Miguel Ripoll

ai and digital art pioneer, technologist, and writer miguel ripoll has explored for over two decades the intersection of creativity and code across all media — his work featured in major international museums, books, and magazines. read full bio

Grand Tour

a collection of digital sketches aided by artificial intelligence on hand-embellished paper inspired by the artistic tradition of 18^th and 19^th century elite travel, delving upon pressing contemporary issues such as post-colonialism, over-tourism, mass consumption, environmental degradation, migration, and the concept of ‘the other’. view

Uncertain Myths

a series of phygital works on canvas that question and subvert long-established themes and traditions of artistic praxis and the role storytelling, beliefs, and myths play within the context of our contemporary anxieties about tech dystopias, societal inequalities, personal struggles, political division, and environmental degradation. view

Although partially originated from AI-mediated dialogue, these artworks are not randomly “prompted” patterns of synthetic noise but complex artefacts made with clear intention and purpose by combining the LLMs' output with meticulously hand–crafted processes based on traditional techniques.

— Made with AI (but not by AI)

A large library of visual elements is generated through complex iterative adversarial dialogue with an AI LLM (based on a custom dataset of open-source images and textual primary and secondary sources). However, the resulting visual bits and pieces are not used as they are uncritically. Instead, they are manually re–edited, retouched, remixed, manipulated, and visually transformed using various digital software tools during an exclusively human-led process guided only by a singularly human artistic vision.

— Code as art

Finally, each artwork is giclée printed with archival ink on museum–grade Hahnemühle canvas or paper, signed and authenticated with a unique hologram system. Original digital files get deleted at the end of the process, and each piece becomes a single original physical object derived from combining contemporary technology with centuries-old traditions and materials.

These works never try to mimic the texture of the paintbrush: they are instantly recognisable for their specifically digital texture (also very different from pixelation) — the texture of AI data.

— From text to texture

The texture of the digital process, from the algorithms' complex code to the interplay of data points, becomes an essential part of the work's identity and is very evident in its final IRL form (hence the large scale of the pieces, so that their intricate detail might be fully appreciated).

The algorithms that help generate these artworks are intricately structured, resembling complex digital weaves. This produces a texture native to the digital medium which is an integral aspect of the AI-assisted artistic practice.

Group exhibition at Berlin's Kunstraum Kreutzberg

The international show “Anonyme Zeichner*innen”, which features one of Miguel's drawings is open till January 12th 2025.

Interview with contemporary art magazine PAC

A long conversation about art, history, innovation, and technology. Read the interview (in Spanish).

Group exhibition “Kinaesthesia: Art in Motion” with R|A

London-based Rise Art featured one of Miguel Ripoll's canvases in this online exhibition.

An in-depth interview on AI-mediated art and technology

A companion to the “Kinaesthesia” exhibtion; read it in full on Rise Art's website.

Group exhibition on AI-mediated art at CVPR 2024 in Seattle, US.

Cureated by leading AI expert Luba Elliott; have a look at the gallery on CVPR's website.

Selected for the EU's Creative Europe NAT PMP 2024-25 Program

PMP invites artists in residencies, workshops and exhibitions in six European countries.

Education

1997 MPhil., UCL, University of London, UK
1995 B.A. (Hons.), Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Awards

2024-25 Creative Europe / NMT PMP, EU-funded program for emerging artists.

