REFIK ANADOL

The question of why we collect, record, and share our quotidian experiences has always been entangled with the formal and aesthetic concerns about how to represent reality, totality, and the depth of human imagination. Nineteenth century poet and critic Stéphane Mallarmé famously said that everything in the world existed to end up in a book. Revisiting Mallarmé’s proposition in her 1977 collection of essays, On Photography, Susan Sonntag wrote, “Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” More recently, Jonathan Zittrain, the co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and society, suggested that “internet architecture” lacked a definable center and instead relied on “an extraordinary collective hallucination.”

Refik Anadol Studio’s most recent synesthetic reality experiments deeply engage with these centuries-old questions and attempt at revealing new connections between visual narrative, archival instinct and collective consciousness. The project focuses on latent cinematic experiences derived from representations of urban memories as they are re-imagined by machine intelligence. For Artechouse’s New York location, Anadol presents a data universe of New York City in 1025 latent dimensions that he creates by deploying machine learning algorithms on over 100 million photographic memories of New York City found publicly in social networks. Machine Hallucination thus generates a novel form of synesthetic storytelling through its multilayered manipulation of a vast visual archive beyond the conventional limits of the camera and the existing cinematographic techniques.

The resulting artwork is a 30-minute experimental cinema, presented in 16K resolution, that visualizes the story of New York through the city’s collective memories that constitute its deeply-hidden consciousness. The exhibition does not tell the story of today’s New York, but, instead, foresees what may come, through the machine intelligence’s bridging of the gap between the present and a vision of the near future. It is a hopeful vision about the evolving relationship between machine and man, and provides an alternative to the conventional narrative of an apocalyptic future. As both an entertaining and enthralling experience, the machine’s hallucination can expand our capacity to dream, and help us envision things that we otherwise could not see or imagine.

Refik Anadol (b.1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is a media artist and director. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio. Anadol is also a lecturer and researcher for UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts from which he obtained his Master of Fine Arts.

Anadol’s body of work addresses the challenges, and the possibilities, that ubiquitous computing has imposed on human kind, and what it means to be a human in the age of machine intelligence. He explores how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing now that machines dominate our everyday lives. As a spatial thinker, Anadol is intrigued by the ways in which the digital age and machine intelligence allow for a new aesthetic technique to create enriched immersive environments that offer a dynamic perception of space.

By proposing the possibility of “post-digital architecture,” Anadol invites his audience​ to imagine alternative realities by re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural elements. Anadol tackles this by not simply integrating media into built forms, but by translating the logic of a new media technology into spatial design.

Residing at the crossroads of art, science, and technology, Anadol’s site-specific parametric data sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many virtual and physical forms. Entire buildings come to life, floors, walls, and ceilings disappear into infinity, breathtaking aesthetics take shape from large swaths of data, and what was once invisible to the human eye becomes visible, offering the audience a new perspective on, and narrative of their worlds.

The primary thread that runs throughout Anadol’s groundbreaking visualizations of the unseen world is data: for ​Machine Hallucination​, Anadol harnessed 300 million publicly available images of New York City; for ​WDCH Dreams​, he accessed 100 years of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s digital archives; for Oakland’s ​Sense of Place​, real-time environmental data informs thework;andforCharlotteAirport’s​Interconnected,​ heutilizesreal-timeairportstatistics.

Refik Anadol Studio employs a unique team of prominent computer scientists, software developers, architects, engineers, and designers to realize Anadol’s vision. A pioneer in his field, and the first to use artificial intelligence in a public artwork, Anadol has partnered with teams at Microsoft, Google (Artist and Machine Intelligence), Panasonic, Nvidia, JPL/NASA, Intel, IBM, Siemens and Epson, to apply the latest, cutting-edge science and technologies to his work.

Refik Anadol is the recipient of a number of awards and prizes including the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art, Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Award, SEGD Global Design Awards, and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.

Anadol’s site-specific audio/visual performances have been featured at iconic landmarks, museums and festivals worldwide, such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Hammer Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, The Portland Building, Daejeon Museum of Art, Florence Biennale, Art Basel, OFFF Festival, International Digital Arts Biennial Montreal, Ars Electronica Festival , l’Usine | Genève, Arc De Triomf, Zollverein | SANAA’s School of Design Building, santralistanbul Contemporary Art Center, Outdoor Vision Festival, Istanbul Design Biennial, Sydney City Art, and Lichtrouten, among many others.

https://refikanadol.com

Profile Photo by Serge Hoeltschi