Marta Abbà
Technology can teach humans how to live more harmoniously with nature, helping us rediscover that synergistic connection which, at least in the West, has long been lost. Artist Ale Guzzetti demonstrates this through his deeply interconnected, synergistic art.
They go unnoticed, but over three hundred tiny technological beings are scattered across parks around the world. From the protected natural expanses of Morocco and China to the Galápagos Islands, from the volcanoes of Ecuador to the Azores, from the artificial islands of the United Arab Emirates to the deserts of Uzbekistan and Oman, from the Zen gardens of Japan to the landscapes of Myanmar and the United States. Who placed them there? And more importantly, what are they? They are “living” devices, active and entirely harmless to both privacy and the environment—though perhaps less so to those who threaten either. Caution is understandable, even wise, especially nowadays. But this time, we are talking about artworks: they were created by one of the first Italian artists to boldly engage with themes of technology, combining two of his passions into what was, at the time, a novel pairing. His name is Ale Guzzetti, and what we have just described is his Techno Gardens Project.
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Micro-sculptures inhabiting the world
Drawing on his love of travel, Guzzetti has, since 1999, been planting zoomorphic robotic micro-sculptures in the most remote corners of the planet, in what he describes as «an operation of environmental interactivity that transforms gardens into settings where these objects assume a new identity».
«Technology is no longer merely a tool used by humans for production—it becomes an autonomous being, governed by its own laws and able to interact with nature from a syncretic perspective».
Accustomed as we are to instinctively seeking out the ways technology harms the environment, discovering Techno Gardens is a pleasant surprise. This dispersed artwork reveals how technology can also engage positively with nature—it all depends on the human who conceives it and gives it form.
Ale Guzzetti, born in 1953, he studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts while simultaneously conducting research into electronic music at the Polytechnic University of Milan and the Centre for Computational Sonology at the University of Padua. He has been a PhD researcher at the University of Plymouth (UK), the Research Centre for Contemporary Art at Brera, and CE.R.CO – the Research Centre in Anthropology and Epistemology of Complexity at the University of Bergamo. In addition to exhibitions in Italy and Europe, his work has been shown in Lebanon, Canada, the USA, Hong Kong and China. In 1991 he received the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, and in 2000 he was among one hundred artists invited by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London to take part in The Next Millennium Museum. Between 2024 and 2025, together with Fabrizio Plessi, he represented Italy at the inaugural Ennova Art Biennale in Lang Fang.
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In this case, Guzzetti has created semi-mobile, almost invisible objects capable of symbiotically engaging with their environment and exploring it without depleting or polluting it, since they are solar powered. These tech micro-organisms emit faint sounds and light up at night, blending into the landscape. They represent a “new species” that Guzzetti introduces to challenge the antagonism between humans and the rest of nature, and instead suggest three coexisting forms of life: the viewer, a human being; the plant, a vegetal being; and the technological object, an informational being.
Fiery tones, exhibitionist acts, cries of protest do not belong to him, yet his environmental message is nonetheless powerful. Calm and clear, subtle yet sharp, it conveys «a new awareness that contrasts with monumental sculpture—a concept of sporogenesis in opposition to site-specificity». And it offers «an authentic, not merely virtual, connection among all living beings inhabiting the Earth».
When art meets technology
To truly “visit” the Techno Gardens Project, one would have to travel the world. But to grasp its essence and be challenged by its message, one need only visit the artist’s solo exhibition, on show from 6 May to 6 June at Fondazione Mudima in Milan. Entitled Different gazes – When robots met the ancient Gods, the exhibition is a journey within a journey—through Guzzetti’s artistic path, a succession of interactions with emerging technologies from various eras, always interwoven with ethics and poetry, intentions and messages. His passion dates back to the early 1970s: «I was studying painting and sculpture at the Brera Academy while simultaneously attempting to study and produce electronic music. For almost a decade, I nurtured my visual and musical skills separately until I began to add sound to found objects. That is when my sound sculptures were born, and I was finally able to bring the two together», Guzzetti recalls. He then confesses that the moment he did so, «the first problems arose—issues that still sometimes persist today when dealing with somewhat narrow-minded art professionals: galleries refusing to consider works with electric cables, neighbouring stands at fairs complaining about sound, the SIAE demanding levies for any sound emitted publicly by the sculptures».
