full interview_refik anadol_3.mp3
Refik Anadol [00:00:00] I'm Refik Anadol. I'm a media artist and director working with data and AI.
Speaker 2 [00:00:07] So let's just set a sort of baseline here. How would you describe the work that you do?
Refik Anadol [00:00:15] I think the work that I do can be described as a digital art that is using advanced computation and using data as a substance, as a pigment, and painting with a thinking brush. When I say thinking brush, here AI is assisting me to work with large data sets of image, sound, and text.
Speaker 2 [00:00:38] And so this thinking brush, is this something that has traveled with you literally through your career or is this sort of a recent development?
Refik Anadol [00:00:46] I think it's a very childish dream, to be much honest. I think I was eight years old when I got my first computer. I was completely blown away by the idea of a machine as a friend. Very, you know, like an imaginary friend in life. For me, a computer was my imaginary friend. And there I first imagined that the AI in the games one day can become a friend in light. So, this assistance in light through machines, I think started like very early ages. But I also think that watching Blade Runner as a child, not seeing the dystopia, but feeling the utopia, and trying to find human in non-human became the fundamentals of imagination.
Speaker 2 [00:01:30] So was there, you mentioned games, was there a sort of a specific game that you played that did that?
Refik Anadol [00:01:34] I would say without any respect, any like games, I love strategy games. I've played Starcraft so much and so long. I would stay till high school, I was pretty much addicted to games. But my family was completely fine because it wasn't affecting my mental or physical capacity. Actually I was feeling more motivated when I was able to create some certain like challenges and I was applying that mindset to my life actually because strategy games are not just necessarily simple tasks. It allows you to also find the path in life. Because for me, success is making dreams real, and that's a very hard journey. And I think games are helping to imagine this path much clearer and have a clarity.
Speaker 2 [00:02:20] Really interesting. You know, some of us watch Blade Runner, it happens to be one of my favorite films, and they decide they wanna make movies. You decided you wanted to do this. So once you were inspired by that, how did you, you went through an engineering path, or you wanted be an artist, how did that go?
Refik Anadol [00:02:37] So first of all, yeah, the movies are fundamentally incredible inspirations, not only the Blade Runner, like Space Odyssey, like Tron, and like many, many movies, I think. Etopian, dystopian, all sci-fi movies, I think, made a big impact in my mind. Flip Kadek, you know, stories, William Gibson's incredible vision. But I think the path that I want to choose is not necessarily... First of all movies, I think are one of the most amazing art mediums that making... Something real, we thought, you know, real, but they use something unreal, and at the end you feel real. And that feeling itself was very powerful. But what I imagine is, I imagine those experiences that exist in near future. Not too far away, not a galaxy level thinking of like new world, but really here, like next to us, the tools we use every day, the hardware, the software. And I think what I like about imagining is enough to use existing technologies as it is. But turn them into some other forms of expression, of imagination. So instead of like what imposed to us, how can we reconstruct them in different ways, such as AI, data, hardware, software, every single tool around us is using those fundamentals. But the movies were much inspiring because they're telling the stories in a very direct way. In my work, I'm not trying to create anything direct. In fact, I think in my work there are two layers. The surface... Is where you feel esthetics and beauty, but there's depth where you can learn about AI, data, practice, process. So I think it's really up to anyone in the world without any bias.
Speaker 2 [00:04:14] You know, it's interesting that your work, you seem to intentionally remove people from it. You know when you make data sets, image sets, you take the time to remove them. And yet, you know, you were inspired by this computers as people or not being able to tell the difference. And you seem care about people a lot. How is that?
Refik Anadol [00:04:33] I'm completely a humanist that believe the future is all about humanity. So I am a very optimist that we will use this technology as good as we can. But I'm not a wishful thinker. The same technology has ramifications, has potential problems, so not to ignore them. But the question is really hard when you think about what else can we do with them. So this question to me is more inspiring than finding the doom day scenarios or like things may go wrong. But I also focus on one thing, that is not personal data. I focus on collective data, or collective memories. For example, nature. I'm in natural parks in the world. All the flowers, all the trees, all the clouds, all of the ocean and lakes. When I think like this, it's not about a human body part or a selfie. It's about an experience in life through the millions of perspectives of the same tree, the same location. But try to reconstruct these collective memories And I believe this is not a personal data. It is a collective imagination of certain important topics, nature, space, urban, culture, and so on. So that's why we spent months, sometimes many months, of creating an ethically clean data set that AI learned from. And it is way harder than you can imagine.
Speaker 2 [00:05:49] So it's sort of, it's a privacy issue, right? Absolutely.
