NGI Forward SALON Foundationals: On Participation with Federico Bonelli

NGI Forward SALON Foundationals: On Participation with Federico Bonelli

Wednesday, March 10th 2021

PRESS RELEASE

Mr. Federico Bonelli brought to our screens a very creative way of thinking, by talking about the importance of being present in order to activate participation. Starting his presentation, Mr. Bonelli focused on the question “How to do it” and explained the meaning of effective participation on societal processes. Then he presented Transformatorio, an innovation methodology based on the living lab approach, that takes innovation-through-improvisation as its premise.The scope of it was to create a group of people who will understand how art and science are interconnected.
Through meditation he made the audience understand the value of the art of being in the moment (presence) , of the intent and the quality.Through this interactive practice Mr, Bonelli made it clear that the acknowledgment of presence is the starting point of participation, because participation is a situation that is happening “here and now”.
In the first part of his presentation he highlighted the relationship between art and the complex reality by talking about a real experiment that took place in Italy,the initiative “Giampilieri transformatorio” which achieved the participation of the whole village. The aim of this initiative was to engage highly skilled artists, use the material which was co-owned by the place and create stories with these that appear to narrative spaces or lead to prototypes. It was all about quality participation and co-designing process than design thinking.
In the second part, the initiative NGI-LEDGER was presented through a video. This initiative was about how to embody a situation and empower the community to participate. It was shown exactly how to work with the presence, make clear what you want to express and the quality of what you want to do. It was a real life example how situational awareness should be societal awareness. Artistic methodology was used to showcase that technology is growing with the people involved and that technology gets a human centric value.
In the last part of his presentation Mr. Bonelli talked about the vision of this practice. This can be achieved through quantitative simulations informed by open data which observe the evolution of the process (e.g. economic data). He talked about models embodying the situation that can inform the structure and contribute to creating sustainable design.
In the closing remarks he made the connection of these practices with sovereign and disposable IDs, which is a complex process that enables us to design from scratch this hybrid space. According to Mr. Bonelli’s position, the promises and solutions on sovereign and disposables IDs will have an impact only if we manage to address the big issues of the present reality.

Organized by

 ELONTech
 NGI Forward
 IoT Council

Guest Speaker:

Federico Bonelli
Independent researcher and artist, main expertise is “creative research”, a term without boundaries. He has training in philosophy of science, history of mathematics and arts. Bonelli is not only an explorer of aesthetic forms, but also an empirical researcher. He previously worked with Philips Research and other artists on realising the Protoquadro (2003): a deterministic techno-pictorical object in constant change, never equal to itself and unpredictable. Since 2012 he directs the international site-specific laboratory ‘trasformatorio’ he founded.

Moderators:
Mantalena Kaili
Rob Van Kranenburg
Gaëlle Le Gars