FMC #01

05.05 / GLEAM – Workshop #2 at MART (Rovereto)
A full day of co-design and testing open to students, together with a group of blind and visually impaired users, in collaboration with MART, Oriente Occidente, and Cooperativa Abilnova. A hands-on experience blending tactile art exploration and (video)games.
https://www.mart.tn.it

21–23.05 / GLEAM – Workshop #2 at SightCity Frankfurt (DE)
Three days of alpha testing for the new (video)game, open to the public, in collaboration with NEEEU GmbH and featuring blind and visually impaired users.
https://sightcity.net/en/home

The GLEAM project has indirectly received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation action programme, via the XR4ED – Open Call issued and executed under the XR4ED project (Grant Agreement no. 101093159).

24.05 / Modern Mythology Course at HTW-Berlin (DE)
FMC launches the second edition of the Modern Mythology course in Berlin, with a focus on museums as new incubators for business models and emerging internationally relevant professions.

29.05 / From Antiquity to Contemporary in Tampere (FI)
Following the success of THE MYTH OF SUPERHEROES exhibition at the Comicon Museum in San Diego, FMC opens a new chapter at the Vapriikki Museum.
https://www.vapriikki.fi/en/exhibition/superheroes-from-antiquity-to-contemporary/

31.05 / YUNKA Festival (Monterenzio – BO)
FMC presents its research on biomaterials and the deep connection with nature. Plants, animals, and bacteria — these are the true superheroes regulating our lives.
https://yunkafestival.it

07.06 / Dua Lipa at I-Days, Milano 
At the SNAI La Maura Hippodrome for the concert of the Pop diva, loved by the greatest fashion designers and undisputed protagonist of the post-pandemic music scene.
https://www.idays.it/artista/65/dua-lipa

11–14.06 / NOVA ROCK (Pannonia Fields, Nickelsdorf – AT)
Four days surrounded by the myths of the music world — Slipknot, Korn, Linkin Park, and
Electric Callboy — at one of Europe’s largest rock events. FMC joins the communities.
https://www.novarock.at/en

16.06 / FASHION HERITAGE ACADEMY Open Day (Turin)
Starting at 5:30 PM at the Piero della Francesca Center, meet the coordinators and
instructors of the new Academy. FMC invites you to explore today’s and tomorrow’s fashion
professions.
Register to participate here

17.06 / GLEAM – Workshop #2 at the National Cinema Museum (Turin)
A co-design and testing day with blind and visually impaired users, in collaboration with the
National Cinema Museum, Tactile Vision, and UIC — exploring cinema through sound and
(video)games.
https://www.museocinema.it/

With the advent of ready-to-wear, around the 1960s, the tailoring workers of Turin and Piedmont in general began a conversion on an industrial level, moving from made-to-measure to mass production. In this particularly happy scenario for the sector, Piedmont at that time confirmed its excellence in textiles with an extensive map that touched on the Biella wool mills, the Chieri cotton mills (from where a particular raw fabric exported to the United States under the name of ‘jeans’) and the Alba area, with the birth of the Miroglio company. The creation of Facis, a company dedicated to mass-produced men’s clothing, later expanded into the colossal Gruppo Finanziario Tessile (GFT), brought Piedmont to the top of Italian fashion manufacturing.

During GFT’s heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, the company produced some of the most important brands in the Italian and French fashion design scene, including Giorgio Armani, Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro and Claude Montana. The bankruptcy of GFT in the late 1990s, however, decreed the collapse of the entire Piedmontese production sector, which counted hundreds of the Group’s satellite tailoring workers scattered throughout the territory.

Despite the gradual decline of the sector, the high-end manufacturing DNA of Turin and Piedmont has survived over time and much of the know-how has not been totally lost.
Confirmation of this are the production hubs of the Kering Group (Gucci, Saint-Laurent, McQueen) and the Valentino and Versace brands, which have recently settled in the region and are continuing to expand. All these companies are looking for an intangible heritage that, far from design – now totally settled in Milan – is identified in the figures of dressmakers, pattern makers and other textile workers from high training schools.
The possibility opened up by the Fashion Heritage Academy to also explore fashion in the digital and technological world, lays the foundations for an interesting collaboration with the Turin Competence Centre and the FABLAB network.

Expected impact, the profiles we form

The M-Cube Foundation aims to respond to the demands of an increasingly global market, but at the same time increasingly impoverished in terms of human skills and expertise. In an era in which AI and robotics are conquering important spaces not only in production but also in creative processes, it becomes essential to train minds and hands so that the art and inspiration of which we are capable is not lost.