Refik Anadol [00:05:51] Absolutely, because I do believe that privacy and freedom will be on stake in the near future. So I believe that what we are trying to do is not about private data, but about collective data.
Speaker 2 [00:06:03] So, when we went to see Unsupervised at MoMA, it's clear that there is something that people gravitate toward. I've been there three or four times now, and every time there is a horde of people stopping and staring, in some case for hours. First of all, explain that piece, but can you explain the reaction?
Refik Anadol [00:06:30] Yes, so Antwerp is one of a lifetime, I guess, a dream project, because I think for any living artist having a piece at MOMA is something, a benchmark in the history. So I'm very grateful for the collaboration with Michel Kuh and Paolo Antonelli, our curators, and the entire MOMA, to be honest. The piece is a true collaboration, like from hanging the screen, putting the sensors, all across MOMA team. It's a pure collaboration. The piece started during the pandemic in a really like unfortunate days of being at home all together. And the question was like, how can we represent the modern art by using AI, but not necessarily mimicking the artist but creating the art making as a form of imagination. So which means that we need to use AI in a different way, meaning we are not trying to mimic the artist in the MoMA archive. We were trying to imagine new ways of seeing that incredible archive of pioneers across centuries. So MOMA has one of the most powerful art collection in the world and they open source this data online seven years ago. We can go and find this information which is very you know brilliant and future forward thinking for institutions. So what I did is basically like if I'm an AI and I'm going online there's a data that represents 138,000 incredible artworks. So we took this data and then metadata like the name of the artist, the type of the art, the size of the canvas and the material. Then AI learns from this information and tries to imagine new ways of seeing this data. Which is very challenging, because as we know, AI mimics reality, tries to create like real something. But we were trying to create a fantasy, a dream, that is not necessarily mimicking what exists. At the end, we found these really inspiring forms that are hard to correlate. Because let's think about AI and humans, right? If I'm an archivist, a researcher, I always think here's a painting, the sculpture. Here's that. Video, here's a game, but AI doesn't need this. When we imagine unsupervised, which is a name that truly AI goes and look at the data, we touch any bias like rules and categories. And then you suddenly find out what happens if like a sculpture and a painting merge and a game and a video merge and that just create a whole new serendipity. My guess is people felt safe and secure because they know where data comes from. And they can learn how AI interacts with them, and that creates a beautiful space for the audience. The piece also uses real-time data, meaning there's a camera and a microphone, and a live weather information. Real-time changes the machine decisions, which I'm calling it a living artwork.
Speaker 2 [00:09:23] Now, some people probably are walking in.
Speaker 3 [00:09:29] Yeah, I hear a little bit of that. I mean, it's not intrusive, but it keeps going. Maybe a bird. It's constant, so it could be something.
Speaker 2 [00:09:43] Sorry. So no worries. So. The
Refik Anadol [00:09:45] By the way, the length is good for answers. I can be shorter, longer. Can be shorter, longer?
Speaker 2 [00:09:48] No, that's fine. And you're, yeah, no, it's great. I want to just kind of zone in on that question though of when people come to see a supervisor, they may not know, they may go to the plaque that explains it. They may not interact with everything that's happening under the hood. So it's a truly pure reaction. So how do you attribute what they're feeling to simply what they are experiencing when they walk in.
Refik Anadol [00:10:17] So this is a really inspiring part of creating an art. I think, to me, art is, at least in my humble vision, I believe it's only art when it touches the mind and soul. And it's a very interesting thinking because using data, analytics, and all that, like algorithms, mathematics, and we talk about soul and mind. It's a really interesting spectrum. That is hard to quantify when it comes to the soul and the emotions and the feelings. But my guess is that the artwork is creating new ways of imagining, new ways powerful connection of art in the mind and soul. And I'm seeing this across all the ages and cultures. It is kind of finding this language of humanity that maybe exists, but we didn't discover yet. And I do believe art has that power. And that's probably one of the reasons that the esthetics that I was in Laos is coming from nature, like I'm completely inspired by nature. The pure fundamental of the artwork is really using fluid dynamics, which is the water in our body, the water life. The water in nature. It's using the forces of movement, truly mimicking the wind, the movement in life. So fundamental mechanics of the work is really nature, where we all come from. So I do believe this is like touching very basics of what we are all connected for. And the other element is I believe, again, as a momma, like being in a museum, people are already in the of being there for exploring new ways of seeing worlds. My guess is that also elevates these moments. But I wanted to say something else because our works are across the world. I mean, not only at MoMA, across like different countries, now we have like more than 20 exhibitions across the word. And I'm seeing a very similar pattern in different cultures, in different scales. Projection on a building, an immersive environment that you step inside the mind of a machine, a piece on a flat wall, or a public art that never stops. They all have a similar pattern where I found this magic connection with the audience, with the humanity.
