Dream of the Machine: Garden

The project “BMW Art Club. The Future is Art: The Machine’s Dream” explored the theoretical potential of artificial intelligence as a creative force, focusing on the phenomenon of so-called AI hallucinations – moments when algorithms generate content not rooted in real data.

In this context, AI was granted the status not just of a tool, but also of a co-creator of imagination, comparable to the human mind in a dream state.

The project was built around the central idea that a machine can “dream” – creating visions of nature that, although fictional, deeply resonate with human sensitivity.

A revitalized garden served as a physical manifestation of this idea – a space where AI’s hallucinatory landscape materialized as a living organism. The spatial and sound installations (by Noviki and Zoi Michailova) explored the concepts of oneirism, error, and ambiguity, shared by both human dreams and AI generative processes.

The garden, filled with unusual plant combinations and mirrored references to neural network structures, acted as a metaphor for vector data spaces, where technology, nature, and imagination coexisted. The project challenged the boundaries between reality and simulation, becoming a vision of a posthumanist aesthetic of the future.

The exhibition, part of BMW Poland’s flagship project “BMW Art Club. The Future is Art” – “The Machine’s Dream,” was open to the public until August 31, 2024. The partner for this year’s fifth edition of the project was the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków.