Refik Anadol: Latent City

Latent City is a massive data sculpture that almost reaches the full height of the exhibition hall — 12 metres high. It is perpetually in flux, constantly reorganising itself into a never-ending, visually arresting flow. The work employs custom machine learning models and generative systems that transform urban data into dynamic visuals. Visitors encounter color-shifting displays generated from datasets spanning multiple global cities including Seoul, Berlin, New York, and Stockholm, plus Bruges itself. The piece converts human metropolises into a sentient, breathing entity and a shape-shifting work of art, synthesizing imagery, archival information, atmospheric conditions, computation and algorithms into an immersive exploration of urban environments both locally and globally. Refik Anadol Studio has trained its own AI models with more than five million images of global cities to create this unique visual experience — the start of a new series in which the artist's long engagement with urban imagination premieres in a museum.