Daniel Ambrosi is a California-based visual artist specialising in digital and AI-augmented art. He studied at Cornell University, where he received a Bachelor of Architecture and a Masters in 3D Graphics. During the 40 years since graduating, he has practised digital art, and starting in 2015, with engineering assistance from Joseph Smarr (Google) and Chris Lamb (NVIDIA), developed an enhanced version of Google’s ‘DeepDream’ technology, that has allowed him to create his large-scale immersive Dreamscape series.

Ambrosi’s practice is deeply informed by the history of landscape painting, finding particular inspiration in the works of the grand format landscape artists of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe and the later nineteenth-century Hudson River School artists.

Ambrosi’s works have been shown in exhibitions and art fairs across the United States and in Europe; his work has recently been acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Digital Art (MoCDA), and in 2019 he was a finalist of the Lumen Prize for Art and Technology.

Charlecote is part of Ambrosi’s innovative Dreamscape series, combining original photography, computer graphics and artificial intelligence. The landscape depicted is the English country estate of Charlecote Park, looking across the lake to the grand 16th-century house in the distance. This artwork is from a body of work in which the artist investigated the landscapes of the 18th-century luminary and designer Capability Brown, who shaped the estate and gardens of Charlecote Park almost 300 years ago. Charlecote Park itself has a rich and fascinating history; the house has welcomed many notable guests including Queen Elizabeth I, and allegedly William Shakespeare hunted rabbits and deer in the grounds as a young man, without permission. Today the estate is managed by the National Trust and is open to the public.

In creating this work and other Dreamscapes, Ambrosi uses computer graphics to combine several photos that he takes of the landscape, awaiting perfect shooting conditions that depend on the light, weather and time. Using the large, multi-layered digital entity that results, the artist then applies bespoke AI technology to achieve the surrealist, dreamlike effect that transforms the photographic depiction into a mesmerising vista. Charlecote is a captivating example of a Dreamscape displayed as a light-box, illuminated from behind by low-energy LEDs. This backlit presentation bestows a luminosity to the work, enhancing the immersive experience with a sense of being physically in this hallucinogenic landscape, of stepping into this alternate reality that prompts reflection upon the infinite complexity of the natural world, and the potential of collaboration between man and machine.