BMW Electric Canvas

On the occasion of Art Basel in Basel 2023, BMW presented the 'Electric AI Canvas' — an extension of 'The Ultimate AI Masterpiece'. Dr Esther Mahlangu was selected alongside four other renowned contemporary artists — Kohei Nawa, Eric N. Mack, Koo Jiyoon and Bin Woo Hyuk — to have their respective artwork chosen as the styles used to train the AI models to transform the 100% electric BMW i5 into a dynamic canvas.

In 'The Ultimate AI Masterpiece', a collaboration with creative technologist Nathan Shipley (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners) and Gary Yeh (ArtDrunk), AI models are trained on datasets of over 50,000 images from 900 years of art history by well-known contemporary artists to produce custom AI-generated designs which are then projected onto the BMW i5.

For 'The Electric AI Canvas', Nvidia's AI architecture StyleGAN trained a base model to represent art in general, before further training the AI to produce works from the participating contemporary artists. These newly created animations were displayed for the first time at Art Basel, by projection mapping different designs on a BMW i5 and shifting through each artist's distinctive style and aesthetic. To further enhance the viewing experience, the animations were amplified and reflected by mirrors.