The Fashion Heritage Academy will make it possible to establish important partnerships with companies already operating in the fashion industry, but also to dialogue with international brands and, above all, to rethink the ‘craft of fashion’, looking at it from new perspectives, discovering new materials, logics and approaches. The teaching of English language and ‘body knowledge’ aims to open new professional bridges, capable of crossing cultures (East and West), ages, aesthetics or what is perceived as disability.

The Fashion Heritage Academy will allow internships at companies, thanks to partnerships signed with the aim of supporting the response to real market needs and the training of coherent professional profiles. At the same time, the relationship with companies will allow the knowledge and innovation developed at an experimental level in the Fashion Heritage Academy – a real sandbox – to be transferred to them together with students and professionals.

The view of the future is made particularly solid through the course in Digital Fashion: with only a few high-level units already active on this subject in the world, the Academy will bring international skills and expertise to Turin, and with them fundamental input to stimulate innovation and leadership in the Piedmont region as well. Fashion linked to technology and the digital worlds, opens up a further front of collaboration with companies operating today in the world of platforms, video games, online fashion shows and metaverse, often in search of skills still to be built.
Finally, the Fashion Heritage Academy will offer professionals in the sector who have already been trained, the possibility of access to specialised modules, functional to enhance their skills or to think about redefining their operations in the new chains of this sector.

Today sees the start of the new Cinema/TV section: a look at the world of fashion through the screens. In this new monthly appointment we will explore together the intersection between fashion and media, analysing films and TV series that have marked (and continue to mark) the way we see the world. We will see how moving images narrate and construct our visual culture, leaving a mark on our collective imagination. We begin this journey with a timeless classic that redefined elegance and turned Paris into a catwalk: Funny Face (1957) by Stanley Donen.

In the age of Instagram and TikTok, where trends are born and die in the space of a post, some styles stand the test of time. Think of the all-black look, the oversized coat or the timeless appeal of chic Paris – all of which the film Funny Face helped to make iconic. But why does a film from over 60 years ago continue to inspire stylists, photographers and influencers? The answer lies in the perfect combination of cinema, fashion and art.

Funny Face is much more than a musical comedy: it is a manifesto of timeless elegance. The film marks one of the most famous collaborations between cinema and haute couture, thanks to the meeting between Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy. The French designer, who had already created the actress’s refined style in Sabrina (1954), on this occasion signed some of the most iconic looks, from the cocktail dress to the sumptuous red gown sported at the Louvre.

But the magic of the film does not stop with Givenchy’s clothes and the costumes of the great Edith Head: Funny Face is a tribute to the legendary photographer Richard Avedon, the creator of the quantum leap in fashion photography that went from static to dynamic storytelling, taking models out of studios and setting the shots in urban contexts. A similar approach is evident in the film: fashion is not only exhibited, but ‘’lives’’ in the most emblematic places in Paris. It is no coincidence that it is Richard Avedon himself who curates the film’s promotional images, consolidating the link between cinema, fashion and photography. 

In Funny Face, fashion becomes an integral part of the narrative. The entire plot revolves around the fashion industry and Paris becomes the ideal backdrop for an inner transformation and more. The protagonist, Jo Stockton (played by Audrey Hepburn), initially appears with a simple look – cigarette trousers, black turtleneck and ballet shoes – but is soon sucked into the glamour of haute couture. Fashion becomes the language through which Jo expresses a new awareness of herself and the world she is living in. Every scene is designed to enhance the communicative power of clothes. From hyper-stylized photographic sets to improvised fashion shows in key locations in Paris. The film celebrates fashion as art, dream and status symbol.

From a technical point of view, Stanley Donen exploits Technicolor to enhance fabrics, colours and volumes, turning Funny Face into a real fashion magazine in motion. Emblematic is the famous ‘’Think Pink’’ sequence which celebrates colour as a symbol of energy, modernity and seduction. The sequence also brings with it a deeper reflection on the fashion world and the problem of trend creation and diffusion: the scene sees the fashion magazine editor (played by Kay Thompson) complaining about the low quality of the next issue.

It is she who is the creator and promoter of a new style and who determines how the American woman (the modern woman) should dress in order to be considered stylish, fashionable and up-to-date. The creation of a trend implies a power of persuasion that goes beyond clothing: it is a true construction of an identity. 

