Art in the age of machine intelligence | Refik Anadol
Summary
TLDRRefik, a media artist, explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and human creativity. Using data as his medium, he transforms architectural spaces into immersive experiences. Drawing inspiration from films like *Blade Runner*, he questions whether machines can dream, hallucinate, and remember. His projects, such as 'Virtual Depictions,' 'Archive Dreaming,' and 'Machine Hallucination,' blend technology and art to create sensory experiences, visualizing vast archives and memories. Refik's work invites audiences to rethink how AI interacts with human knowledge, emotion, and memory, expanding the possibilities of imagination in the 21st century.
Takeaways
- 🎨 Refik Anadol is a media artist who uses data as a creative medium and employs artificial intelligence to collaborate with machines, aiming to make buildings 'dream' and 'hallucinate'.
- 🌟 His inspiration was sparked by the futuristic vision of 'Blade Runner', particularly the concept of machines dealing with memories, which led him to question the capabilities of AI in processing human memories.
- 🏙️ Anadol's work involves transforming architectural spaces into canvases, creating immersive experiences that blend the physical and virtual worlds through data visualization.
- 🔍 He explores the 'poetics of data', turning everyday data into sensory experiences, as demonstrated in his 'Virtual Depictions' project, which visualizes the city's network of connections.
- 🌬️ Wind-data paintings and 'Bosphorus', a kinetic data sculpture, are examples of how Anadol uses machine intelligence to simulate natural phenomena and create meditative experiences.
- 🧠 'Melting Memories' is a project inspired by Alzheimer's disease, visualizing the process of remembering and celebrating the act of memory itself, using EEG data and machine learning.
- 🏛️ Anadol's work with the Walt Disney Concert Hall involved using machine intelligence to project 100 years of archived memories onto the building, making it 'dream'.
- 📚 'Archive Dreaming' is an AI-driven installation that explores 1.7 million documents, inspired by Borges' 'The Library of Babel', aiming to physically navigate vast archives of knowledge.
- 🖼️ 'Machine Hallucination' uses machine learning to process over 100 million photographs, creating a dreamlike fusion of past and future images of New York City.
- 🤖 Anadol's TED Talk data universe project processes and visualizes 30 years of TED Talks, clustering topics and revealing new conceptual relationships, showcasing the potential of AI in expanding human cognitive capabilities.
Q & A
What is Refik's artistic approach?
-Refik uses data as a pigment and AI as a tool to create immersive art that blends architectural spaces with machine intelligence. His work explores the idea of buildings dreaming and hallucinating through data and technology.
How did Refik first become inspired to pursue his artistic vision?
-Refik's inspiration began when he watched the movie 'Blade Runner' as a child. The architectural vision of the future Los Angeles mesmerized him and stayed with him as a core part of his artistic imagination.
What key question drives Refik's work with AI and memories?
-A key question that drives Refik's work is, 'What can a machine do with someone else's memories?' He explores how machines can process memories and whether they can dream, hallucinate, or remember involuntarily.
How does Refik view the collaboration between humans and AI?
-Refik believes that AI is only intelligent as long as it collaborates with humans. AI can construct things that human intelligence envisions but may not have the capacity to realize alone.
What role does data play in Refik's art?
-Data serves as the core medium in Refik's art. He treats it as a pigment that can be transformed into sensory experiences, creating connections between human senses and machine intelligence.
What is 'Archive Dreaming,' and how does it relate to AI?
-'Archive Dreaming' is one of Refik's AI-driven public installations. It allows users to explore approximately 1.7 million documents spanning 270 years through machine intelligence, transforming the experience of a library in the digital age.
What was the significance of the 'Melting Memories' project?
-'Melting Memories' visualized the process of remembering, inspired by Refik's uncle's battle with Alzheimer's. The project explored how memories are not static but change shape over time, using brain signals to generate the art.
How does Refik's work relate to the concept of machines dreaming?
-Refik explores whether machines can dream through various projects, such as the 'Machine Hallucination' installation, which uses AI to process millions of photographs and generate new dreamlike images of New York City.
