Cruïlla Festival Becomes a Citizen Innovation Space to Explore Artificial Intelligence and Digital Identity

• The ENIA UAB–Cruïlla Chair on Artificial Intelligence Research in Music and the Arts and the Computer Vision Center (CVC) are launching an open science and innovation space where festival-goers can explore AI applications and reflect on their societal impact.
• The initiative is supported by the Catalan Data Protection Authority (APDCAT) and the Barcelona Innova Foundation within the framework of Barcelona City Council's new ordinance on experimentation spaces.

From 8 to 11 July, the Cruïlla Festival will become a unique space for exploring the role that artificial intelligence can play in music and the arts within an open science and innovation framework. Researchers, public administrations, and companies from the innovation ecosystem are joining forces in this initiative to test emerging technologies in a real-world environment, placing citizens at the heart of the innovation process.

The initiative is led by the ENIA UAB–Cruïlla Chair on Artificial Intelligence Research in Music and the Arts—a joint initiative of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and Barcelona Events Musicals, the promoter of the Cruïlla Festival—under the direction of Dr. Fernando Vilariño, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the UAB, in collaboration with the Computer Vision Center (CVC).

The project will transform the festival into a living laboratory where attendees will be invited to explore socially acceptable uses of AI through academic and industry demonstrators. This year's edition, under the theme "Cruïlla is Home: Your Identity and AI," will showcase practical examples of how AI may affect digital identity, addressing topics such as the representation of the human body and hypersexualisation, the interpretation of personal preferences, and the tensions between individual and collective identity.

Beyond the technological experience itself, the initiative aims to incorporate citizens' perspectives into the validation of new AI solutions before their deployment, promoting open, responsible innovation aligned with European values.

The Festival as a Temporary City for Innovation

The initiative reflects the mission of the ENIA UAB–Cruïlla Chair to transform both the UAB campus and the Cruïlla Festival into living laboratories for innovation, where AI research is developed alongside public participation in defining what constitutes socially acceptable artificial intelligence.

For four days, the Cruïlla Festival becomes a temporary city, bringing together nearly 80,000 people who share spaces, activities, and cultural experiences. AI is already present across many dimensions of this ecosystem—from creative content generation to logistics, audience management, and planning. This environment offers a unique opportunity to observe how emerging technologies interact with people in real-life situations and to integrate these insights into the innovation process.

In this context, and in collaboration with the Catalan Data Protection Authority (APDCAT), the Chair is helping establish a pioneering open experimentation space at the festival—a regulatory learning sandbox that enables AI prototypes to be tested while fully safeguarding fundamental rights. Integrated into Barcelona City Council's new ordinance on experimentation spaces, this model ensures that the showcased demonstrators are prepared to comply with both the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the European Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), while actively involving citizens in defining socially acceptable uses of AI.

To support this objective, the Chair has worked closely with APDCAT to minimise the impact of AI systems on fundamental rights. The Authority has provided regulatory guidance, promoting privacy by design and by default, and has made available the Catalan FRIA model (Fundamental Rights Impact Assessment), a pioneering European methodology for the design and deployment of trustworthy and responsible AI systems, developed by APDCAT within its "DPD en Xarxa" community.

Four AI Initiatives to Be Validated in a Real-World Environment

The space will showcase four initiatives—two from industry and two from academia—which will be validated through the direct participation of festival attendees.

Among the industry initiatives is Lainapp, developed through the AI4ALL programme coordinated by the UAB Research Park, which uses AI to personalise content and monitor large-scale events in real time with the aim of improving the attendee experience.

The second industry participant is Tecous, a startup supported by the AI Accelerator programme coordinated by the RDI-IA Network, which is developing a platform that helps users better understand the terms and conditions of digital services.

The exhibition will also feature two academic demonstrators.

The first, "Like Face, Like Beat", was developed by students from the UAB Bachelor's Degree in Artificial Intelligence as part of a challenge-based learning project. Using a photograph and a short questionnaire, the system generates a personalised musical composition, identifies musical affinities, and suggests connections with artists and other festival attendees. The demonstrator explores AI's ability to infer tastes and preferences from multiple sources of information while encouraging visitors to reflect on the limits of these inferences and the responsible use of personal data.

The second academic demonstrator, CraftGraffiti, developed by the Computer Vision Center, invites visitors to become the stars of the Cruïlla Festival posters. Using a photograph, a generative AI system creates a personalised visual narrative inspired by the festival's musical universe and graffiti aesthetics—one of Cruïlla's most distinctive artistic expressions. Beyond the creative experience, the demonstrator encourages reflection on how generative models represent identity, the human body, and the stereotypes they may reproduce.

Citizens at the Heart of Responsible AI

The demonstrations will be accompanied by multimedia materials designed to encourage reflection, developed in collaboration with the TechnoValues Committee of the UAB–Cruïlla Chair. The committee has contributed ethical, regulatory, and societal analyses of the featured technologies. The aim is for attendees not only to experience AI firsthand but also to engage in an open conversation about the risks, opportunities, and values that should guide its development.

For the UAB–Cruïlla Chair, citizen participation is essential to building artificial intelligence that responds to society's needs. The arts and cultural festivals provide an ideal setting for fostering this dialogue, bringing research closer to people while incorporating their perspectives into the innovation process.

An Alliance Between University, Research and Culture

The ENIA UAB–Cruïlla Chair is a public-private initiative jointly established by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Cruïlla Festival, with the Computer Vision Center as a collaborating institution. Its activities are organised around three main research areas: AI as a creative tool (AI-CREATE), AI as support for artistic creation (AI-SUPPORT), and AI to enrich cultural experiences (AI-EXPERIENCE).

The project brings together researchers from the UAB, the Computer Vision Center, and the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), working alongside Barcelona Music Lab, Eurecat, and the Fundació Èpica La Fura dels Baus to promote open, responsible research that generates positive societal impact.

The project is partially funded through the European Next Generation EU programme under Spain's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA), led by the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.