Dario Buratti Defines Systemic Direction as New Artistic Role in AI Art

In an article on Artribune, artist and theorist Dario Buratti argues that generative AI art shifts the artist's role from image-maker to 'systemic director' (regista sistemico). Buratti contrasts superficial prompt-based approaches with deeper 'opera-sistema' (system-work) where the artwork is the entire rule-based infrastructure—datasets, algorithms, constraints, and display. He cites Tate's definition of generative art as art made through a predetermined system, and the V&A's view of digital culture as an ecosystem. Historical precedents include Hans Haacke's 'Condensation Cube' (1963-1965) and Refik Anadol's 'Unsupervised' (2022), both exemplifying art as behavior or architecture. Buratti introduces his own work 'ResNet XX – The Geopolitical Sublime' (2026), which monitors real-time geopolitical sources and generates immersive audiovisual outputs via a neural network. He coins 'Systemic Direction' as a practice where the artist designs workflows, selects training archives, sets variation thresholds, and curates the dramaturgy of selection. Style becomes a 'distributed signature' in the system's behavior, not in surface traits. The article concludes that the key question is no longer 'which image to generate' but 'which worlds a system is allowed to show.'