How does Refik's work combine physical and virtual worlds?
-Refik's art combines physical architectural spaces with virtual, AI-generated experiences, creating immersive environments where data and machine intelligence merge with real-world structures.
What does Refik mean when he asks if a building can learn or dream?
-Refik refers to his work with the LA Philharmonic, where he projected 100 years of archived memories onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall. He explores the idea of a building learning and dreaming by merging its history with AI-generated visuals.
Outlines
🎨 Exploring AI and Artistic Imagination
Refik introduces himself as a media artist using artificial intelligence and data to create art. He reflects on his childhood inspiration from the movie 'Blade Runner' and the idea of memories and intelligence in machines. His creative work revolves around exploring how machines can collaborate with human intelligence to achieve what humans alone cannot. He contemplates whether machines can dream, hallucinate, or remember and how this could revolutionize our relationship with history and knowledge.
🌊 Visualizing Nature and Data Through AI
Refik discusses his project 'Bosphorus,' where high-frequency radar data from the Marmara Sea is used to create a dynamic and immersive synthetic sea experience. He reflects on how architecture and imagination extend beyond physical materials, with AI offering new ways to augment our perception. He connects his work to artificial intelligence and the feeling of being plugged into a broader, more knowledgeable system, introducing the 'Archive Dreaming' project, which used AI to explore 1.7 million cultural documents from Istanbul.
🧠 Immersing in Machine-Driven Knowledge and Memories
Refik takes the audience on a journey into the world of machine intelligence, focusing on how memories and knowledge evolve through AI. He details projects like 'Machine Hallucination,' where AI processed 100 million images of New York City to create a fusion of past and future. He introduces 'Melting Memories,' a work inspired by his uncle's Alzheimer's diagnosis, visualizing the fragility and transformation of memories through machine intelligence. Finally, he reflects on his collaboration with the LA Philharmonic, where AI turned 77 terabytes of archived memories into a projection on the Walt Disney Concert Hall, realizing his childhood dream of seeing a building dream.
🤖 AI and the Power of Collective Knowledge
In the final segment, Refik invites the audience into a TED Talk data universe, where AI processes 30 years of talks, generating clusters of interconnected topics. He highlights the impressive power of AI in mapping relationships between concepts and creating a vast knowledge network. Standing inside this AI-driven mind, he expresses his belief that the future of AI is in human hands, capable of expanding our understanding and remembering what we can only dream of.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Artificial Intelligence
💡Data as Pigment
💡Architectural Spaces as Canvases
💡Machine Learning
💡Immersive Experience
💡Generative Algorithms
💡Cultural Documents
💡Human Senses and Machine Simulation
💡Memory and AI
💡Public Installations
💡Digital Archives
Highlights
Refik Anadol describes himself as a media artist who uses data as a pigment and AI as a tool to create art.
He collaborates with machines to make architectural spaces dream and hallucinate.
Inspired by 'Blade Runner', Anadol ponders the potential of AI to process and dream with human memories.
AI's intelligence is seen as a collaborative effort between humans and machines.
Social networks and machines get smarter through increased human interaction.
Anadol questions if machines can dream, hallucinate, and make connections between human dreams.
He explores the idea of AI as a revolutionary tool for capturing and experiencing history.
Anadol's studio brings together architects, scientists, and artists to blend media arts with architecture.
Data is considered as a pigment in Anadol's work, creating a 'poetics of data'.
The project 'Virtual Depictions' turns city data into a public art installation in San Francisco.
Anadol's work transforms invisible data into collective sensory experiences.
Wind-data paintings visualize poems based on data from wind sensors.
The 'Bosphorus' kinetic data sculpture questions our capacity to reimagine natural occurrences.
Anadol's work with AI explores the potential of machines to simulate human senses and nature.
The 'Archive Dreaming' project uses AI to explore 1.7 million documents from Istanbul's cultural archives.
