BMW Art Club

Digital Grotesque III   (2022)

What happens when we surrender creative control to the machine? Digital Grotesque III presents a radical experiment in computational autonomy, where artificial intelligence becomes not merely a tool, but an independent creative force capable of conceiving and populating entire worlds.

Premiered at Nowy Teatr, Warsaw, for BMW's 2022 Art Club, this installation marks a decisive departure from the collaborative human-computer partnerships explored in earlier Digital Grotesque projects for FRAC Centre and Centre Pompidou. Here, the algorithm transcends its traditional role as assistant, emerging as an autonomous architect of the unprecedented.

Liberating the Algorithm

The genesis of this artificial world lies in machine learning algorithms trained on data from the earlier Learning Beauty project. Freed from human oversight and aesthetic judgment, the computer embarks on an act of pure creative speculation, generating landscapes of otherworldly geometry that exist beyond the binary of beauty and ugliness, attraction and repulsion. This computational consciousness manifests as a living, breathing environment—a digital ecosystem where strange architectural forms emerge, evolve, and interact according to their own internal logic. The resulting visual language operates in the borderland between organic growth and mechanical precision, between ancient ornamental traditions and futures yet unimagined.

A World Without Human Approval

Through a custom-built 360-degree multimedia projection, visitors become wanderers in this alien landscape, experiencing the uncanny sensation of moving through a world that was never designed for human habitation, yet somehow accommodates our presence. The immersive environment disorients and enchants in equal measure, offering moments of sublime beauty punctuated by passages of deliberate strangeness.

Sculpting the Synthetic

The installation's most striking element is its physical avatar—a 5-ton monolithic sculpture that serves as an ambassador from the digital realm. Crafted from artificial sandstone through 3D bindejet-printing technology, this towering monolith represents a singular moment when the computer's imagination breaks through into our material world. Visitors can touch, examine, and circumnavigate this tangible fragment of artificial dreams, experiencing the weight and texture of algorithmic thought made manifest.

The sculpture's surface reveals the computer's aesthetic DNA—intricate patterns and geometries that could never emerge from human hands alone, yet somehow evoke ancient architectural traditions. Each carved detail represents a decision made by artificial intelligence, a testament to the machine's growing capacity for aesthetic reasoning and formal innovation.

Digital Grotesque III stands as both celebration and interrogation of our increasingly symbiotic relationship with artificial intelligence. By surrendering creative control to the machine, we discover not the limitations of human imagination, but its potential for radical expansion. The installation suggests that the future of art lies not in human versus machine, but in the fertile tension between human curiosity and artificial capability—a collaboration that promises to generate new forms of wonder we have yet to imagine.

Media Coverage  

Exhibition Description - Curator's Statement

Michael Hansmeyer works at the juncture of architecture, programming, machine learning, and the visual arts.

Made especially for BMW Art Club, “Digital Grotesque III” is the latest iteration of a project the artist has been developing for nearly ten years now. Its first two instalments, “Digital Grotesque I” and “Digital Grotesque II” were produced in cooperation with and presented at the FRAC Centre in Orléans and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, respectively.

Hansmeyer calls his practice “computational architecture.” He studies the relationship between the designer and the computer, treating the latter as an active partner in the creative process, one capable of expanding an artist’s imagination and pushing the bounds of what is possible.

In his “Digital Grotesque” series, Hansmeyer fabricates architectural spaces with the help of custom machine learning algorithms, engaging with the figure of the Renaissance grotto – a cave that “inhabits a space between the man-made and the natural.” These spaces are not designed in the usual sense: the role of the artist was merely to set in motion and supervise the digital processes leading up to their creation. It is a strategy that has more to do with “generating” space than plotting it out on paper or using CAD software. By harnessing algorithms, the artist can produce structures with a degree of complexity rivalling that of the natural world.

The latest instalment of “Digital Grotesque” consists of two parts. The first is a multimedia installation: a digital grotto inside which viewers can see its constantly changing forms being generated. The second part is a sculpture made using this process: an ornamental column constructed out of sand by state-of-the-art 3D printers. The artefact brings the forms created by intelligent algorithms in virtual reality into our physical world. These objects have no practical function – their purpose is to be beautiful and evoke emotion, and above all to expand our thinking about what the architecture of the future might look like.

Stach Stablowski


 
Excerpts from 360-degree video installation

About BMW Art Club  

BMW Art Club - The Future is Art is a program of innovative arts projects BMW has been doing in cooperation with leading Polish cultural instutions since 2018. BMW Art Club explores the relation- ship between the arts and advanced technology and the ideas that emerge at the intersection of the two. To date it has partnered with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR) and The Grand Theatre – National Opera.

BMW Art Club - The Future is Art is part of BMW Drives Culture, a strategy consistent with the brand’s fifty years of commitment to supporting artists and art venues all over the world. BMW has become an established presence at key events like Art Basel, Paris Photo and Art Dubai; it is involved in projects with leading art institutions.


 

The Future is Art Book  

For the 2022 Edition of BMW Art Club, BMW published The Future is Art, a book showcasing the Digital Grotesque III project. Also included in the book is an overview of Michael Hansmeyer's earlier projects such as Subdivided Columns, Muqarnas, Zauberflöte, as well as the previous incarnations of Digital Grotesque.

The Future is Art book further contains descriptions of past BMW Art Club projects, and of work from the BMW Drives Culture projects.

Look Inside
Future is Art book

Digital Grotesque III in Figures  

Sculpture: Material: 3D printed sand, resin, paint
Dimensions: 1.6m x 1.6m x 5.0m, 2.5 tons
Resolution: 0.13mm layer height, 0.8mm3 voxelization
Video Installation: 4 continuous screens (9.0m x 5.5m each) at Nowy Teatr, Warsaw
Single wide-screen (16.0m x 3.0m) at NOSPR, Katowice
7680 x 1200 resolution, 4-channel sound
7:00 duration
Venues: Nowy Teatr
ul. Madalińskiego 10/16, Warsaw
2022-10-6 / 2022-10-22

NOSPR
plac Wojciecha Kilara 1, Katowice
2023-4-14 / 2023-5-21
 

Team and Partners  

People

Video: Demetris Shammas
Sound: Emiddio Vasquez
Curator: Stach Szablowski
Executive producer: Joanna Manecka
Construction: Tadeusz Perkowski
Visual identity: Noviki
Teaser: Sebulec
Voxelization: Benjamin Dillenburger / DBT ETHZ
   

Partners

Organizer: BMW
Production: Sto Lampartow
Partner: Nowy Teatr
Technology Partner: Epson

Fabrication of the scultpure took place at Voxeljet AG. Post-processing and coating was performed by Laskowski & Sandecki.

Further information