MACHINE CITIES: UNSUPERVISED 2025

The city—reborn through code, data, and imagination.

Machine Cities Unsupervised is a real-time generative artwork. This immersive, living system responds dynamically to the rhythms of Riyadh and beyond. Imagine a city that breathes, thinks, and evolves—where invisible data becomes visible form, and artificial intelligence transforms into a creative collaborator. At the heart of this piece is a digital twin: a futuristic avatar of Riyadh, rendered through a fusion of live data streams, unsupervised machine learning, and generative AI. Pollution levels, weather shifts, news updates—every input becomes part of a constantly morphing visual projection, sonic landscape, and mechanical choreography. The artwork listens to the city, speaks with its data, and reimagines what urban life could become.

This isn’t just art—it’s an experience of machine consciousness, where the boundaries between man-made systems and organic life blur. The AI doesn’t merely observe the city—it interprets, reacts, and redefines it in real time, asking urgent questions about autonomy, intelligence, and the soul of the city.

Machine Cities Unsupervised is part of Stanza's larger exploration of panoptic aesthetics—an artistic language that reveals the hidden algorithms, surveillance systems, and data flows shaping our modern lives. This work invites viewers to consider the politics of data and the power of transparency, while also offering a vision of urban spaces not just governed by machines, but shaped by the collective voices of people, environments, and code.

This is more than a smart city.  This is a thinking city. A city that sees you, hears you, and maybe—just maybe—understands you.

EXHIBITION To be exhibited on three to six screens. Each screen can show a different aspect of the system.

ENVIRONMENTAL DATA: THE BREATH OF THE CITY

Live air quality data—including hazardous pollutants, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and water quality—is gathered from ninety key locations such as:-

Jeddah, Jubail, Mecca, Dammam, Dhahran, Riyadh, Tabuk, Qassim, Al-Ahsa, Taif, Asir, and more.
Each data point is geo-tagged with longitude, latitude, and live updates from monitoring stations across the country.

WEATHER DATA: THE MOOD OF THE CITY

From Abha to Arar, Riyadh to Turaif, real-time weather feeds cover: Temperature (min/max) Humidity Visibility Air pressure Wind speed, direction, and gusts

These are fed directly into the neural network to simulate the shifting atmosphere of the city—visually, and structurally.

NEURAL NETWORK: THE MIND OF THE MACHINE

At the core is a custom-built ART 2 neural network, running unsupervised machine learning server-side. It maps patterns, finds relationships, and continuously generates new visual outputs. The system creates an emergent, evolving urban entity—one that learns, responds, and reimagines itself in real time.

Text and image feeds from across Saudi Arabia are reinterpreted by AI to create predictive media—imagining news stories and imagery 50 years into the future. Powered by the STANZA API, the system blends real and speculative data into a new kind of narrative: the city as forecaster, as storyteller.

GPS INTEGRATION (Optional): THE CITY AS PERFORMANCE

Real-time GPS tracking can be integrated via a mobile app, transforming visitors’ movements into performative gestures within the artwork. The city watches, listens, and responds as you walk through it.

Machine Cities Unsupervised turns data into material, cities into collaborators, and viewers into participants in a world where systems think, learn, and reshape our collective future.

Supported by DAF Diriyah Arts Futures Riyadh. While artist in Residence. 2025

Exhibition. Available for exhibition. Contact me for inquiries....best shown as multi screen <-> multi projector experience.

Keywords. AI, CITY, DATA, REAL TIME, GENERATIVE, ART

Funding: Funding needed for the next version if interest in supporting the project get in touch. A number of features are still in develoment and additional support is needed.

Machine Cities Unsupervised is a real-time generative artwork that reimagines Riyadh as a living, responsive city shaped by data, AI, and environmental forces. The installation transforms live urban inputs into shifting visuals, —blurring the line between machine and city.

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