The idea was born 4 years ago in a family context, when Mauro Annunziato, a career as a digital artist, imagined a platform to simplify the work necessary to develop images and interactive installations by integrating the experiences made in 20 years of creative work.
Over the years, this idea continued to develop until ideally reaching broader objectives. From a simple system to make the creative process easier, he began to think of a way to share this idea with other artists starting a collaborative process.
Among various mistakes and attempts, he continued to update the platform until December 2022, when, satisfied with the progress achieved, he began to think of an entrepreneurial initiative for artists and operators in the performing arts (theatre, concerts, museums, music, dance…). Since then, I (Leonardo Annunziato) also joined the project, beginning to develop ideas for spreading the platform.
The initial idea became a “development plan”. We worked on the idea to design a creative environment based on a core framework and a "modular" approach where many artists can develop and integrate new modules. This concept is familiar with the “WIKI culture” where a little effort of many people makes together a great result.
We decide to give the name “Raphael” (from Raffaello Sanzio) because this project is inspired by the spirit of the digital renaissance. Symbolically it is a bridge between art and new digital technologies
The inspiration was a community, where developers and users can collaborate in order to grow together, participating in the development and sharing the economic returns necessary to support the project. The ambition was to create a place where artists can collaborate, share and co-create. So the idea of a “collaborative diffused company” began to emerge. This gave birth to the project for a "Digital Art Living Lab" (DALI) to allow the future grow of the platform expressing the community itself.