In this perspective, the magazine is the medium through which the trend (the colour pink in this case) is imposed by an elite and subsequently adopted and reproduced by the masses. Fashion, therefore, is no longer just an act of individual expression, but becomes a process of social production, a power game in which artistic direction and cultural influence define what is ‘’modern’’, ‘‘cool’’ and ‘’trendy’’.  In an era where trends are born and die out quickly on social media, where the content that appears to us on Instagram and TikTok dictates trends and consumes them in record time, Funny Face invites us to reflect on how, although trends may change and media evolve, the mechanism of fashion production and distribution as a language remains surprisingly similar. 

The film continues to remind us that behind every trend there is a vision, an idea and an act of creation that can cross decades and stand the test of time, and this is also thanks to the help of cinema, a special space where fashion can establish itself as art, culture and language capable of settling desires and visions. And precisely because it works with the moving image, cinema is able to give fashion not only a form, but also a soul, something that runaway trends, however viral, can hardly build.

GLEAM
Funded as one of the top 20 projects by the Horizon Europe program within the development of the XR4ED platform, GLEAM – Game to Learn and Enable Accessibility through Modern Mythology is currently in development.
Led by the Berlin-based tech company NEEEU GmbH, with Fondazione M-Cube as a key partner, the project involves MART (Rovereto) and the National Cinema Museum (Turin) as the Italian venues for co-design workshops with blind and visually impaired individuals.
GLEAM’s primary goal is to develop an inclusive (video)game connected to the worlds of Modern Mythology, museums, and education, bringing together visually impaired and sighted individuals in a shared challenge. The aim is to create a bridge between these two spheres, integrating technologies such as spatial audio, audio augmentation, and tactile feedback.

The GLEAM project has indirectly received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation action programme, via the XR4ED – Open Call issued and executed under the XR4ED project (Grant Agreement no. 101093159).

SEE THE INVISIBLE
See the Invisible focuses on the interaction between reality and myth in cities such as London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, New York, and Venice — whose allure and iconic status transcend time, making them “Eternal Cities.”
The research, led by Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto within the NGI Transatlantic Enrichers program for Fondazione M-Cube and in collaboration with the New York Institute of Technology, will lead to the development of a prototype based on New York City.
The project combines hand-drawn 360° panoramas and immersive generative AI algorithms to explore the interaction between humans and machines and to address, understand, and represent complex subjects in space and their evolution over time.

THE MYTH OF SUPERHEROES

The exhibition “The Myth of Superheroes”, curated by Fabrizio Modina for M-Cube Foundation, Federica Montani and Eugenio Martera for Contemporanea Progetti, tells the story of superhuman characters: how their emergence was influenced by the tales, poems and aesthetics of ancient cultures, which, combined with modern stories, gave rise to the superheroes we know today. The Superman comic book, first published in 1938, was the initial impetus for the rise of these new heroes. Over the past hundred years, comic artists and writers have created ever more incredible worlds, starting from a medium originally conceived for children’s entertainment, then evolving into an original means of expression and a contemporary art form.
Starting in September 2024 at the Comic-Con Museum  in San Diego (U.S.A.), “The Myth of Superheroes” moves in May to the Vapriikki Museokeskus in Tampere, Finland, and then continues its journey around the world in other museums to be defined.

SUPERHEROES

The exhibition simply titled “Superheroes”, curated by Alain Bieber at the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf (Germany), has a more pop and playful approach than “The Myth of Superheroes”, with loans from Fabrizio Modina’s collection. The supersaturated Technicolor installations give the exhibition a precise aesthetic imprint borrowed from the graphic language of comics and the narrative of the journey is based above all on the impact of the superhero figure in the present time. From the sharing of universal values ​​to LGBTQ+ ones, modern demigods (and their nemeses) become the mirror in which the great social themes are reflected, made accessible thanks to the simplification of interaction with the reader. The exhibition, which has been met with enormous public success, so much so that it was extended in the first months of its opening, will end in May, and then move to other German museums.

NEW PROJECTS
Four new project proposals have been submitted by FMC in response to the Horizon and Creative Europe program calls:

<EI>Museums<AI>
Understanding Emotions in Phygital Environments. Setting up through Emotional Intelligence & Artificial Intelligence. Implementing New Tools for the Museum Sector
Lead: Politecnico di Milano

<EI>Art<AI>
Understanding Emotions in Phygital Environments. Performing by Emotional Intelligence & Artificial Intelligence. Implementing Tools for the Audiovisual Sectors
Lead: Politecnico di Milano

EUROPEAN ARTIST BANK
Lead: SINUS (DE)

ENCOMPASS
Expanding Networks across Cities and Organisations around Music to Promote Alternative Sustainable Systems
Lead: Turismo Vivencial (ES)