Link to location programme

Pietro Lugaro & Alessandro Mac-Nelly (Italy/Germany)

ACV (Algorithmic Cultural Vandalism)

Interactive installation, 2024

ACV (Algorithmic Cultural Vandalism) is an ongoing research project exploring the relationship between symbolic language and algorithmic manipulation. It reflects on how cultural symbols behave within technical systems, mapping the mental tension between sign and meaning. The installation invites visitors to interact with a robotic arm powered by an archive-trained AI, collaboratively generating prototypes of symbols that drift toward aesthetic immanence.Through this human-machine exchange, pseudo-symbols emerge in a continuous loop. The boundary between meaningful sign and idle scribble remains fluid, and the act of drawing with another intelligence brings forth moments of ambiguity and misinterpretation—central to the experience. The archive and algorithm are deliberately constructed to avoid interpretation, focusing solely on the morphology of signs without assigning meaning. This refusal becomes a form of unlearning, opening space for speculation, symbolic friction, and new modes of visual thinking beyond representational logic.

 acvproject.xyz