Curating art, narrating reality.
A place where creativity and research meet.
Here are our projects:
On the occasion of Smart Life Festival, from 16 to 18 October, Metronom’s Digital Video Wall will present the complete cycle of works featured in its seventh edition, Theory&Practice: The Italian New Wave, curated by Emanuele Amighetti.
Theory&Practice: The Italian New Wave is conceived as a collaborative project and a statement of intent, bringing together works by Vittorio Maria Dal Maso (1995, Vicenza), LOREM, Giacomo Mercuriali (1990, Cesena), Federica Sasso (1992, Vicenza) & Luca Pagan (1993, Venice), and Alba Zari (1987, Bangkok).
The title itself indicates a methodological position that identifies a common thread running through the different works: the artists’ practice takes the form of theoretical research, in which artworks become tools for investigation and knowledge production.
The working method adopted in this project is therefore hybrid: there are no hierarchical relationships between theory and practice. Rather, the two coexist within a circular process.
The artists’ practices bring together a range of media and tools — from artificial intelligence and machine learning to virtual reality, biosensors, memes and CGI — while also engaging with academic research and institutions. In their work, Theory and Practice coexist.
We Have the Same Eyes (2024) by Alba Zari stems from a research project into the identity of the artist’s biological father and, consequently, her own identity.
Through digital technologies, Zari explores the face and its expressions, moving beyond mere representation in search of an emotional presence. The video thus makes a meeting possible, albeit within a virtual space, questioning the boundary between reality and simulation.
Divergences (2023) by Federica Sasso & Luca Pagan (4E) is a video work and 1:1-scale audiovisual installation that draws on the photographic tradition of studying human movement and on Muybridge’s legacy, giving rise to a kind of moving statue projected into hyper-contemporary experience.
The work explores phenomena such as embodiment, leading the viewer into a suspended universe between digital and physical dimensions and prompting unconscious and cerebral responses, ultimately raising the question: “Would I react in the same way?”
Mnemosyne and my Advance (2026) by Vittorio Maria Dal Maso is a video composed of “augmented” images in which stillness and movement alternate, guiding the viewer through a visual journey of idols and icons drawn from ancient, historical and contemporary repertoires, brought together in a single figurative archive.
Through the Droste effect, Dal Maso creates a conceptual kaleidoscope that reflects on the places and modes of production and consumption of contemporary images, in a tautological repetition of a visual act that observes and interprets another visual act.
Life is Easy (2026) by Giacomo Mercuriali is a film that reflects on contemporary life through a pragmatic approach and the visual languages of memes, reels and advertising.
In this AI-generated video sculpture, the artist films himself carrying out everyday activities as if he were creating content for social media, transforming the flow of his daily life into a video-documentary that investigates the mechanisms through which personal experience is shared in the digital age.
Angle#07 (2026) by LOREM is a multichannel installation that continues the artist’s investigation into states of consciousness and mythological machines: narrative devices based on large textual archives curated by the artist and reworked through statistical tools and combinatorial processes. In Angle#07, language becomes conscious of itself, giving rise to an epiphanic encounter in which an angelic presence is revealed.
Through the DVW, Metronom provides a space dedicated to the exhibition and presentation of digital art languages, with the aim of exploring their expressive possibilities and engaging with the complexity of the context shaped by new technologies.
The DVW’s distinctive position, which allows for 24-hour viewing from the street, makes it a unique exhibition venue. The projection facing outward from the premises becomes an urban intervention: a window display that also offers a way of reshaping and transforming the image of the street through the content presented.
Emanuele Amighetti is an art director and researcher based between Milan, Como and Switzerland. His work is characterised by an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach that brings together contemporary visual culture, new technologies and new media. He conceptualises, commissions and directs a wide range of projects, from branding to publishing, in collaboration with both emerging and internationally established photographers, filmmakers and fashion designers. From 2021 to 2023, he was Creative Director of Esquire Italia. Since 2025, he has served as Executive Image Director of Harper’s Bazaar Italia.
Theory&Practice: The Italian New Wave
METRONOM | Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
October 16 – 18, 2026 | 24h
For Theory&Practice, Lorem presents Angle#07, a new chapter in the DRA+ narrative universe, that continues the research begun in the previous works. The video continues Lorem’s investigation into states of consciousness and so-called “mythological machines”: narrative systems built from textual archives selected and curated by the artist, then transformed through combinatory processes and statistical models. In Angle#07, this inquiry takes the form of an apparition: an angel embodying consciousness and self-awareness through an evanescent and refined visual language.