Inspired by 'The Library of Babel', Anadol imagines exploring vast archives through machine intelligence.
The 'Machine Hallucination' project uses AI to predict and hallucinate new images from New York's photographic archives.
Anadol reflects on the non-static nature of memories and how machines can simulate subconscious events.
The 'Melting Memories' project visualizes the process of remembering, inspired by Alzheimer's disease.
Anadol worked with the Neuroscape Laboratory to understand brain signals during memory formation.
For the LA Philharmonic's centennial, Anadol made the Walt Disney Concert Hall 'dream' with archived memories.
Anadol's final project immerses viewers in a data universe of 30 years of TED Talks, processed by machine intelligence.
He envisions AI as a tool for expanding human memory and imagination, controlled by our dreams and aspirations.
Transcripts
Hi, I'm Refik. I'm a media artist.
I use data as a pigment
and paint with a thinking brush
that is assisted by artificial intelligence.
Using architectural spaces as canvases,
I collaborate with machines
to make buildings dream and hallucinate.
You may be wondering, what does all this mean?
So let me please take you into my work and my world.
I witnessed the power of imagination when I was eight years old,
as a child growing up in Istanbul.
One day, my mom brought home a videocassette
of the science-fiction movie "Blade Runner."
I clearly remember being mesmerized
by the stunning architectural vision of the future of Los Angeles,
a place that I had never seen before.
That vision became a kind of a staple of my daydreams.
When I arrived in LA in 2012
for a graduate program in Design Media Arts,
I rented a car and drove downtown
to see that wonderful world of the near future.
I remember a specific line
that kept playing over and over in my head:
the scene when the android Rachael
realizes that her memories are actually not hers,
and when Deckard tells her they are someone else's memories.
Since that moment,
one of my inspirations has been this question.
What can a machine do with someone else's memories?
Or, to say that in another way,
what does it mean to be an AI in the 21st century?
Any android or AI machine
is only intelligent as long as we collaborate with it.
It can construct things
that human intelligence intends to produce
but does not have the capacity to do so.
Think about your activities and social networks, for example.
They get smarter the more you interact with them.
If machines can learn or process memories,
can they also dream?
Hallucinate?
Involuntarily remember,
or make connections between multiple people's dreams?
Does being an AI in the 21st century simply mean not forgetting anything?
And, if so,
isn't it the most revolutionary thing that we have experienced
in our centuries-long effort to capture history across media?
In other words,
how far have we come since Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner"?
So I established my studio in 2014
and invited architects,
computer and data scientists, neuroscientists,
musicians and even storytellers
to join me in realizing my dreams.
Can data become a pigment?
This was the very first question we asked
when starting our journey to embed media arts into architecture,
to collide virtual and physical worlds.
So we began to imagine what I would call the poetics of data.
One of our first projects, "Virtual Depictions,"
was a public data sculpture piece
commissioned by the city of San Francisco.
The work invites the audience
to be part of a spectacular aesthetic experience
in a living urban space
by depicting a fluid network of connections of the city itself.
It also stands as a reminder
of how invisible data from our everyday lives,
like the Twitter feeds that are represented here,
can be made visible
and transformed into sensory knowledge that can be experienced collectively.
In fact, data can only become knowledge when it's experienced,
and what is knowledge and experience can take many forms.
When exploring such connections
through the vast potential of machine intelligence,
we also pondered the connection between human senses
and the machines' capacity for simulating nature.
These inquiries began while working on wind-data paintings.
They took the shape of visualized poems
based on hidden data sets that we collected from wind sensors.
We then used generative algorithms
to transform wind speed, gust and direction
into an ethereal data pigment.
The result was a meditative yet speculative experience.
This kinetic data sculpture, titled "Bosphorus,"
was a similar attempt to question our capacity to reimagine
natural occurrences.
Using high-frequency radar collections of the Marmara Sea,
we collected sea-surface data
and projected its dynamic movement with machine intelligence.
We create a sense of immersion
in a calm yet constantly changing synthetic sea view.
