IN the lively One Bonifacio High Street mall, an otherwise empty exhibition space at the third level has become a large-scale canvas, where data paintings are brought to life by vivid audio and visual projections.
Award-winning Istanbul-based new media studio Ouchhh is responsible for this out-of-this-world experience coming to Bonifacio High Street. Using artificial intelligence (AI), they weaved together Leonardo Da Vinci’s technical drawings and works by over 300 artists into cohesive immersive experiences.
“Wisdom of Da Vinci: An Immersive AI Experience” comes together by taking inspiration from the legendary Italian artist’s own ideas about the marriage of art and science.
“Da Vinci was also a scientist. He tried to integrate art and science and technology,” Ouchhh director and new media artist Ferdi Alici said at the exhibition’s launch in August.
The Curator Lounge is where the experience begins, with a collection of innovative digital displays. One is the Poetic AI Gallery where an algorithm transforms 20 million lines derived from the notes of Albert Einstein and Galileo Galilei into art.
Another is the Manila Real-time Data Artwork, which utilizes Philippine economic data from budgets, agriculture, and statistics, to show a data piece fluctuating in real-time as it reflects the nation’s pulse.
Mr. Alici said that viewers can journey inside the artistry of these data sources thanks to machine learning, which sheds light on “how machines see us and how machines can create art from the data archive.”
The first immersive hall, called Digital Garden of Dreams, takes that philosophy to the next level. Its energetic whirlwind of visuals and sound is divided into chapters:
Atlas, inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and his study of the human body;
DataGate, a collaboration with NASA using data gathered by the Kepler space telescope covering 500,000 stars, 2,500 planets, and 60 supernovae;
Superstrings, featuring real-time brain waves of musicians; and,
Filipino Master, featuring the works of Juan Luna created throughout his lifetime translated as data paintings.
The second immersive hall, the titular Wisdom of Da Vinci, explores through abstract aesthetics the works of the artist-scientist and other acclaimed creative masters, combining visual data from the likes of the Mona Lisa down to detailed manuscripts, sketches, invention plans, and paintings.
A dynamic musical score by movie composer Ludovico Einaudi (Nomadland, Alexandreia, The Father) completes the final part of this experience.
Mr. Alici noted that, beyond getting a glimpse of Da Vinci’s unique mindset, viewers “will experience multidimensional universes made by AI.”
For Filipinos, this will prove fascinating, especially now that the pandemic has eased and allowed communal experiences in public art spaces once more, according to Bonifacio Global City (BGC) Estate Association executive director Jun Galvez.
He told BusinessWorld after the launch that the “Van Gogh Alive” interactive art exhibit in 2019 showed that AI-made multi-sensory experiences can be a hit in the Philippines.
“Now that we’re back to normal, we want to continue providing immersive experiences because we don’t have a lot of these kinds of shows here. The result was overwhelming before and it proved that Filipinos are into art, especially digital art,” Mr. Galvez said.
“Wisdom of Da Vinci: An Immersive AI Experience” runs until October, at the third level of One Bonifacio High Street mall in BGC, Taguig City. Tickets are priced at P975 for adults and P780 for students. Visit https://bgcimmersive.com for ticket reservations. — Brontë H. Lacsamana
