Through a series of phygital experiences—hybrid spaces that intertwine the real and the digital—we explore, together with artist Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto, the Myth Cities. Using the medium of the panorama, we observe and analyze these places as living laboratories in constant evolution, capable of transcending the barriers of time.
A collection of hand-made drawings meets digital technologies… QR codes, NFC/RFID tags, AI. The human eye joins with the machine’s gaze to see more clearly and to understand more deeply. Inside the large panorama, the experience unfolds as an interactive narrative, made of layers and connections to be explored.
The visitor is guided into the construction of myth: the 360° panoramas become bridges between memory, myth, and imagination, crossing generations and different languages. Cities emerge not only as shapes and organizations in space, but as emotional and cognitive landscapes that live within us. Myth Cities operate on multiple symbolic levels – physical, narrative, perceptual – becoming living devices of myth-making in global culture.
Tour
AUKLAND, Nuova Zelanda // Nov-Dic 2025
The DEMO See the Invisible exhibition is coming to New Zealand for the GDI 2025 Green + Digital + Intelligent Built Environments conference. Together with the M-Cube Foundation, we will present the paper See the Invisible: How Generative AI Can Support Panorama Artists to Represent Spaces in a Deeper Way, While Understanding More About “Eternal Cities”, and we will hold the professional workshop Draw the Invisible on phygital panoramic environments.
GDI 2025 Green + Digital + Intelligent Built Environments
See the Invisible. How generative-AI can support panoramas artists to represent spaces in a deeper way, while understanding more about “Eternal cities”
Today, panoramas’ artists are experimenting solutions for drawing by using generative AI. The International Panorama Council (IPC) also counts on researchers and scholars who are also investigating and supporting the advancement in the sector. This paper is based on the See the Invisible research, carried on by Fondazione M-Cube (FMC) and the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) within THE NGI ENRICHERS TRANSATLANTIC program (2024-2025).
During the research, we used specific content to train and improve the performance of the AI in complementing humans when drawing panoramas. Research content concerns cities that in our world and across History, have acquired a powerful mythological allure, becoming “eternal cities”. In these cities, there are “facts and events” that cannot be seen through human naked eyes, but have the potential to reveal places and routes in a different way compared to how physical senses perceive them. The AI was in charge of generating that specific intangible layer in an equirectangular format.
This paper explores the two main approaches adopted in our research process:
(1) hand-made equirectangular drawing: identification of specific places in the city (still visible today) – on site drawing; archive investigation to collect historical materials related to places (not visible anymore today) and qualitative interviews to a cross-generational sample in the USA and Italy with respect to the perception of the myth and its value for people – reconstruction drawing; post-production process; perspectives’ variation process (e.g. different projections and views about the same place).
(2) AI-generated drawing: the AI has been responsible for drawing the “invisible” layer of Mythology, where the magic took shape in the mind of the artists and designers. To do that the algorithm has been trained with available datasets; knowledge from researchers, artists, curators; knowledge about objects from thematic communities.
BERLINO, Germania // Sett 2025
XXII. Conference Culture and Computer Science // Remixing analog and digital
Cities as Emotional-Cognitive Constructs.
Panoramic view to access Myth, Memory, and Meaning
Cities, architecture and infrastructures are evolutive concepts. They represent how our vision of space and time takes shape, how culture, relationships, emotions and fluxes are key elements in planning and building processes. In our era, a powerful new actor has entered this game, creating a third dimension, no less real and impactful than space and time: the digital.
Within this framework, this research explores the interplay between memory, myth, and transformation through immersive 360-degree panoramas as tools for both representation and engagement. Four interdisciplinary projects – Schianti (SCH), We’ll Meet Again (WMA), MultipliCity (MLC), and See The Invisible (STI) – served as case studies to investigate: (1) how memory and emotional responses can reshape places and their meanings; (2) how mythological cities are created and influence perception and identity; and (3) how low-threshold interaction can call for action cross-generations and foster individual/collective change.
Through hand-drawn and AI-augmented equirectangular panoramas, alongside public exhibitions, workshops, and participatory processes, the research examined both physical and digital spaces. Results demonstrate that immersive drawings can become media to leverage community pride, catalyze emotional healing, and act as symbolic interfaces to complex narratives.
Moreover, the analyzed projects demonstrated the potential of panoramas as co-design catalysts, opening new pathways for interpreting, reimagining, and regenerating space across artistic, academic, and civic domains.
Making of
The creation of an exhibition requires many hands and many creative minds… from drawing to tailoring, from technology to paper engineering. Claudine Vincent assisted us in crafting the first large immersive panorama—150 cm in diameter and 12 precisely assembled segments — to create a kind of globe… one that you can travel inside.