Speaker 2 [00:12:34] Something unique you do in this piece is, you seem to want people to know what's under the hood. Yes. Because you stop every so often and show people the day that it's happening. Yes. Which is a very distinct look compared to everything else. Yes. Why are you doing that?
Refik Anadol [00:12:49] It is the responsibility of AI. AI is a very powerful technology. I do not believe it's fair to hide the machine decisions. I do believe that making it more demystifying machine decisions is exactly what we need for humanity. And since seven years, in my very first AI work, I always spent significant time to find a space to unveil every single machine decision, where data comes from, where AI algorithms come from, how machines decide. Sometimes there's a problem for the art making because people try to hide and create a mystery which is important and I like, but I don't believe it's the case for AI. I do believe that we should have a responsibility to be able to show how AI functions. I felt this kind of education purpose because the artwork created curiosity and people inspire, but the very first step they can take is just next to the artwork, there is something that they can get the information. In. And then hopefully go back home or explore the idea deeper if they want to. So I just want that this is a very fair point to give AI some chance of explaining itself before we get all biased, suddenly get in the fear and negative zone because there's a lot of potential in this technology before we just lose ourselves in the negativity.
Speaker 2 [00:14:09] Okay, so we're about to talk about healing, you know, totally anecdotally, there's clearly something happening when you watch people react to your pieces, but more than that, can you talk about this space that you're now entering, that you are very interested in?
Refik Anadol [00:14:27] So I guess once we finish many exhibitions across the world and once I received thousands of personal notes across the world, how people are feeling safe, how are people feeling connected from their memories and traumas and personal moments, it became like a really a moment of thinking like if the artwork can create this impact that a person around the world can find the time and write me personally about a lost one, a gender issue, a family issue, an issue in life that makes the artwork let her or them to think about it and create an impact of writing back to me. That's when I felt that this is interesting. While I knew that intent of the work is beauty, positivity, and create a safe space, but I never thought that this may function that quick and comes back as an input. One that happened, multiplied by many cultures and countries, I felt that we had to take this an opportunity to think different, our work. More responsibility, but also brings more scientific thinking. So the first thing I thought that, can we truly quantify the effect of the artwork on the mind and the body? I'm very grateful for both Adam Gazzoli and Taylor Kuhn, two wonderful neuroscientists. Adam inspired me like seven years ago almost, and unfortunately my uncle was diagnosed by Alzheimer's. And that was a very hit for me that the idea of memories are actually melting. And then the moment of like, can we preserve our memories? Can we like find the moment of remembering and represent this moment? And thanks to him, me and my team completely trained with his neuroscientist team to like learn about how to use brain signals, how to used heartbeat data, body temperature, skin conductance, and find these moments. And it was a very wonderful learning path for us that we can really quantify certain things in the body and the mind. So I thought I'd bring those ideas back again and ask the question, can we truly quantify the effect of the work in the mind and body? The good news is that MoMA, we are now under, I guess, official protocol that we will be going through certain cases of people who are willing to be alone with the artwork in the museum, like a museum is a laboratory, and we are trying to measure the effect of the works. I'm happy to say that in the very first experiment we are measuring the well-being aspect. I do believe, I mean art is always healing humanity for sure, but scientifically talking about this is a different aspect. And now with Taylor Kuhn at UCLA, one of our wonderful friends' mother unfortunately had Alzheimer's as well. She was watching one of her artwork called Bosphorus, which is visualizing the Bosphorous movements. And her mother was in that. Stage four Alzheimer's and she truly connected with the artwork after many months of nothing and she just felt that this is the beauty, like this is this the moment of beauty. I connect with my mother, I connect the artwork, it connects us. So I have many examples like this I can count and turn into ad research.
Speaker 2 [00:17:59] Is this sort of a side, I mean, you're still going to make art, but do you feel like all the art you make will have some healing value?
Refik Anadol [00:18:08] I do believe, at least my fundamental view is art is for humanity. Art should be for anyone and in any culture without any bias. And that journey eventually becomes healing. I'm trying my very best to find how can I be more helpful for humanity beyond just statistics.
Speaker 2 [00:18:27] As part of yours or someone else's, sort of healed you in some way, you have a personal experience.
