Digital artists like myself, the movement that's enjoying computation, games, and creativity with AI and so forth, we were the blind spot for the museums and galleries, super honestly. And it's quantifiable for many reasons because it's a new movement, it's a new reaction to the field. The art world has a concrete base like centuries-old techniques and tools, and it's this revolution. It's this renaissance happening right now, we are all living in.
Hello. Welcome to Behind the Tech. I'm your host Kevin Scott. My co-host Christina Warren is out doing some really cool things at GitHub, so it's just me today. Before I introduce our guest, anyone who has been watching the world even a bit over the past month is aware of the horrifying destruction wreaked by Hurricane Helene in the US southeast. One of the most devastated areas was in northern and western North Carolina, in particular the Asheville region. As I've been delving more and more into the art and craft of ceramics in my personal life, I've learned that one of the strongest concentrations of ceramic craft and artisans in the country is right there in Asheville. There are a bunch of folks in that community who really could use your help to start pulling their lives and livelihoods back together after such a terrible loss. Namely, those at East Fork and Mud Tools, as well as individual artists like Akira Satake and John Britt. We'll share their information in the show notes, and anyone who is inclined to support would be playing a huge part in helping them get back on their feet. And we're still accepting questions for our upcoming 'Ask Me Anything' episode. If you have questions for me, please send us an email at
[email protected]. So on the podcast today is Refik Anadol. I met Refik at an event that both of us had the pleasure of attending earlier this year. And one of the things that we were discussing at that event was the nature of art. Refik is an incredible artist and is using AI in really adventurous and creative ways. I've been a big fan of his work for a long while, and what he is doing and what he's done over the past few years as these new AI tools have created new possibilities for art and artists has been just extraordinary. So I'm really delighted that we've got him on the show today and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So let's dive right in.
Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He's the director of Refik Anadol's AI Studio in Los Angeles and a lecturer in UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol's projects consist of data-driven machine-learning algorithms that create abstract, colorful environments. His work addresses the challenges and possibilities that ubiquitous computing has imposed on humanity, exploring how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing in the digital age. Anadol's immersive and audio-visual installations and live audio-visual performances have been exhibited worldwide, transforming entire buildings and creating a dynamic perception of space. His work has been featured in venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul. Anadol holds a BA in photography and video and an MFA in visual communication design from Istanbul Bilgi University, as well as a second MFA from the Design Media Arts program at UCLA. And I will say personally, I adore your work. So it is a real pleasure to have you here with us today. And I think we're going to have a really important conversation because the intersection of art and artificial intelligence is a hot topic of debate right now. But maybe we can just sort of start by talking about how it is you got interested in both art and technology and where for you did those two things first intersect.
Absolutely. Kevin, first of all, again, thank you so much for this wonderful moment. We had incredible conversations before and I'm so, again, honored to share the journey with you and everyone. So it is truly I would say a very childish start. I was eight years old in Istanbul, and my mom, one day, completely randomly, without I guess, guessing, she brought home a Commodore, a very first computer. And it was a fascinating eight-year-old moment, right? The first time seeing a computer, there was a small booklet from it that shows how to very much basically basic programming. And then I think the part I am still super in love with, of course, games. I love games so much, and that was a beautiful start. As a child, I think we always respond back to reality as positive as possible, as hopeful as possible. And I watched my first dystopian science fiction movie, Blade Runner at the same age, and I think there was this moment, okay, the machines can become a friend, like a game companion or imagination part, and then we can see the future of architecture in Blade Runner, such as the media architecture, flying car, and android tells the other android that these are not your memories. This is someone else's -- I mean, as a child, I still cannot forget this epiphany. And I didn't stop with computers, I would say, the life and imagination. So grateful that in my undergrad year, 2008, in Istanbul, it was a very beautiful moment with a mentor of mine, Peter Weibel, which we lost this year. He was the founder of the world's first art, science, and technology museum called ZKM. In his class, it's the first time I was able to use software called Pure Data, which is a very early open-source visual programming language that I will say that I very much get so inspired at visualizing the sensors, which is making invisible/visible moments, and seeing literally ultrasound sensors and be able to take a light point and line geometry of the sensor. And I think in that class I coined the term 'data painting,' the idea of data can become material, if you think that is a form of memory and that memory can take any shape and form. So since then, now 16 years, I was able to work with heartbeat data, skin conductance, brain signals, weather data, pretty much anything we can quantify, I believe can be a form of art. And that journey is still keep going. Now I have a studio in Los Angeles, California, we are 20 people, can speak 15 languages and 10 countries. And I was so grateful that I received the Microsoft Research Award 2013. I was at UCLA and that was a moment that I remember to truly connect with academia as an artist to think about art, science, technology together can create work.
