Synthetic Creatures.

Starting May 7, 2026
Thursday through Sunday – 3:00 PM / 7:00 PM
MEET Digital Culture Center
Viale Vittorio Veneto 2, Milan

Since 1974, Rebecca Allen has been asking a question that continues to challenge our present: where does the body fit in when we inhabit virtual worlds? In a context initially dominated by abstractions and geometric calculations, her research has helped redefine the digital realm as a space where corporeality is not only represented but becomes a language and a critical tool. As one of the very few women active in computer animation in the 1970s, Allen introduced synthetic figures capable of asserting a clear position: technology is not neutral, and the digital realm requires an embodied perspective capable of questioning its cultural and political implications.

The arrival of a new technology: the computer

“I received the calling in 1973. While struggling for direction and inspiration in art school, two things became clear. My work must move away from static media and become dynamic, involving the dimensions of motion, time, sound and rhythm. The second issue involved a growing conviction that artists must grapple with the latest technology; the computer. I was drawn to artists of the early 20th century who recognized the powerful impact of the Industrial Revolution on all of society. During that time, the machine and the process of mechanization formed the theme of many art works while providing artists with new art-making tools and techniques. 

In the early 1970’s it was apparent that the computer, the intelligent machine, would profoundly affect many facets of our lives. I was determined to participate in the computer revolution, to explore the potential of the computer as an extension of the human mind and body.  I, too, wanted to present society with a vision, one that would question our relationship with emerging technology and with each other. As technology permeated our lives I wanted to insert more humanity into the machine (and more femininity). 

In 1974 I created two of the earliest works of computer animated art, Girl Lifts Skirt and Flirt. These pieces were statements about a woman’s body in motion, while serving as a counterpoint to the very technical process of making the work. 

This convinced me to infiltrate the world of computer engineers; to turn the “cold, hard, unemotional” computer into something sensual that would provide new directions for the arts.  I found that in order to give birth to a number of my ideas, new art making tools were required. My creative studio for many years had to be a computer research laboratory”.

Human movement as a form of expression and communication

“Several of my works involve the study of human motion as a form of expression and communication. Through the abstraction of motion, I can reveal the subtle language of body movement and create dynamic works that are abstract yet deeply familiar. 

Eventually, this interest extended to a more general study of organic motion that led me to early work in complex generative art, experimenting with fluid “natural” motion and organic forms that had been particularly difficult to simulate using the computer in the early years. The form of artificial intelligence that has most interested me as an artist, has been the area of Artificial Life, an interdisciplinary field focused on creating and studying natural life-like systems, their properties and their behaviors, including emergent behaviors, expressed through motion”.

An art form that reexamines the definition of reality

“My work addresses issues of gender, behavior, cultural identity and artificial life, sometimes through the metaphors of popular culture.  These areas continue to go through dramatic transformations and prove to be fertile subjects for artistic exploration. Drawing from current discourse, it is clear that our advancing technologies require us to reexamine the fundamental definition of reality as well as the relationship between the body and the soul, between each other, between humans and nature. 

I have always worked on notions of the self within computer technologies.  The sense of having a self – or selfhood, including the selfhood of artificial life forms. My understanding of how to translate this strange language of 0s and 1s into colors and shapes and sounds grew into knowledge about how to shape sensory worlds which tug on feelings.  With my early involvement in modelling human motion, artificial intelligence, dynamic artificial life forms, I always tried to keep something palpable in these rather sterile environments, some kind of “humanity”.

Over the last five decades, I’ve utilized various forms of emerging digital media to explore ideas around physicality and virtuality, nature and illusion, the body and the mind, and what it means to be human as technology redefines our sense of reality and identity”.