How Art, AI & Science Combine to Shape Diriyah Art Futures

The Saudi Museums Commission launched Diriyah Art Futures as the region’s first institution centred on New Media and Digital Arts.

Its inaugural exhibition, ‘Art Must Be Artificial: Perspectives of AI in the Visual Arts’, featured over 30 artists from Saudi Arabia, the MENA region, and beyond. The exhibition explored the evolution of computational art from its emergence in the 1960s to its current role in shaping modern artistic expression, grounding the conversation in the work of the influential polymath Al-Khwarizmi, whose contributions to algorithms marked the beginning of a conversation that is still ongoing to this day.

Laila Shereen Sakr, an Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is one of the artists featured in the exhibition. Her work revolves around examining the connections between motherhood, technology, and the idea of the cyborg in both local and global Arab contexts.

Instead of seeing these ideas as fixed labels, Sakr views them as overlapping experiences that focus on movement and action. "Fixed identities can only be located within a single time and place,” Sakr says. “Life is change and movement, and digital and new media art is a medium that expresses that well. I have been both Arab and American. Before we were mothers, we were daughters. We continue to move in and out of these categories throughout our lives."

A key aspect of Diriyah Art Futures is its focus on collaboration between artists, technologists and scholars. For Sakr, this interdisciplinary approach is vital to her work. While she finds it challenging to navigate the separate communities of art, tech and academia, she views her work as a vehicle to bridge these fields. The real difficulty, she notes, is in getting audiences to engage with these diverse practices.

The same interdisciplinary approach can be seen in the work of Nasser Alshemimry, aka DesertFish, who brings together sound, visual art and technology to forge new artistic expressions. Based in Jeddah, Alshemimry draws inspiration from his Najdi roots along with his background as a multi-instrumentalist recording artist. He dedicates much of his time to his studio, where he works with local artists to hone his craft.

In his piece ‘Digital Anemone’, DesertFish creates a digital version of an anemone using simple shapes and computer techniques. He starts with a pipe shape, which he repeats in a grid to form a digital organism. The piece has the anemone respond to the movement of the viewer within the space.

The work uses the camera to track how the viewer moves and makes the anemone interact with them, giving it a sort of "sight" and making it react in real time.

"One has to have a multi-disciplinary approach. Collaboration can lead to new ideas and insights if done correctly with like-minded individuals who share a similar vision,” DesertFish tells SceneNowSaudi. He believes his experiments with new ideas to be a part of a bigger shift in Jeddah, especially during a time where the city is becoming more and more recognised as a creative hub for many.

Another artist featured in the exhibition is Lulwah AlHumoud, an award-winning artist and curator with a strong international presence. Her work is inspired by research into Islamic geometric patterns, which are rooted in accumulated knowledge from various sciences and cultures.

These compositions use repeating basic shapes, but they don’t strictly follow geometric rules. Instead, they allow for variation and gradual transformation. Speaking with SceneNowSaudi, AlHumoud shares how cross-disciplinary collaboration has influenced her work: “When I work with engineers or technologists, it opens up new possibilities for my practice. Their expertise brings fresh insights that help me push my work further. Cross-disciplinary collaboration allows me to explore new dimensions and enriches my artistic process.”

The Ministry of Culture presents Diriyah Art Futures as the first institution of its kind in the MENA region. Its building, now a finalist for the ArchDaily 2025 Building of the Year Awards, was designed specifically to serve as a hub for digital art. Though this exhibition has concluded, more events and workshops are planned as the institution continues to expand.