Sunset in Rome (2025) transforms golden hour light at Rome’s Giardino degli Aranci into an infinite digital meditation, capturing something both deeply personal and universally resonant about the passage of time in the Eternal City. Born from a collaboration with Bulgari that draws inspiration from the brand’s 140-year Roman heritage, this work explores how algorithmic art can honor cultural legacy while creating new forms of beauty.
These atmospheric compositions create luminous depth through time-based algorithmic progression that echoes both Renaissance fresco traditions and Turner’s atmospheric studies. Flowing fields of warm ochres, molten crimsons, and luminous violets shift across the screen, their algorithmic textures evoking the layered brushwork of Roman frescoes while channeling the Impressionist fascination with fleeting light. These colors unfold in a seamless three-minute cycle that creates a hypnotic contemplation of sunset’s eternal return, where familiar moments resurface with contemplative rhythm.
This approach reflects Contiero’s understanding of how digital art can engage with place-based memory and cultural inheritance. The algorithm interprets the emotional resonance of Roman light, transforming atmospheric observations into broader experiences of beauty, temporality, and belonging. The work connects to cyclical time themes explored throughout Contiero’s practice, from the seasonal celebrations of Stagioni (2019) to the biological rhythms of Battito (2023), yet here finds expression through environmental interpretation rather than abstract metaphor.
The collaboration demonstrates how digital art can engage meaningfully with cultural heritage. Unveiled in spring 2025, the work now inhabits selected Bulgari stores worldwide, with particularly significant presentation at the Milan flagship on Via Montenapoleone, where it appears on a massive LED screen serving as both artwork and architectural element. This integration transforms retail space into cultural experience, creating what Bulgari Deputy CEO Laura Burdese describes as “un palcoscenico di 140 anni di storia” (a stage for 140 years of history) that bridges Roman roots with Milanese energy through the warmth of generative orange light.
Sunset in Rome represents an evolution toward place-based digital art that exists naturally within lived environments. The looping structure mirrors Rome itself, where ancient rhythms persist through constant renewal, each cycle both familiar and transformed, like Rome itself: eternal yet constantly renewed.