On December 2nd, 2025, the Wolfsonian–FIU in Miami Beach will unveil Marco Brambilla: After Utopia, a sweeping meditation on progress and imagination reshaped through the lens of artificial intelligence. The celebrated artist, known for his boundary-pushing moving-image works, turns more than 135 years of world exposition history into an immersive digital art installation, merging architecture, memory, and machine vision into a single, hypnotic ascent.
A century of world expositions re-envisioned
In this new project, Marco Brambilla looks back at the utopian ideals that once defined global fairs—from Paris 1889 to Osaka 2025—and transforms them into a vast, continuously unfolding digital landscape. Instead of nostalgia, the installation offers a critical reflection on how past dreams of technological perfection echo in today’s AI-driven culture.
The artist uses archival materials from The Wolfsonian’s collection, such as blueprints, photographs and historic brochures, to train the AI models that structure the work. Each pavilion is presented as a symbolic fragment, representing the ambitions of its era as well as the evolving relationship between human imagination and computational systems.
Digital art installation: infinite ascent across three screens
At the heart of the exhibition is a towering three-channel digital art installation, presented on ultra-high-resolution vertical screens. Brambilla’s continuous loop dissolves geography and chronology, allowing pavilions from Paris, Montreal, Seville, Shanghai, and Osaka to coexist in a single moment. Algorithmically generated figures move through the environment, their behavior informed by historic attendance data—an echo of human presence rendered through machine simulation.
The piece invites viewers into an upward journey, both architectural and spiritual, where iconic structures like the Eiffel Tower and Atomium reappear as dynamic digital organisms rather than static monuments.
Key ideas behind the project
Brambilla frames the work as a reflection on how technological optimism has evolved. The monumental structures that once symbolized a faith in progress have been replaced, he suggests, by virtual systems that shape experience in quieter but more pervasive ways. As AI increasingly mediates perception, the work asks whether humanity risks surrendering both control and imagination.
Don’t miss our dialogue with artist and filmmaker Marco Brambilla, who reveals the research and imagination behind his newest moving-image worlds. We explore his fascination with utopian design, his use of archival imagery, and the shifting role of technology in shaping collective memory.
MARCO BRAMBILLA
After-Utopia
Courtesy of MARCO BRAMBILLA
Special thanks to KARLA OTTO
