MEET on Tuesday, May 26, at 6 p.m. will host one of the highlights of the public program for Heaven+Earth, the site-specific project for the Civic Museum of Castelbuono (Palermo) by artists John Sanborn and Ionee Waterhouse, conceived by Laura Barreca and running from May 24 to August 30, 2026, in the spaces of the Castello dei Ventimiglia in Castelbuono, home to the Museum.

The talk will feature a direct discussion with the two creators of the work: one of the pioneers of American video art and former MEET The Media Guru John Sanborn, and Berlin-based artist Ionee Waterhouse.

The Project: Where Artificial Intelligence Meets Historical Heritage

The event on May 26 will provide an opportunity to explore the technical details and artistic vision behind Heaven+Earth, a multimedia installation that bridges the celestial and earthly realms. The project is based on a process of visual hybridization: the artists scanned the zoomorphic and phytomorphic figures from the 17th-century Baroque stuccoes by Giacomo and Giuseppe Serpotta (housed in the Palatine Chapel of the Castle), superimposing them onto the faces of some residents of the Sicilian village.

Through the use of AI and generative animation, these images come to life on the museum’s architecture. The visual experience is complemented by an immersive quadraphonic soundscape, curated by sound designer Andrea Ludovic, to explore the themes of memory, fragility, and transcendence.

The artists

• John Sanborn: a key figure in the second generation of American video, the artist has a career spanning over forty years, ranging from his early experiments in the 1970s to productions for MTV and interactive installations. His connection to MEET is longstanding: Sanborn was, in fact, one of the leading “gurus” featured in past editions of Meet the Media Guru, the series of events conceived by MEET that has hosted the world’s leading experts in digital art.

• Ionee Waterhouse: a visual artist specializing in video mapping, immersive environments, and artificial intelligence applied to animation, focused on transforming historic architecture into digital narrative spaces.

This project is supported by PAC2025 – Plan for Contemporary Art, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, under the patronage of the University of Palermo, Department of Robotics, and the University of Bologna (“Alma Mater”), and in collaboration with MEET Digital Center in Milan and the Ypsigrock Festival.