Suburb View with Urban Vision: from 25 May to 14 June, the works become urban walls
With Suburb View, the project created with Urban Vision Group, artists Giacomo Lion and Natalia Saurin guide schools in creating digital works to mark the anniversary of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale. From 25 May to 14 June, the works become urban walls.
From rock art to digital, from hands coming together to networks of light criss-crossing the city. The 25th anniversary of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale is transformed into images, movement and a collective narrative thanks to the work carried out with schools as part of Suburb View, the project promoted with Urban Vision to enhance urban spaces and empower young people through digital creativity. The initiative involves secondary school students in creative workshops led by digital artists, Urban Vision staff acting as expert volunteers, and trainers from the Fondazione Mondo Digitale. The final works, whether videos or images, are designed to be projected onto Urban Vision’s LED walls in Rome, Milan and Naples.
In this edition, the starting point was the Foundation’s anniversary: an occasion that was not merely celebratory, but generative. How can 25 years of commitment to the right to knowledge be recounted through the eyes of young people? How does one transform a logo into a story, a word into an image, an educational experience into a visual work capable of inhabiting public space?
In Rome, the project was led by Giacomo Lion, a multidisciplinary creative designer who works on identity, experiences, narratives, spaces and visions. With the students, the work began with the Fondazione Mondo Digitale logo, viewed not simply as a brand, but as a set of narrative elements: the little man, the circle, the movement, the graphic symbol. From this arose the idea of transforming the little man from the logo into a character, almost a primordial figure, who traverses the stages of technological evolution: from stone to digital, from ancient symbols to contemporary tools, from the human need to communicate to new forms of artificial intelligence.
The result is a short, dynamic video, constructed as a workshop in visual thinking. The students worked on the concept, symbol, storyboard, visual tests, frame selection, editing and pacing. Artificial intelligence and digital tools were used not as a shortcut, but as creative means to be guided, questioned and refined. The ending, ironic and contemporary, captures the essence of the journey: not a rigid anniversary celebration, but a living narrative, close to the language of the young people.
In Milan, with Natalia Saurin, the story of the 25th anniversary took shape around the word connection. During the first sessions with the classes at the Rosa Luxemburg School, the shared search for keywords brought out images linked to nature, such as the rings of a tree trunk. In an age marked by rapid technological change and the growing presence of chatbots and artificial intelligence, the students chose to bring the physical, relational and human dimensions back to the fore: hands coming together, care, empathy, presence.
The visual work “Always Connected” brings together the digital and the analogue. Alongside luminous networks and signs of connection, real hands, flowers, stones and notebooks appear: simple elements that remind us that technology has value because people exist. In the project developed with Natalia Saurin, connection is not merely access to the internet or digital navigation, but the ability to feel what others feel, to collaborate, and to grow together.
From 25 May to 14 June, the works created for the ‘5 per mille’ initiative and those by schools will be displayed on urban walls, bringing into the public space a message that runs through the entire history of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale: innovation is never just a matter of tools, but of communities, languages, relationships and opportunities.
With Suburb View, the city thus becomes an open-air gallery. And the Foundation’s 25th anniversary is not recounted from on high, but through the eyes of those who are learning to imagine the future.