Refik Anadol [00:18:33] Yes, I have a personal experience through many moments. I mean, first of all, I do believe that pandemic created a massive impact on humanity. And that's where I found that at UCLA, we had this moment of moment of reflection. And unfortunately at UCLA we lost many students and many families affected. And when the school asked me like, can we bring your artwork called Nature Dreams, which is focusing on 300 million. National parks, all the beautiful things in nature. We put the artwork in the campus as a public art, as a free of expression, last May, and I got many personal messages from many students, professors, employees of the university. That's the first time I felt that actually healing is pretty much is doable with art. And when people reflect their beautiful moments and thinking, that was the last evidence I may need. And then I said, okay, let's take our focus and resources and hopefully make things more impactful and purposeful. And also right now in a children's hospital, in a cancer research area, there are moments life that people are going through very heavy things. I'm just trying to bring hope, inspiration and joy as much as I can.
Speaker 2 [00:20:03] Is there an art piece of art, not a song, a painting, something that you can recall really affected you?
Refik Anadol [00:20:12] Yeah, so I have a very powerful connection with people called Yavanava. They are living in the heart of Amazon in Brazil, in Acre. And this family is 1200 people and they are a very humble group of people. But they are there for thousands of years and living in the heart off the rainforest, protecting our lungs. I met with the family last year and we have a beautiful relationship with the family, and they have this incredible song. Called Canaru, I think it's the song for the creator, and it's about a bird that flies from their land to the world, and the bird goes across the sea and finds new land and comes back all the time for many, many years. And one day, it couldn't come back, and that's where they lost the connection with the other humans. And there was a song about that, that, that touch my heart so heavy. But that's one of the reasons I'm working on Rainforest, that inspired me so much, that the next two years, my whole focus is Rainforest. Because we needed an ancestral wisdom for a new journey for humanity.
Speaker 2 [00:21:27] We'll come back in two years and talk to you about this really fascinating project. Just one more thought on this. Can you talk about what you did with Taylor Kuhn who's going to be coming here in a moment, and was there a result of that?
Refik Anadol [00:21:43] So Taylor Kuhn and I connected through UCLA and we were looking for this idea of, can we turn our emotions into spaces for Venice Architecture Biennale. And thanks to him, he is running the Human Connect On project, which is one of the most advanced data collection for human mind functions. And thanks for him, we collaborated with him and used 6,000 people's brain scannings from six months, nine, six years old. And we were able to create. The form of an architectural space that represents the human emotions and memories and thoughts. And it started like this, but then it went beyond and then thanks to him, I personally thought that UCLA should be, I mean, my university, like my alma mater, like can we find a way to like quantify the well-being aspect of the work that we do. So he started this research with other two colleagues. And we were able to provide some AI artworks, which you can find in our studio, AI-driven nature, AI-driving water, things that are, I hope, relevant to many people. And he's quantifying the impact of this in a more functional MRI, and he's going much advanced research than just EEG signals. I'm really excited about their research. I think they are very close to find something exciting.
Speaker 2 [00:23:06] And there was something with the nature photos that you heard premiering next week, that data set, and I don't know if you have spoken to him about it or not, but maybe you will when you come back.
Refik Anadol [00:23:19] Exactly. So the artwork is opening next week. That's why we just finished. It's 155 million images of 10 national parks in California. They have been used in this new research.
Speaker 2 [00:23:30] We'll talk about that when it gets here, okay. So tell me a little bit about how you work with this team. Tell us about the makeup of your team, first of all. All the multidisciplinary people.
Refik Anadol [00:23:42] So first of all, I started programming computers 14 years ago, and I saw my personal limitation and I saw being alone and egocentric versus like a team making. There's an amazing African proverb, like if you're going to go faster, do it alone. If you're gonna go further, do it together. I do believe this a lot because being together means much more than being alone. So, and then, it's more like a movie making, I guess. Like, it feels like there's a director and all the incredible crew that all come together and make something that doesn't exist. That is what the very, like, power of being a team. In team, I try to focus on things that we may need in the future. Again, AI data science, architecture, neuroscience, significant literature research, scholar research, music, of course, computational design, programming. Like, look at all the aspects of what we do and how we can bring that to surface as a team. Projects take time and resource, so it's really hard in the beginning to become a team, but over the years, we became a strong, small team, and the idea here is not like become a large team, it's a horizontal space, everyone is their own leader. Our maiden age is 26, 27. We represent 15 languages and 10 countries. In very humble but I do believe being small is not a problem, being together is much more powerful than how many people you are.
Speaker 2 [00:25:09] And when you think of a new idea for a piece, where, everyone has their analogy for this. Mine is you're sort of picking a piece out of a jigsaw puzzle. You never really know what piece you're gonna start with. What is that piece for you?
