Eva & Franco Mattes Present 'RAGE BAIT' at Palazzo Franchetti, Venice

The artist duo Eva & Franco Mattes, known for over 25 years of critically and ironically investigating digital culture, have opened the exhibition 'RAGE BAIT' at Palazzo Franchetti in Venice, curated by Nadim Samman and Luisa Haustein, running until June 30, 2026. The show confronts how algorithms and platforms shape emotions, behavior, and collective imaginaries, focusing on generative AI and the attention economy. The title refers to online content designed to provoke outrage for economic gain. The installation transforms the 16th-century palace interiors with raised floors, cable trays, and metal structures evoking data centers. Key works include 'Cursed Cat (in the Dataset)' (2025), where a language model trained solely on images of a black plush cat generates new images via a robotic arm to contaminate future training datasets, and 'Are You Still There?' (2025), which uses AI-generated characters to reenact authentic conversations from a suicide prevention hotline, later used to train chatbots, updating Joseph Weizenbaum's 'ELIZA effect' from the 1960s. The exhibition is supported by Palazzo Bentivoglio, APALAZZOGALLERY, Massimo Giorgetti, and CTRL+Alt Museum.