Technology News |
By Alina Neacsu
Cisco has presented Echo, an immersive AI art installation at the Venice Biennale that turns visitor impressions of the city into light, music and motion. The project brings together artists, engineers and AI systems to explore how technology can support creative collaboration rather than replace it.
For eeNews Europe readers, the project is relevant because it shows how agentic AI, digital twins, collaboration tools and human-machine interfaces are moving beyond enterprise workflows into cultural and experiential environments.
Echo was developed with artist and scenographer Paolo Fantin, composer Dardust, Cisco engineers and designers, and partners H-Farm/Shado and Logotel. The installation invites visitors to share spontaneous impressions of Venice, which are then translated into an evolving audio-visual experience inside a 15-metre tunnel through the Venice Lagoon.
“We started from human emotion,” Fantin said. “The technology was there to make that connection, to translate those human emotions, those memories, into visual and musical poetry.”
Cisco’s Gianpaolo Barozzi, VP and chief technology officer for people, policy & purpose, said the project was intended to offer a more nuanced view of AI’s role in human creativity.
“In a world where utopians believe AI will take us to heaven and dystopians fear it will cause the end of humanity, I was trying to find a new way of looking at it,” he said, “particularly how AI and humans can not only coexist but work together and create together.”
The project required close work between creative and technical teams. Cisco used Webex during development, while AI tools helped the teams test ideas and move towards a working prototype.
“Our Cisco designers poured their energy and passion into this project,” Barozzi explained. “Thanks to our Webex platform, we shared feelings, feedback, and perspectives across dozens of meetings. And AI enabled us to ideate all kinds of ideas virtually and quickly, so that when we built a prototype, it was exactly what we wanted.”
The technical challenge was not only to generate content, but to create a system that could respond to abstract human input. Cisco product designer Nick Zolfo said this pushed AI beyond more conventional productivity use cases.
“A lot of the current focus and efficiency of AI tools is in things like engineering, administrative work, and even some design,” explained Zolfo. “When you ask AI to create an artistic representation of an abstract idea, you are pushing the boundaries of how we work with AI agents.”
Cisco senior software engineer Edgar Uribe said the team used digital twins and room-scale prototypes to help the artist experience the work before final installation.
“I needed to not just help create a platform for the artist to see his vision,” he said, “it needed to be one where he could feel his vision.”
For Cisco, Echo also supports its broader messaging around responsible AI and human-centred technology.
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