To mark the start of the 2025/2026 academic year, ISIA Pescara welcomed the robotic work LEGAMI by artist and scientist Luigi Pagliarini, a pioneering figure in the fields of artistic robotics, artificial intelligence and neural networks applied to creativity.
The installation, visible from the outside and located in a public passageway, will be accessible daily to citizens and students, transforming the entrance to the ISIA into a symbolic meeting point between art, science and sustainability.
Originally created for Futuro Remoto 2009 – Città della Scienza, Naples, LEGAMI is a robotic art installation representing a robot cyclist pedalling to generate energy and illuminate a plant, a symbolic gesture of balance between man, nature and technology. The work, made largely from recycled electronic materials, thus becomes an ironic yet poetic manifesto on sustainability and the value of technological reuse as an aesthetic and civic act. A metaphor for the fragile but vital link between man, technology and nature. Redeveloping suburbs through technological waste.
The initiative is part of the “Refurbish Ninja – Recycling technology for a sustainable future” project, promoted by Metro Olografix in collaboration with Melting Pro, as part of the Call for Urban Redevelopment and Safety in the Suburbs (Prime Ministerial Decree of 25 May 2016) by the Municipality of Pescara and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
The project combined social innovation, circular economy and youth training, with the aim of giving new life to discarded electronic materials and converting technological waste into cultural and social value. Refurbish Ninja involved citizens, young people under 35 and institutions in investing intelligently in process innovation and training to address the challenges facing society.
In this context, the work LEGAMI represents the symbolic culmination of a process of urban and human regeneration, capable of transforming waste into light, energy and shared meaning.
The title LEGAMI refers not only to the ecological message of the work, but also to the deep human and professional ties that united Pagliarini to the ISIA in Pescara, where he held masterclasses, workshops and courses and collaborated with numerous teachers as an artistic and theoretical reference point. He was also a reference teacher for generations of students and designers.
A pioneer of dialogue between art and science, creator of avant-garde festivals such as PEAM Pescara Electronic Artists Meeting, Pagliarini leaves behind an intellectual and visionary legacy that continues to inspire contemporary research.
From Luigi Pagliarini’s statement:
‘LEGAMI, designed and created for Futuro Remoto 2009 (…and he created the Robot in his own image and likeness, Città della Scienza, 19 November 2009, Naples), is a robotic art installation that presents itself as a simple and ironic work but, at the same time, is imbued with meaning and calls for proper reflection on the relationship between human beings, technology and nature.
Starting with the use of the artwork “Fatherboard, the Superavatar”, a robot cyclist is staged engaged in an extreme and paradoxical environmentalist action: supporting the survival of a seedling through highly sophisticated equipment.
The installation features a life-size automaton on a bicycle that starts pedalling backwards as visitors pass by. This choice is certainly open to interpretation, but it already sounds like a distancing from excessively techno-triumphalist tones, as evidenced, among other things, by the use of recycled materials for the most part.
In short, throughout the work there is a reference to an eco-sustainable approach to technology and technological development. After all, the very presence of the bicycle is a symbol of a call for a change in lifestyle that goes beyond Futurist concepts and is expressed through sustainable mobility.
And, probably not coincidentally, the automaton’s boot bears the “NO OIL” plaque, a symbol of reference for activist movements such as Critical Mass.
However, the centre of gravity of the work is and remains a plant (Zamia), placed both in the centre of the exhibition hall – and consequently the centre of attention – and at the centre of the technological effort made. There is a desire to speak out in favour of eco-systemicity. In fact, too often, and especially in the field of advanced technology, we observe a contradictory attitude in which there may be a reference to ecology, but then the more technologically advanced and interesting something is, the more it triumphs. Unfortunately, this is true in both the artistic and scientific fields. Conversely, this work seems to claim that the eco-sustainability index of research in any field should be taken seriously into consideration.
