The Mirror, The Machine, and The Artist
What Michelangelo Pistoletto teaches us about art in the age of AI
There are moments in history when a new technology destabilizes art — not by replacing artists, but by forcing them to rethink their role.
Photography did this in the 19th century.
And today, artificial intelligence is doing it again.
To understand this moment, it helps to look at how artists responded the last time the ground shifted.
When Photography Changed Painting
When photography emerged, painting lost its monopoly on representation. A camera could capture likeness, detail, and realism with mechanical precision.
So painters asked a radical question:
If a machine can reproduce reality, what is painting for?
The answer did not lead to the end of art.
It led to transformation.
Movements like Cubism — pioneered by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque — abandoned single-point perspective and naturalistic representation. Instead of painting what the eye sees, they painted multiple perspectives at once. They painted memory, structure, and inner perception.
Photography pushed painting inward.
It liberated artists from imitation and invited them into interpretation.
Pistoletto’s Crisis and the Mirror
Born in 1933 in Biella, Italy, Michelangelo Pistoletto emerged in the early 1960s during another period of artistic uncertainty. Painting, as traditionally practiced, no longer felt sufficient.
Rather than abandon painting, he redefined it.
He began creating what became known as the Quadri Specchianti (Mirror Paintings): life-sized photographic images transferred onto polished stainless steel surfaces.
The effect was radical.
The viewer’s reflection became part of the artwork.
The surrounding environment entered the composition.
Time itself moved through the piece.
The artwork was no longer a static image. It was a living relationship.
Pistoletto later became a central figure in Arte Povera, a movement that rejected traditional hierarchies and embraced everyday materials and conceptual experimentation. But the mirror works were foundational — not just aesthetically, but philosophically.
They asked:
Where does art end and life begin?
Who completes the artwork?
Is the viewer separate from the work — or inside it?
The mirror did not compete with photography.
It used photography — and surpassed it.
Instead of capturing a frozen image of reality, it reflected living presence.
In a moment of artistic crisis, the mirror became a tool of reflection — literally and metaphorically.
Beyond Representation: Art as Social Practice
Pistoletto’s thinking did not stop at the gallery.
In 1998, he founded Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, an interdisciplinary laboratory connecting art with education, economics, ecology, politics, and social transformation.
For him, art was not isolated from society.
It was a catalyst within it.
The mirror expanded from a physical surface to a societal one.
AI as the New Mirror
Today, artificial intelligence confronts artists with a similar tension.
AI can generate images, text, music, and video in seconds. It can emulate styles, remix aesthetics, and simulate creative processes that once required years of practice.
Again, artists ask:
If a machine can generate images, what is left for us?
History suggests the answer is not retreat — but depth.
Just as photography freed painting from representation, AI may free artists from surface production.
AI can reproduce.
But it does not experience.
AI can simulate.
But it does not embody.
The opportunity, then, is not to compete with the machine on speed or volume — but to move into territory it cannot inhabit:
Embodied experience.
Ethical responsibility.
Contextual meaning.
Human intention.
AI becomes a reflective surface — much like Pistoletto’s mirror.
When we interact with generative models, we see reflections of our datasets, our culture, our biases, our imagination. The machine reflects us back to ourselves at scale.
And like any mirror, it can provoke discomfort — or insight.
The New Human: A Space for Reflection
At CODAME, as we explore The New Human, we are not asking whether AI will replace artists.
We are asking how artists, technologists, and thinkers respond creatively to this inflection point.
Just as Pistoletto used the mirror to confront his own artistic crisis and transform it into a new language, we now stand before a different kind of reflective surface.
The New Human Creative Hackathon is an invitation to step into that reflection.
Not to race against AI.
Not to fear it.
But to explore what it reveals.
What does authorship mean in the age of generative systems?
How does participation evolve?
How do we design responsibly?
What remains profoundly human?
Photography once pushed artists toward abstraction and interiority.
The mirror turned the viewer into co-creator.
AI now challenges us to redefine creativity itself.
The hackathon becomes a living laboratory — much like Pistoletto’s mirror — where technology is not an endpoint, but a surface for inquiry.
The future doesn’t arrive all at once.
It emerges through how we respond.
And just as Pistoletto once stood before a mirror and discovered a new artistic language, we now have the opportunity to stand before AI — to reflect, to question, to build — and perhaps shape the next movement.
The movement of the New Human.