Upcoming exhibitions

February 2025Kunsthaus, Erfurt (Germany)
May 2025Hyper Cultural Passengers, Hamburg (Germany)

Group exhibitions

2024 “Anonyme Zeichner*innen”, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin (Germany)
2024 “Kinaesthesia: Art in Motion”, Rise Art, London (UK)
2024 “CVPR - AI Art Gallery”, Seattle Convention Center (US)
2002 “Pasión”, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Germany)
2001 “Forms of Speed”, FIRA, Alicante (Spain)
2000 “Signs of the Century”, Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid (Spain)

Collections

Design Museum, Barcelona, Spain
Ministry of Science and Innovation (DDI), Madrid, Spain
Municipal Art Collection, Alicante, Spain
MUVAP, Cervantes Institute, Madrid, Spain

Bibliography

Raquel Pelta, Pilar Vélez, “¿Diseñas o trabajas? La nueva comunicación visual. 1980-2003”, Exhibition catalogue - Design Museum, Barcelona 2018
Alberto Corazón, Emilio Gil, Enric Satué, “Signos del Siglo”, Exhibition catalogue - Reina Sofía Museum / DDI, Madrid 2000

Spanish AI and digital art pioneer, technologist, and writer Miguel Ripoll started experimenting with combinatorial algorithms and generative code back in 1999 — his early works from that period (exhibited in major institutions like the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, and the Cervantes Institute) are now in the permanent collection of the Design Museum in Barcelona — but he was deeply frustrated by the limitations of the rudimentary technology available at the time, and decided to pause his artistic practice entirely.

For the last two decades, instead, he has worked at the intersection of creativity and technology — as an expert in the design and coding of algorithm-driven interfaces for complex information systems, leading digital initiatives for Yale University, Princeton University, Sciences Po Paris, Columbia University, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Historical Association, etc.

Miguel has designed more than a hundred projects for top cultural institutions such as the Qatar Foundation, the University of California - Berkeley, Lund University in Sweden, Stony Brook University, the King Hassan II Fund, and the National Library of Morocco, and advised global corporations and governmental agencies in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East on digital design, strategy and technology.

In addition to heading his own independent commercial design studio, Miguel also worked in London for the Financial Times Media & Telecoms, and was Global Director of Design Strategy at Vistaprint (Nasdaq: CMPR), one of the world’s leading design and print companies.

His commercial work (digital, print, film, and theatre design) has been featured in many books and magazines worldwide, such as Communication Arts, Creative Review, Computer Arts, Internet Magazine, etc. He has been interviewed by the BBC and Deutsche Welle, and profiled by all leading newspapers in Spain, including cover stories in El País, El Mundo, and ABC.

Miguel's background is both humanistic and technological: he read History of Art and Musicology at the University of Macerata in Italy, graduated summa cum laude with Special Distinction from Goldsmiths, and then researched for an MPhil at UCL, University of London, where he also was a Visiting Lecturer. Fluent in five natural languages (plus another four artificial ones), he has published poetry and essays on digital art and technology and translated best-selling novels by Tom Sharpe and Alan Hollinghurst, published in Spain by Anagrama.

Miguel was a Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and has lectured and led seminars at Columbia University in New York, Trondheim University in Norway, Lund University in Sweden, and the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. He has taught master classes in Spain at the University Carlos III and Nebrija University in Madrid, the University of Alicante, the University of Navarra, the University of Tarragona, and the IESE Business School.

He has directed two international conferences, curated and designed exhibitions in Europe and the Middle East, and has been a keynote speaker at major digital and technology events. He was also president of the jury at the New Media RO Awards in Bucharest (Romania) and a member of the jury at the prestigious technology FPRJI Awards in Spain, with Nobel laureate professors Paul Berg, Illya Prigogine, Hamilton Smith, and Jerome Friedman.

Now focused full-time on artistic production again since 2021, Miguel has been selected for the European Union's Creative Europe NMT PMP 2024-25 Program, which will hold workshops and exhibitions in several countries. His work was also part of a group exhibition of AI-mediated art, curated by Luba Elliott, at CVPR '24 in Seattle, the world's premier international computer vision event, sponsored by Google, Meta, OpenAI and Apple.

He recently had his first commercial group show in London with R|A and another one at the prestigious Kunstraum Kreutzberg in Berlin — more group and solo exhibitions are planned in Europe (Erfurt, Hamburg, Barcelona) and the US in 2025.