Introduction
Hito Steyerl focuses on the role of media, technology and the circulation of images in the era of digital nativism. The artist creates installations in which film production is associated with the construction of architectural environments.
For her exhibition at Castello di Rivoli, she premieres The City of Broken Windows (2018), stemming from research into the practices of Artificial Intelligence industries, surveillance technologies and the contradictory roles Museums often play today. The City of Broken Windows revolves around neural sound recordings that, like an atonal and discordant symphony, document the process of teaching artificial intelligence how to recognize the sound of breaking windows, a practice that symbolizes social disruption. Steyerl explores how AI affects our urban environment and how alternative practices may emerge through pictorial acts in the public space. Chris Toepfer, protagonist of the new work, has boarded up Castello di Rivoli with trompe l’oeil window paintings. Steyerl’s new project offers an intriguing perspective on how the digital contemporary imagination shapes our emotions and experience of reality.