A New Reality


To celebrate the reveal of the new all-electric BMW i4, BMW invited Russian media artist Maxim Zhestkov to freely interpret the new vehicle, and create a series of digital artworks using the BMW i4 design and technology as his inspiration. The result is a series that is as mesmerizing as it is unique.


Maxim Zhestkov is a Russian media artist and director whose work centers on the influence of digital media on shifting the boundaries of visual language. “I started out studying traditional architecture, but somewhere down the road I came to realize that the 3D software we used for mapping and modeling had so much more potential,” Zhestkov says.


What followed were years of autodidactic discovery, finally leading him on a path towards digital artworks, powered by algorithms, theoretical physics, mathematics, and of course, interaction between objects, virtual canvases and the artist himself.


One such “hidden reality” was brought to life through a digital art collaboration Zhestkov entered with BMW for the launch of the all-new BMW i4. To visualize how electric currents and improvised fields of electromagnetism impact an unseen reality around us, Zhestkov let his algorithms calculate billions of outcomes, then overlaid his results with 3D renderings of a moving BMW i4 as it finds its way into three different virtual environments. The outcome is a tantalizing trip into an entirely digital space, where the laws of physics are mapped out and laid bare for the beholder to see and experience as moving visualizations.


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