Refik Anadol

If machines can ​“learn” or ​“process” individual and collective memories, can they also dream or hallucinate about them? Since 2016, world-renowned new media artist Refik Anadol has been exploring the relation between the human mind, aesthetics, machine learning technologies, and architecture to speculate responses to this question. Coining the terms ​“AI Data Painting,” ​“AI Data Sculpture,” and ​“latent cinema,” Anadol has been reflecting on new multi-sensory forms of narrating collective memory in physical and virtual spaces and inviting his audience to imagine alternative and dynamic realities. 

Anadol, a Turkish native who is based in LA, is a pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. His work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. Taking the data that surrounds us as primary material, and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol offers us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expands the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts. Anadol’s site-specific data paintings and sculptures, live audio/​visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, collective experiences, public art, decentralized networks, and the creative potential of AI. 

Anadol’s work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Art Basel, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Ars Electronica, Istanbul Modern, and ZKM | Center for Art, and New Media. Anadol has received 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, Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award, and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.

This project was made possible by a grant from the Arts Initiative at the University of Michigan.

Series presenting partners: Detroit Public Television and PBS Books. Media partner: Michigan Radio.