Refik Anadol [00:25:24] It's actually like a serendipity. Sometimes there are ideas waiting in the mind to be realized and be ready, but there are idea like the Yamanawa people. They inspired me so much that I didn't think about rainforests before, and when I learned about that, the whole new energy, the whole motivation popped up. Or sometimes a technology company who had been... Very careful about their like algorithms and then they don't want to like release it They want like artists to question it, you know, ask about it and bring philosophical ethical concerns So we're also there so our medical context like in a children hospital We need to create a hope and joy and inspiration. It's really no like formula here. It's all about co-creation
Speaker 2 [00:26:15] So, may I ask you for the short answer version of this? You are, what, sitting with a drink, or you're listening to a song, or where do you think, where do, is it really you have a meeting with people and you think this is the next data set, or is there some spark sometime in your day where you think that this is it?
Refik Anadol [00:26:37] Most likely I wait in memory in time and space to inspire me. I mean, of course, again, personal dreams, something. But I try to focus on co-creation. Again, an example, Yamanawa people. Like I met with the family, I live with them, I became one of them and feel the culture and completely change my perception of life. And it's a great view to give back to that culture. For example, they wanna preserve their language because only 17 people speaking. I need to find a way to make an algorithm, a system to preserve this. This is not a project that has a contract. It's not about someone ask you something. It's about from inner voice. But there are many things like that. In nature, in the pandemic, I just ask the question. We are all staying at our homes. We can go to nature, but can nature come to us? And I found the limitation. Then I decided to create this data set. I think all these are memories in time and space that triggers inspiration.
Speaker 2 [00:27:38] I do want to say, because we don't have any of the rainforest stuff that is so very present-testing.
Refik Anadol [00:27:44] But they are all rated right now. I'm happy to give any inform that we have a 2 billion image parameter rated rainforest. Oh, okay. You can use any images.
Speaker 2 [00:27:54] Okay, well, that's great, thank you, but as pulling from examples of things we're talking about, we should mix it up, too, because we don't have a picture of that right now, but when you create an algorithm, first of all, help us understand what that is.
Refik Anadol [00:28:15] First of all, creating an algorithm for a scientist different, for an artist very different. Because again, to me, data is the pigment, data for people is a number, but to me data is a form of memory. And this memory can take any shape and form. That's what I need algorithm to give a shape and form to data. So algorithms are mathematical context given some systems and rules. But to me for example, when I think about a simulation of a water, Pacific Ocean, for example, that I go every weekend to see and watch and relax, that algorithm starts in my mind by watching the nature itself. The fun thing is, when you start to imagine and respect nature through those numbers, and that's a beautiful connection with the nature. So it's not just mathematical idea of, let me find a way to create a fluid dynamics of an ocean, it's actually beyond that. When it comes to this more experience in life. For example fluid dynamics. As I said in my work you will see a lot of water movements. It's purely coming from the water itself. The ocean, the lake, you know the water in our body and also on. That's for example the example. So I deep dive into this idea of like a pigment that doesn't dry. A pigment always in motion, on flux. Then I figure out that to make this happen there are lots of parameters actually. The viscosity, the speed, those molecules that you see in the work, How long they... You know, travel, how big they are, what color they get, this all becomes, you know a new pigmentation or a new brush that doesn't exist. I know it sounds weird, but it really starts like these ideations and goes to much deeper research.
Speaker 2 [00:30:03] What strikes me is that we make documentaries and if the idea is to show people something real, like nature, well, we're not really doing that. Nature exists on its own. It doesn't need any help. We're processing it through editing, music, interviews. Is that a fair equivalence of what you're doing?
Refik Anadol [00:30:24] It can be but I feel like it's more like a you know, let's think about Monet as an artist, right? He has these incredible drawings of atmosphere. I mean back in time the technology he had, his mind, his brushes. But now if I want to dream about atmosphere, about clouds, like I was able to download hundred million clouds photos let AI learn from these clouds and then draw this data painting with all the clouds that exist in the world. So I believe As artists, we are always finding new techniques of expressing our ideas and imaginations. It's a very similar pattern. Also, I feel like, I just want to be sure, so I love nature, I love reality. And I'm trying to say that we are not replacing anything. The question is, truly, what is the capacity of a machine can bring us the ultimate reality? But it's not necessarily replacing anything at all. It's finding new ways of imagining. Because I love nature and I love the physical world.
Speaker 2 [00:31:24] You require technology as an artist. Do you think you're an artist or a technologist?
Refik Anadol [00:31:30] I'm a media artist. I'm media artist because I'm part of a movement that I believe started in the 60s, who started using programs and softwares and hardwares. I feel that I'm connected to this movement, people who start working with computers.
Speaker 2 [00:31:50] And do you think that artists, even further back, would understand the work you're doing? Do you think they would like impressionists or like your...
