. The coexistence produces mutual benefit, but the adaptation also generates suffering in the more sensitive, biological part of the symbiont: a suffering caused by the diversity and different speed of the two actors in the symbiosis, and which manifests itself both globally and at the individual and social levels.

Climate change, fake news, imaginaries of the singularity, the end of leisure time, the liquefaction of interpersonal relationships, depression, and media dependence are all manifestations of the suffering of the human-technology symbiosis. To solicit critical reflection on this relationship with the aim of re-setting it on a track of harmonious co-evolution and greater balance is the mission of Fondazione Spazio Vitale.

Rejecting both the path of unconditional celebration of digital media and that of their prejudicial rejection, Fondazione Spazio Vitale intends to cure the suffering of the human-technology symbiosis by restoring centrality to the body and to the non-rational – and therefore not translatable into data and algorithms – components of human intelligence, namely the emotional and narrative ones.

Hence the centrality that art in all its forms takes on in Fondazione Spazio Vitale’s activities – as an exquisitely human enterprise capable of developing intuitions and imaginaries that are functional as much to the diagnosis as to the cure of the symbiont.

Vitale, then, is not only the name of the street and space in Verona where the Fondazione begins its activities, but also the role it wants to carve out for itself in the contemporary cultural debate.

Activities

Fondazione Spazio Vitale is active in organizing and promoting cultural events, meetings, moments of socialization, education and public debate in the different fields in which the symbiotic relationship between humans and technology is articulated.

More specifically, the Foundation aims to:

• the provision of technological instrumentation suitable for artistic and creative experimentation;
• the organization of workshop, seminars, moments of meeting and debate, independently or in collaboration with artistic entities and/or research institutes;
• the curation of exhibition events dedicated to contemporary arts, with a focus on those that field a critical investigation of the problems of human-technology symbiosis, or creative research directed toward a harmonious and balanced co-evolution;
• dissemination and accessibility, including through publishing activities with multi-channel logic (print and online tools), of texts and content deemed useful and functional for awareness raising in its specific area of intervention.