Yeah, so I want to talk a little bit more about your journey as an artist because, I mean, it's really interesting. I think you and I had approximately the same exposure to computers. I think I'm older than you, but like it's a very similar experience. I got one of these consumer computers when I was a teenager and I was just fascinated by the device, but also really intrigued by how you could use this technology to make games. I was really into Dungeons & Dragons, I was into video games, I was -- and I also, at the time, I didn't know I was going to become a computer scientist. The thing that I really wanted to do when I was 12 years old was I wanted to be a comic book illustrator. But for reasons I don't even quite understand, as I got older and older, I gravitated more towards not just technology, but kind of the utilitarian aspects of the technology. So I just really loved using computers to make tools for other people to use. So how do you think it is that you chose the vector that you're on or did the vector choose you? Or, I mean, these questions always are fascinating to me.
That's a great question. I think very similar, I think feeling. I felt that as a person, I really truly enjoyed this idea of discovery and innovations. But more in the creative side of, for example, I mean, I still remember finding an exciting hack of a machine is as inspiring as, hey, I can do that. This sharing moment was never a question. But what I felt so inspiring is when I start to combine multiple elements, such as computation, architecture, or most importantly, I will say, as soon as I start to see the buildings as canvas, for example. Because I think that architecture is an incredible form of surface. I believe that any form of architecture can become a canvas, the building facades, the floor, the ceiling, the window, the door, because as soon as we liberate this idea of a material, which means what happens if you take the light and data together and imagine this new non-Newtonian material, maybe, that can disappear if you don't want it, but we can program it through algorithms and data that can take any shape and form. As soon as that created an epiphany moment, I couldn't stop imagining. And I feel like the future of architecture is so inspiring because they can reflect as humanity. Of course, there's lots of function to protect us from Mother Nature, but also they can have a function of like other imaginations. And since that moment, it's so fun. And then the computation, in general, I'm a digital artist that means that I don't have a connection so much with the physical world even though I cannot draw properly or write but I know how to compute geometrically the voxels, the pixels and really living in digital space became so inspiring. And then on top of that, I'm really inspired from the science so much, huge respect to the research going on in computer science, in other sciences, super in love with and respectfully looking how incredible people are pushing forward technology, and just try to capture that positivity, and just blend it with this imaginary materials, is I think where I get so excited, and then learn programming, and then on top of it, computer graphics. I couldn't stop thinking about neuroscience, because I believe that buildings can dream and hallucinate one day if you do it right. So all this connected together naturally, I will say.
Yeah, so the two things that I really want to chat about later is, yeah, I think you and I were at an event together earlier this year where we in a group were being asked to ponder the question like what is art? And I definitely want to talk about that later. And I also want to talk about your work in particular. But before we do that, how did you decide that this is what you wanted to do for your career? Did you have encouragement from your parents? Did you have some concept that I'm going to be able to do this and make money, so I can pay my rent and --?
