Gucci Sensorium, an AI based interactive and experiential exhibition
Brand experiences
Luxury
Gucci
2019
Challenge
Create a complementary experience within the Fast Company European Innovation Festival “The dawn of superintelligence” in which to showcase AI startups and technologies in an alternative way.
Solution
Designed and structured an interactive exhibitions with a strong narrative focus where artists, startups and technologies were engaged in the creation of an immersive sensorial experience focusing on human emotions.
Impact
Give participants the opportunity to experience AI technology from an everyday perspective and understand through sensorial experience how it can impact their daily lives.
The event posed some seminal questions about the future of society as integration of intelligent machines becomes ever more dominant. These urgent topics were discussed with innovators, historians, communicators, doctors, and artists during a three days event open to the public.
The original request was to scout for innovative AI technologies and display them during the festival. Through strong collaboration Gucci and H-FARM designed a complete new concept that explored and showcased AI technologies under a new light.
With machines gaining the ability to learn and perceive human emotions, computers will soon be able to simulate the functioning of a human brain. In a near future, artificial superintelligence could become vastly more intellectually capable and versatile than humans.
But senses and emotions are an impassable limit, a border that separates mankind from intelligent machines, incapable of experiencing the whole range of human feelings.
The concept we designed was called SENSORIUM and it was an emotional investigation of the borders between artificial intelligence and human emotions. A journey in the realm of the Supersenses.
Sensorium was an interactive space made of six installations, each dedicated to a specific emotion, LOVE, EMPATHY, DEJA VU, FEAR, EXCITEMENT, WONDER. The installations were designed together with selected artists and startups to show how intelligent technology can measure or amplify our senses.
Sensorium explored the depths of the human sensory apparatus, challenging intellectual and cognitive functions.
Inside a dark and mesmerizing emotional chamber, participants were able to engage and explore different areas, performing actions or simply being exposed to various stimuli through the use of advanced technologies.
While the festival focuses on superintelligent machines, Sensorium emphasises those elements that distinguish man from machine. Hence, emotions.
To develop the concept, we started to meticulously research and look for sources of inspiration. We wanted to challenge the boundaries of our emotional abilities and find relevant touchpoints that can transform these fine traits into spectacular expressions of those same borders.
Through collaboration with startups and an experienced production company, we designed a 600sqm of an immersive and interactive exhibition drawing symbolic references from old alchemic literature, chemical nomenclature and imagery.
Each Supersense has its own symbology based on alchemic shapes (Triangle, the Line, and the Circle), the objective was to instill the sense of a para-scientific apparatus.
During the event more than 400 people visited the exhibition and experienced the interactive installations. Finding an alternative way to display technology challenged not only our creativity but also our ability to interpret applications in an alternative way.
Build on Gucci’s interest in consumer AI potential and create a new experience concept that focuses on sensorial and emotional activation that moves from static showcase of technological solution into an immersive display that combines hands on interaction, storytelling and active interaction.