Refik Anadol [00:31:57] I don't know personally, but I read a lot of comments. For example, when we did the Gaudi's Casabatio project, when we project his building in Barcelona with the 5,000 people, I read hundreds of messages saying Gaudí will be proud to see this, Gaud' will be inspired to see these. When I read those comments, they are the data sets for me to quantify the impact.
Speaker 2 [00:32:24] So let's talk about your creativity, because I'm trying to get to what this is something we talk about a lot in the show, is the qualitative aspect of creativity. Thinking like an artist, thinking like a coder, is that the same kind of creativity?
Refik Anadol [00:32:42] I think the creativity, as I said, art for me is humanity's capacity of imagination. So as a human, I just use my capacity of imagination and I push myself to the edge of this world that doesn't exist but there somewhere. I found myself with machines, archives, memories and dreams, a collective imagination of humanity. And I know everyone is pushing in different direction and they found different. Purpose in their journey, but I found myself there. And not necessarily, I mean, the code and data, AI, they're important, but the core is not technology. I believe the core still is storytelling. The core is still new ways of seeing the world. Technology may change, missions come, goes, but I think the idea here is what does it mean to be human in the 21st century? That's the journey. The journey is the answer, I think.
Speaker 2 [00:33:46] If code is a story, who's telling it?
Refik Anadol [00:33:49] It's a co-creation. It's co-created with a human and machine. Because when people think about AI, oh, here's this magic machine, does everything, actually it's not. Luckily, machines do not decide to decide yet. So it's pretty much like a one-on-one session with AI, fine-tuning parameters. Like, when you train an AI, you have many steps of like, you go through the image collection, curating, and then finding amount of image, and then when AI learns from it, you have. All these parameters you are crunching days, weeks, to find the thing you are looking for. It's a lot of work and a lot like hidden work, maybe doesn't visible in the like first thing you see, but behind the scenes it's a very big effort to find esthetics, the beauty, the storytelling and the depth. It requires time.
Speaker 2 [00:34:40] Do you think that code or AI maybe is being created?
Refik Anadol [00:34:47] Is a very creative approach. I think in my mind, it's the extension of the human mind. First of all, machines do not forget. So I have this friend that doesn't forget. Again, it is very mental practice. Like you have this tool, you have these extensions of your mind, you can use it any way you wish. To do that, right now, of course, if you can program this, you are more advanced. If you wanna learn it, there are free tools online you can learn. And so Again, seven years with AI feels 70 years. It's a very fast-pacing research, but I'm happy to say that I believe this will transform the humanities imagination. It is a very powerful way of thinking for humanity.
Speaker 2 [00:35:30] How do you feel about the hypothetical day in the future where we tip that scale?
Refik Anadol [00:35:38] I think, again, I'm very positive about the future, and I know ramifications exist, and I know things may go wrong, but I still want to be in the positive side and imagine a world that's where we are curing problems of humanity, inequalities, distinction problems. Like right now, there's a 200 million protein folding archive online, which fundamentally If we know how the protein folding happens, we can cure disease. We can help Alzheimer's, we can solve many problems exist. Like right now, there are software that allows people to do renewable energy for cloud computing. Like we can count many examples that AI can assist humanity. Of course, things may go wrong, again, but I know that the amount of beauty and positivity it can bring, more than we can imagine. It's just about the mindset to bring that out.
Speaker 2 [00:36:33] And I'm sure you've thought about the mid-journey, down the aisle of that. First of all, is that something, just speaking to layman, is that's something akin to what you're doing in terms of what's under the hood? Yeah.
Refik Anadol [00:36:45] Yes, first of all, I'm very happy that there's now a movement, generative AI movement, publicly. Finally, there are tools that people can interact, prompt their words, make something from it, and finally, people are learning that this exists. But again, seven years working with AI, these are all like predictable things, and luckily, having been doing this personally, now I'm much easier to explain things to the world. But I have problems that I heard that, that's that I feel like connected, some artists felt that my work is in the data set, I don't want to be a part of this, which I rightfully feel that they are right. That's why I feel that ethical data collection is super important. That's one of the reasons in our work we make our own models, for many reasons, but first ethical reasons, and I hear that this problem is a relevant one, but I'm we will find ways of like, you know, handling these issues and making it beautiful. Creative tools that will be hopefully helping for students and teachers. Of course, still the question for future is who will define what is real? So I think that's still the concept for the future. But I hope that these tools will allow people to learn much quicker and and hopefully learn much quicker what AI is so we can turn this into like hopefully a portrait for humanity. And one more thing that the reason we use rainforest example as I mentioned We are working with local indigenous people in the forest. We let them record their own data, create their own datasets. We are going to a different path for this reason of co-creating with the people who live and inhabit spaces.