Practical hurdles, logistical challenges, or mental blockades—but nothing insurmountable for someone who has chosen to give voice and movement to technology through his art. First electronics, then computers, now robotics—all interpreted in his own way, echoing the automata of Hero of Alexandria and his steam experiments, rediscovered 1,500 years later. And then the inventions of 12th-century engineer Al-Jazari, of Leonardo da Vinci, and above all Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century—mathematician, theologian, philosopher, inventor of submarines, flying machines, logical and calculating devices. «In all these figures, there is no distinction between art and technique, between music and architecture, between religion and mathematics», he explains. «What they share is a strong transdisciplinarity, a passion for invention, and above all, the ability to be great dreamers». These are his chosen masters: «they are the ones who have most influenced my artistic approach; they taught me to constantly search for other possible worlds».
A new creative paradigm
Always eager to explore interactivity and new paradigms for interpreting the relationship between viewer and artwork, Guzzetti remains attentive to a world increasingly saturated with art yet seemingly losing its capacity for concrete dreaming. He is ever more convinced that technology offers «unlimited tools for realising every imagined and imaginable world». His is a pragmatic imagination—the same that led him to spread micro-sculptures across the globe, inviting us to join in an «aesthetic game layered over a cognitive strategy of information exchange».
An expression strongly focused on technology but, in essence, also reflective of art: both involve the exchange of information. And so their forces and opportunities may be united in “works of meaning”. The qualifier “of meaning” must now be emphasised, because while technology once had a modest and measured presence in the art world, its current pervasiveness risks turning it into a dangerously invasive species. As Guzzetti highlights, for example, «by shifting from drawing and manual modelling to 3D scanning of real objects and digital modelling offering infinite variables, we are delegating the primary creation of artworks to machines». This prompts questions about new possible creative paradigms and who the true protagonist is. The role of the viewer has also changed, Guzzetti notes:
«The immersive use of digital images now elevates both art and its experience to new heights, completely overturning the role of the visitor from passive observer to co-actor in the work».
As for artificial intelligence, he remains “sceptical”: «I have seen some spectacular outputs so far, but they are still steeped in surrealism. Yet I believe that in the very near future, artists will learn to find a language and visual grammar that are more autonomous and original with AI. It is not enough to use sound or video to be trendy: technology provides powerful tools, but they must be embedded within an artistic vision».
Projecting into the future to care for it
Guzzetti’s artistic vision evolves and shifts, making room for technology to do the same. It stays coherent yet welcomes innovation. This is well known to Gino Di Maggio, who has been following his work for some forty years.
Di Maggio is also curating Guzzetti’s solo exhibition in Milan, seeking to highlight how «his relationship with technology has grown increasingly complex and sophisticated over time, without ever losing that artisanal quality that characterises an artist’s work and sets it apart from the approaches of philosophers of science and epistemologists. These are artists pursuing their own personal research, using technology as one of many products of science». There is no unnecessary complexity, no forced attempts at futurism, no bandwagon-jumping for the sake of relevance. Guzzetti may seem a challenging artist to curate, but for Di Maggio it is a pleasure and a privilege. Why?
Because «his artistic work suggests—at times with a touch of irony—a joyful and playful relationship with technological development, which in this exhibition is even elevated to a divine level, as it encounters the ancient gods».
Gino Di Maggio is a Sicilian native who has lived in Milan since 1950, Gino Di Maggio has been involved in art and culture since the late 1960s. Before founding Mudima, he managed art galleries and also engaged with experimental music and literature. He has had close relationships with many of the Milanese (and other) artists who have shaped the city’s cultural scene over the past fifty years. He remains a key figure in understanding the past, present and future of Milanese culture.
Surprisingly—though perhaps not for Guzzetti—technology here becomes a tool for connecting with the environment, and an opportunity to discover more ethical and respectful ways of relating to it. His works invite humans to engage—at the very least, with their gaze—with an artificial presence: «it is a new situation, perhaps unsettling, but we always have the choice to play along—or not», says Di Maggio. He adds that young people are more willing to accept the invitation: «not only because they discover a new artistic language, but also because they feel more comfortable with it, being “naturally projected towards the future”». Art may not yet be able to foresee that future, but according to Di Maggio, it will remain «the most sublime activity, the highest expression of human creativity, the most powerful testament to our existence in the world».
