When Refik Anadol answers the phone, he’s calling in from Los Angeles – beaming, slightly frazzled and unmistakably elated. Just an hour earlier, one of his data-driven artworks sold at Christie’s for $1.9 million in support of UNICEF. “I think it’s good news to share,” he says with audible joy. “I was stressed a lot because, you know, auctions are not easy – but I’m happy to say we raised money for a good cause.”
This blend of technical brilliance, emotional depth and real-world impact captures the essence of Anadol’s artistic universe. Known globally for pioneering work in data painting and AI-generated visual art, the Turkish-American media artist is now bringing his sensibilities into an entirely new sensory domain: scent. In a groundbreaking collaboration with luxury house Bvlgari, Anadol has extended his digital language into the olfactory world – transforming molecules into an immersive artwork for the limited-edition Le Gemme Tygar fragrance, the perfume formula into a data-based visualisation and the bottle into a sculptural canvas.
“This is not the first project we created together,” Anadol begins when asked about the origins of his partnership with Bvlgari. “We have a long relationship.” That relationship first took shape nearly four years ago with Serpenti Metamorphosis, in which Bvlgari and Anadol created an AI-generated scent and sculpture. That project planted the seed for what Anadol now sees as a missing dimension in digital art – scent – and this latest fragrance project, then, is a continuation of that realisation. “The idea here was not only just the scent itself, but the formula transforming into a beautiful form of art – the packaging design and the bottle itself.”
For Anadol, the invisible world of fragrance offers an irresistible invitation. “In my work, I use data as a pigment, meaning making the invisible visible,” he explains. “Scent is something we cannot see, but we can feel.” Using the raw perfume formula as a dataset, Anadol applied artificial intelligence to generate the visual forms that ultimately shaped the bottle design. “The formula of the perfume transforms into these formations, the visualisations,” he says. “It’s one of the first examples of using the data of the perfume as the concept.”
A key medium for this translation is what Anadol has long called data painting. “In 2008, I coined the term,” he says. “I’ve been painting with data for many years.” With this project, he used AI models – trained on natural elements like flowers, clouds and water – to blend with the perfume’s ingredient data and generate abstract shapes and textures. “I call it a thinking brush, because this brush can remember every molecule inside the perfume.”
These “data pigments” become programmable units in his visual language. “You can program them to take a shape, form, colour, texture,” he says.
The outcome of this process isn’t just a visual rendering – it’s a sensory experience captured in a physical form. “The bottle becomes a canvas,” Anadol explains. “We don’t like to treat this like just another print. We think of it as a form of sculpture.” Using experimental printing and shading techniques, the bottle reflects the molecular structure of the fragrance. “When you look from different angles, you can see different molecules and different ingredients of the scent.”
That multidimensionality mirrors Anadol’s broader artistic practice, which fuses sound, image and now scent into immersive installations. “Scent is one of the most powerful neuroscientific memories for all of us,” he says. “We remember memories through scent… To me, this beautiful formula is a statement, a form of memory.”
Projects like Data Land, his forthcoming AI museum, and past works at MoMA and the Guggenheim Bilbao have each included a scent component. “Almost all our major artworks have a scent molecule attached to the concept,” he says. “This project with Bvlgari continues that journey – transforming sound, image and text into scent molecules.”
At first glance, Anadol’s data-driven, AI-centric work might seem worlds apart from the heritage and craftsmanship of Bvlgari. But for him, the partnership feels organic. “It’s not that hard because Bvlgari is open to innovation,” he says. “When we meet with the CEO and the team, everyone is excited to try new things.” He sees art and luxury as parallel pursuits of excellence. “Art is giving value to an idea, to a concept. And I believe our artworks have value because of the innovation, discoveries, and intellectual depth we bring together with Bvlgari.” Indeed, the perfume project continues a series of collaborative experiments – like transforming 75 years of Bvlgari’s high jewellery archives into a data-driven sculpture. “We’re always making the invisible visible with Bvlgari,” he says.
In the end, Anadol sees the Bvlgari fragrance not just as a product, but as an artistic experiment brought to life. “It’s an amazing experiment transforming theory into reality,” he says. “All projects start as sketches. But once it becomes real, on the shelves, in people’s lives – it becomes making dreams real.” And that, perhaps, is the unifying thread in Anadol’s ever-expanding creative universe: the relentless, joyful pursuit of making the invisible visible – and now, making the invisible not just seen and heard, but smelled.
Photography courtesy of Bvlgari.