Lorem’s practice explores states of consciousness and emotional landscapes through intense and immersive audiovisual narratives. Among the early artists to experiment with machine learning in the audiovisual field, Lorem has progressively developed a distinctive aesthetic language capable of intertwining sound, image, and artificial intelligence across AV performances, installations, experimental films, and music productions. The project is directed by Francesco D’Abbraccio.
Angle#07 | Lorem
METRONOM | Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
From June 3 to June 30, 2026 | 24h
For Theory&Practice, Giacomo Mercuriali created Life is Easy, a film that reflects the logic of contemporary existence. Blending visual aesthetics typical of online content—such as memes, reels, and advertisements—this AI-generated video work transforms ordinary moments into brief fragments of shared knowledge. Its fast-paced editing echoes the continuous consumption of social media, while the protagonist, the artist himself, stages and records his daily actions as if they were content intended for online circulation. The result is a kind of visual diary that examines how we narrate and make public our personal experience today.
Giacomo Mercuriali is an artist and professor of Cultural Anthropology and Phenomenology of Contemporary Art at the Fine Art Academies of Bergamo and Como.
Life is Easy | Giacomo Mercuriali
METRONOM | Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
from April 29 to May 26, 2026 | 24h
For Theory & Practice, Vittorio Maria Dal Maso presents Mnemosyne and my Advance, a video work that explores the perceptual threshold between reality and fiction. On the screen, augmented images unfold through the interplay of elements drawn from the surrounding environment and digitally generated components. This interaction produces a dynamic visual field that heightens the viewer’s sensory engagement. The imagery draws both from historical archives and contemporary culture, assuming the role of conceptual icons that activate layers of memory and interpretation. Dal Maso employs the device of a “double” monitor: the represented, virtual screen—at times fragmented or broken—and the physical display of the Digital Video Wall onto which the work is projected. Through this strategy, the artist establishes a visual pairing that intensifies the dialogue between the real and the represented, inviting viewers to question the boundaries of perception and mediation.
Vittorio Maria Dal Maso is an artist engaged in the experimental construction of images through artificial intelligence. He is also the founder of 700×100®, a creative studio dedicated to research and artistic production enhanced by AI.
MNEMOSYNE AND MY ADVANCE | Vittorio Maria Dal Maso
METRONOM | Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
From March 18 to April 14, 2026 | 24h
DIVERGENCES is a video work conceived by mixed-media artist Federica Sasso and sound artist Luca Pagan, who collaborate under the name 4E. During a live performance, a man who lost his left leg walks continuously on a treadmill, positioned within a sterile environment and fully immersed in a virtual reality simulation. The work reflects on how an external object is perceived both through digital systems and through embodied experience, connecting these dimensions to human perception of space and the stimuli that traverse it. The artists push the relationship between human beings and technology to its limits, inviting viewers to question the future transformations of interactions between the physical and the virtual, the role of ergonomic solutions, and the implications these may have within contemporary society.
Federica Sasso is a visual artist and researcher who uses photography, video, and artificial intelligence to explore the relationship between the human body and technology, as well as the boundary between the real and the virtual. Luca Pagan, a sound artist and performer, focuses his research on the interaction between sound, body, and space, with particular attention to sonic biofeedback and devices that integrate motion sensors, AI, and audio. Their collaboration led to the creation of studio 4E, an intermedial laboratory whose name refers to the four dimensions of cognition: embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended.
DIVERGENCES | Federica Sasso & Luca Pagan
METRONOM | Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
From February 18 to March 10, 2026 | h24
The work is rooted in the research project The Y, initiated in 2016, in which the artist reconstructs, through digital technologies, the identity of her biological father whom she never knew. Using gaming software and 3D sculpture, Zari models his face and expressions, giving shape to a presence that is both artificial and intimate.
With the project We Have the Same Eyes, the artist establishes a virtual relationship with her father, developing an emotional connection that crosses the boundaries between reality and simulation.
The work begins with a single word “Daddy”, learned from her mother and visible in an archival family photograph. From this original fragment, the project evolves into a physical 3D sculpture of the father’s face, and then, through video, focuses on the complexity and variability of his expressions.
Alba Zari’s practice (Bangkok, 1987) integrates photography and virtual tools through a documentary-based approach to investigate social, cultural, and identity-related dynamics, with particular attention to themes of memory and mental health. Her work questions photography as both trace and construction of the gaze, balancing analytical rigor with poetic sensitivity. Biographical experience lies at the core of her practice. Continuous movement since childhood has contributed to shaping a perspective attentive to the social and political dimensions of places and to conditions of fragility and marginalization.
We Have the Same Eyes | Alba Zari
METRONOM | Via Carteria 10 | 41121 Modena
from 28 January to 17 February, 2026 | h24