Yes. An amazing question because for generally, I have two, again, I think breaking points. First of all, I'm truly grateful for the family because I have 14 teachers in my family. So I grew up with like learning to learn as the fundamental layer of the fabric of life. So I don't remember saying, I don't know something because it felt always not right before researching, learning what is my capacity of understanding of that specific topic. And then on top of it, it just became this -- I mean, yeah, people say 'nerding about the topic', but it's actually learning about a topic. And then when you learn about it, it becomes an extension of life and so our cognitive capacity of life. So I never quit that moment of learning. And then I'm so grateful that in the journey, as soon as I know that I think I feel myself art, science, technology in that point of interest, nobody stopped in the family. They just trusted that this can be the right thing. So very grateful. But the financial part was really challenging because generally speaking, the art world is a relatively challenging environment for artists to create value with their work. For many reasons, there's a gallery world, there's a museum world, and there's a collector world, that's where the financial value comes to the art making. So I am an artist without a gallery representation, meaning independent, which makes it much harder because it means that I have to navigate through the whole, in my own social media, myself, and studio, which was a much more entrepreneurial challenge on top of the journey. But I find it so inspiring because over the last 10 years as a studio, we honestly openly shared everything online, that what happened, wherever we go, and that naturally grew. But I'm so grateful that, again, I come back to the Microsoft Research Award as a student, 2013, I knew that I wanted to open a studio. I know that I'm not an alone person, I should be a team of people exploring the concept, context. I know that as a human myself, I have a capacity of cognitive limits. But if I become a team, maybe we can invent new ways of imagination, computation, AI research, neuroscience, and so forth. That was always this lab atelier dream. And it started very hard in the beginning. But people who have been understanding the moment, pioneers of technology, or the people who have been creating important products and services about technology, they completely got it. They directly understand that a new art form, a new speculation about an idea, a dream, a sculpture, a painting, completely fit very well. And so I'm so grateful to Los Angeles, UCLA, and all our supporters across the journey that grew very naturally and very challenging, but very grateful that turned into a value.
Yeah, and I know a lot of artists -- Yeah, stage one, it seems like is you just sort of have to figure out any sort of economics, how can I get paid at all to do this creative thing. And then once you figure that out, I know a bunch of artists who the next question is how do I make sure that I've got the real creative freedom that I want. So basically being sponsored to just do whatever versus doing things like taking commissions where you have a very rigid set of constraints that you're operating in. And you seem to have navigated that super well, but how tricky has that been?
It is very, very. So first of all, I will be super honest that digital artists like myself, the movement that's enjoying computation, games, and creativity with AI, and so forth, we were the blind spot for the museums and galleries, super honestly. And it's quantifiable for many reasons because it's a new movement. It's a new reaction to the field. The art world has a concrete base like centuries-old techniques and tools. And it's this revolution. It's this renaissance happening right now we are all living in. But as an artist, I was so naturally saying this all the time that I witnessed the birth of the Internet, Web 1, Web 2, Web 3, AI, Quantum, Cloud. I mean, naturally, that's what I reflect back as a form of imagination. So I think, there was this rejection for a while, I would say, or a blind spot. But then as soon as the more we created works that bring people together, like our project in Walt Disney Concert Hall, which was also back in time the MFA project, thanks to Lili Cheng, that she was also one of the early mentors and advisors. And suddenly that became a reality that brought 100,000 people together, that became a tangible idea. Or Casa Batlló project in Gaudi's building in Barcelona, 65,000 people. Or at MoMA, our show received 3 million people, the largest audience in MoMA history, with 38 minutes average viewing. And that's all I think made these tangible results. And as soon as they become an experience in life and memory, I think that really bonded the context from a dream to reality.
Yeah. So let's talk about your work. Maybe we can start with one of your more recent things. So you have this really exciting thing called Dataland that you're doing. Do you want to describe that a little bit?
Yes. So this is truly the joy project. So first of all, very grateful again over the years, as a studio, we thought that last now almost 10 years coming, we got so excited about what else can we do with our knowledge and experience so far. So as I mentioned, we are very grateful. We work with MoMA, Guggenheim, Pompidou. I mean, they're amazing in museums in the world, but there's only a couple of them, but there's so many artists like myself. So number one was how can we be sure that this medium, which is very hard to think about. I mean, an AI model is a living artwork. I don't think even museums know how to preserve an AI model. I mean, museums are still discussing how to preserve a painting, which is already physically in the world. So there's a lot of distance from what is coming right now. So we just want to be an example in the field. And second, I really want to always imagine what is truly and honestly the most complex architectural manifestation of a museum in the age of AI and data and so forth, not necessarily physically, but in this living system that can see us, feel us, have conversations with different levels, can do an incredible level of computation in real time, and also, curate these beautiful narratives and with neural networks. And doing great work also, for example, for humanity such as nature, as I'm a huge lover of nature. I believe that nature is the most important thing we have, and the most inspiring thing we have. How can we make AI research by collecting data by ourselves, giving back to the community, open-source data exchange, work with the pioneers and also educate AI to the public, and even collect AI work? So we found that just a moment, this becomes a museum actually because it's not only creating art, it is collecting art, sharing learning and education, and also bringing other artists together. So I found that it's a very incredible and even maybe ways of imagination. So it's that joy and inspiring place to imagine. In Los Angeles, California, opening hopefully next year in a Frank Gehry building. I'm so excited and so happy to join many forces together.