Speaker 2 [00:38:22] And then I just want to ask a really simple, big question. What is creative?
Refik Anadol [00:38:28] I think creativity is a function of human mind that brings joy, inspiration, and hope. And I think that is why I hope art is also the capacity of imagination for humanity. So they're all correlated, mind functions for humanity For me, that's my escapism from the reality where I found, again, joy and hope and inspiration and that's exactly what I'm reflecting back.
Speaker 2 [00:38:59] Can you tee up next week? We're going to go to the gallery a little bit. What are we going to see there?
Refik Anadol [00:39:03] OK, so 10 years in Los Angeles, a new home. And I'm so excited to be in another new show unveiling for Los Angeles. It will be at Jeffrey Deutsch Gallery. Focus.
Speaker 2 [00:39:14] And don't say will, uh, it's at. Oh, it said, okay, okay. Okay, okay
Refik Anadol [00:39:18] Okay, so my new show called Living Paintings Unveiled at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. The show is after 10 years My very first major solo show, but most importantly 2018 when we projection mapped the Disney Hall, Frank Gehry's cultural beacon It will be the second encounter with the public And I'm so excited. The topic is focusing on Los Angeles and California and the nature. We have 155 million 10 national parks and their images that AI is dreaming these new landscapes. We will have the winds of Los Angeles, specifically we are recording here in the studio with a machine that records the wind speeds, gusts, and temperature, rain, humidity, these data fields are becoming artwork. And also we have a new artwork called neural paintings, which is visualizing the visual the cortex of the mind and also focusing on the memories. The research with Adam Gazzoli. This time, they have three artworks, one is showing a positive memory, a negative memory, and a meditative mind. So we have three art works unfolding. We also have an infinity room, which is inspired from Kusama's mirrored infinity rooms, but this time, this room is a very childish dream. Imagine opening a door and you have this universe that doesn't have a beginning or end, and machine is reconstructing this beautiful. Light hand space movement, inspired from the early 70s, James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin, kind of a homage to like my heroes that I think start the movement of light handspace.
Speaker 2 [00:41:00] Just tell me when someone puts on this headset, people are going to be able to just walk in and put on this.
Refik Anadol [00:41:05] In some days. And we will be assisting people, not every day, probably in the weekends we will allow people to project their minds to the piece. It's an interactive neural painting.
Speaker 2 [00:41:16] Project their minds, what does that mean?
Refik Anadol [00:41:18] So basically I've been imagining this idea of, so first of all visual cortex of the mind is where I do believe our perception of visual world is represented and I was imagining these paintings that one day we can paint with our like, these visual cortex activities. So the artwork is real time getting data from an eight channel from the mind and reflecting back to real time to an abstract painting. And everyone has, of course, a unique perception of life, and everyone has a unique painting of their perception.
Speaker 2 [00:41:51] I cannot wait to see it.
Refik Anadol [00:41:53] And I have a b-roll in 4k that I recorded for you, so you're welcome to use it.
Speaker 2 [00:41:55] Oh, fantastic! Well, uh...
Speaker 3 [00:41:59] Can I roll the camera? Yeah. Okay. So, do you want me to go ahead? Yeah. Just answer your questions.
Speaker 4 [00:42:06] Yeah, you can talk to me now, but you had mentioned that the woman with dementia, okay, and that she had made a connection to your artwork. Do you have any, I realize it's somewhat ineffable, right, but... Wait a minute, that person is in here. Do you, do you have an explanation for that, kind of what that means? Look over here. Yeah, by the way,
Refik Anadol [00:42:29] Yeah, by the way, Taylor Kuhn and Cynthia Hirshhorn is the person funding the Taylor-Kuhn research.
Speaker 4 [00:42:35] Oh, okay.
Refik Anadol [00:42:35] She doesn't want to be very public, but Taylor maybe mentioned it. She is the person that says, if this happens to my mom, what else may happen? And she started the research at UCLA. I don't know how much.
Speaker 4 [00:42:52] Are you able to describe what that actually is, is that possible?
Refik Anadol [00:42:58] Okay, let me try. So, the person with dementia who was able to connect with the work and the environment most likely triggered a memory that was waiting there to be triggered, most likely. So the piece is both for us, which is using the high radar frequency water activities and it was creating these movements. And... The person who witnessed this moment, that when the person starts remembering and connecting, which is a very challenging situation for stage four, it was a magic moment. And my guess is... Art can trigger those memories, even in the most hardest conditions, and connect us again. But I'm still thinking, like, what else can be the reason of this activation that is It's pretty much impossible scientifically, but it happens. And it's this precious moment in time and space that both the person, I hope, and the person who witnesses have this new memory in life. And by the way, this is the person that is allowing us to research deeper understanding of the impact of art in the human mind.