Seeing with the brain is often called imagination,
and, for me, imagining architecture
goes beyond just glass, metal or concrete,
instead experimenting with the furthermost possibilities of immersion
and ways of augmenting our perception in built environments.
Research in artificial intelligence is growing every day,
leaving us with the feeling of being plugged into a system
that is bigger and more knowledgeable
than ourselves.
In 2017, we discovered an open-source library
of cultural documents in Istanbul
and began working on "Archive Dreaming,"
one of the first AI-driven public installations in the world,
an AI exploring approximately 1.7 million documents that span 270 years.
One of our inspirations during this process
was a short story called "The Library of Babel"
by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
In the story, the author conceives a universe in the form of a vast library
containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set.
Through this inspiring image,
we imagine a way to physically explore the vast archives of knowledge
in the age of machine intelligence.
The resulting work, as you can see,
was a user-driven immersive space.
"Archive Dreaming" profoundly transformed the experience of a library
in the age of machine intelligence.
"Machine Hallucination" is an exploration of time and space
experienced through New York City's public photographic archives.
For this one-of-a-kind immersive project,
we deployed machine-learning algorithms
to find and process over 100 million photographs of the city.
We designed an innovative narrative system
to use artificial intelligence to predict or to hallucinate new images,
allowing the viewer to step into a dreamlike fusion
of past and future New York.
As our projects delve deeper
into remembering and transmitting knowledge,
we thought more about how memories were not static recollections
but ever-changing interpretations of past events.
We pondered how machines
could simulate unconscious and subconscious events,
such as dreaming, remembering and hallucinating.
Thus, we created "Melting Memories"
to visualize the moment of remembering.
The inspiration came from a tragic event,
when I found out that my uncle was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
At that time, all I could think about
was to find a way to celebrate how and what we remember
when we are still able to do so.
I began to think of memories not as disappearing
but as melting or changing shape.
With the help of machine intelligence,
we worked with the scientists at the Neuroscape Laboratory
at the University of California,
who showed us how to understand brain signals as memories are made.
Although my own uncle was losing the ability to process memories,
the artwork generated by EEG data
explored the materiality of remembering
and stood as a tribute to what my uncle had lost.
Almost nothing about contemporary LA
matched my childhood expectation of the city,
with the exception of one amazing building:
the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry,
one of my all-time heroes.
In 2018, I had a call from the LA Philharmonic
who was looking for an installation
to help mark the celebrated symphony's hundred-year anniversary.
For this, we decided to ask the question,
"Can a building learn? Can it dream?"
To answer this question,
we decided to collect everything recorded in the archives of the LA Phil and WDCH.
To be precise, 77 terabytes of digitally archived memories.
By using machine intelligence,
the entire archive, going back 100 years,
became projections on the building's skin,
42 projectors to achieve this futuristic public experience
in the heart of Los Angeles,
getting one step closer to the LA of "Blade Runner."
If ever a building could dream,
it was in this moment.
Now, I am inviting you to one last journey into the mind of a machine.
Right now, we are fully immersed in the data universe
of every single curated TED Talk from the past 30 years.
That means this data set includes 7,705 talks from the TED stage.
Those talks have been translated into 7.4 million seconds,
and each second is represented here in this data universe.
Every image that you are seeing in here
represents unique moments from those talks.
By using machine intelligence,
we processed a total of 487,000 sentences
into 330 unique clusters of topics like nature, global emissions,
extinction, race issues, computation,
trust, emotions, water and refugees.
These clusters are then connected to each other
by an algorithm,
[that] generated 113 million line segments,
which reveal new conceptual relationships.
Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to remember
all the questions that have ever been asked on the stage?
Here I am,
inside the mind of countless great thinkers,
as well as a machine, interacting with various feelings
attributed to learning,
remembering, questioning
and imagining all at the same time,
expanding the power of the mind.
For me, being right here
is indeed what it means to be an AI in the 21st century.
It is in our hands, humans,
to train this mind to learn and remember
what we can only dream of.
Thank you.
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