Speaker 3 [00:44:22] I'm going to follow up on this one. If family does the studies and the science isn't born out, it's like we just can't measure the change. How do you feel? What does that say about the earth?
Refik Anadol [00:44:38] Completely fine, because I think art, at least in my art, I think there is a spiritual level that I do believe it exists. Because I am doing this with a spiritual context and just pouring numbers and machines, cold and hardwares, because the spiritual part is finding human in non-human, correlating with this concept. So even though it's not quantifiable, I personally know that the intention of it when creating is there.
Speaker 3 [00:45:06] When you look at people, I know you said people have written to you and they've been really moved by your work, but when you're physically in the space and you're watching the public interact with your heart, what do you see in what you see?
Refik Anadol [00:45:18] So that's the most inspiring research in my, yeah. Exactly, yeah, the most inspiring research is for me is being able to perceive the artwork together with the public. In a museum, in a gallery, in like a former church, in a public space on the street, I always spend significant time with the people who are perceiving the piece. And these are the most inspiring dialogs I have. Like in MoMA for example there was a person who came from Argentina, and by the way, I have a very much inspirational writer, Borges, and his incredible story, Library of Babel, and he was, his PhD was on this research. And he was saying, did you read Library of babel? I said, this is the first inspiration that the project started. Or I met with someone from Berlin who had witnessed another project in summer and came to New York. And she saw me and then suddenly hugged me because she remembered a memory in that space. Another person came from Paris who saw the peace in Berlin who had a very spiritual moment. And it was in New York. Like this all happened in MoMA in just one day. I mean while it's an international space but also like how people are still remembering memories. And the impact of the work. I got the most powerful moments when I stay in the artworks and connect with the people.
Speaker 3 [00:46:50] So when I tell people, you know, a quick description of who you're going to be, and you're gonna be cannibals, and they know you're supposed to know it, and I always say, he's working with cutting edge technology, and he's like, okay. But are there challenges with cutting edges? Are there challenges that you might have the biggest monitor that hasn't been put on the market yet, but next year? Yeah.
Refik Anadol [00:47:13] Yeah, so the cutting edge technology brings cutting edge problems. So while things are ready, available online, but most of our projects require beyond that. For example, when, as an example for rainforest, we want to work on every type of rainforest in the world. We have these 10 types of rainforests, tempered, cloud, and tropic, and so on. This is a big challenge of 2 billion parameters, like biome, like flora, fauna, fungi, Like could really make this happen, you really need a powerful team of like researchers and of course a computational power that is rare to find. But it's possible and I mean, you can even now use these technologies with renewable energy. It's all about like finding problems or creating problems and then finding solutions in an iterative way. And sometimes like in at MoMA project again, like I never know that you can create a real-time dialog between AI and the built environment. So we have to, from scratch, find a way, an algorithm listens and sees and feels the weather. So these are tools that doesn't exist that have to be created from scratch. Or like at the Disney Hall, what is now called Projection in LA, there was this question like, you can't do it. When I, Generally here this question or someone says impossible. That's when you feel that there are walls to be broken like that This is the part that that you know Has to be invented and then we have three kilometers of fiber cables We have to calculate the reflection of the surface because the building has a stainless steel That is really hard to project because this material can eat the light that you project, but you see nothing So we have to calculate, by algorithm, how to project and give a life to this building. So it took maybe three months to just compute the refraction of the light. So these are things that makes more inspiring and exciting for us, that is, making invisible visible is, I think, still the core.
Speaker 3 [00:49:29] One more question.
Refik Anadol [00:49:30] By the way, this is a really good challenge. Oh my god, it's a nightmare, nightmare. Nightmare Datasette is a group of materials that can be a sound, image, and text, and sense, and many others.
Speaker 3 [00:49:51] And that was just a week from it. OK. Good.
Refik Anadol [00:50:00] Dataset, for me, is the fundamental of our work, but also functionally is a group of materials, digital materials, this can be a sound, image, text, the heartbeat, brain activities, pretty much anything quantifiable by machines can become a dataset. And dataset is also the fundamental of an AI, a core memory that learns from.
Speaker 4 [00:50:26] One final question, you know our art, the name of our series is confluence art and science. Is what we do both art and sciences?
Refik Anadol [00:50:37] I think what I do is convergence of art, science, and technology. I do believe it's always a part of the journey for artists, like when we look at Da Vinci or many other artists who have been exploring cutting-edge imagination, I think we always find this triangle of art science and technology, and I think this will be more powerful in the future.