It's really super cool to think about the community aspect of it. I think it's truly wonderful, but just technically, I want to double-click on preservation. One of the things I think when you and I were younger, there was this idea that because everything was transitioning from analog to digital media, that it was going to be so much easier to preserve everything forever. As soon as the bits were there, it's just trivially easy to preserve them. But I think we are kind of seeing exactly the opposite. So the bits endure, but the bits are only useful when you can sort of reduce them onto a particular set of hardware to render them in some way to like play back a piece of music or to -- and your works are really complicated because they're these crazy assemblages of technology. And so, I do think the preservation challenge just seems to me really, really daunting because imagine 100 years from now, trying to the hardware to go run the bits on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally agree. And by the way, in our conversations, you mentioned so much beautiful response to the physical, the joy that you also enjoy physical craftsmanship. And I completely agree with you because, by the way, yes, I'm a digital artist, but I love physical worlds so much. So I didn't detach from the physical beauty of life. And I feel like it's a great time still, I think for us, to remind us how beautiful the physical world. And instead of sort of replacing it or saying just there's another alternative world, it's so beautiful to capture the beauty of the world. And I think -- especially, I think in the pandemic, I asked this question a lot, we could go to nature but could nature come to us? And that was when I realized that actually there's so much we can do. So we are traveling 16 rainforests around the world and working with incredible people living in the forests such as the Yawanawa people in Amazonia. So they are teaching us how to live in the forest, for example. Incredible feeling, when there is no technology that we know around us, but their technology, how they live for thousands of years in the forest. They show us these beautiful species that are barely known or maybe never discovered in the Latin or English world. There's so much discovery. And also what I found that, as soon as I think the AI models are so inspiring research and also we learned -- so we were able to receive 3.5 million species by asking the museums and institutions who have been preserving them. But the funny thing is, they are incredible silos. I mean they're independently incredible, but they never merged. So what we tried is what happens if this intellectually physical world representation comes together, and then suddenly this AI becomes incredibly perfect about nature. And then suddenly it creates this new encyclopedia context. I mean, it's so funny that something from the physical world to the virtual world, but to appreciate the physical world is really so inspiring.
Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally agree. So, it's sort of hard to talk about your work because it is so sensual in nature that it's really hard to have an abstract conversation in English that does it justice. But I wonder, maybe to give listeners an idea, maybe you could sort of describe what AI has allowed you to do with a piece of art or with the making of the art that you couldn't do before with paintbrushes or Photoshop or whatever the toolset was before.
Yeah. I think that is a great question. So it was 2016 when I was very fortunate to work with, very first time, 1.7 million documents from a library that has mostly cultural documents. And our curator was very much in love with archives, and of course, as an archivist, they always have a challenge. For nine years, six researchers have been trying to sort this data. It's very challenging. And as soon as we applied a machine learning algorithm, very early, embedding models, digital synthesis, I was shocked by the result of seeing that 1.7 million documents in the form of three-dimensional plottings. This was this moment of, okay, but this is a new sculpture. But this sculpture is seen through the AI's mind and applied to humans' mind's eye by giving those line and points reasoning that suddenly makes that millions of documents visible. And the second question was, of course, if the machine can learn, can it dream? I see these questions all the time in the history, right? Artists ask the question, what is beyond reality? I mean, that question now with AI, I find that so easier to answer by using a memory context. This can be nature, urban, culture, buildings, cities. I'm so obsessed with all these topics, but I mean, they are topics that belong to humanity, right? For example, nature. We were able to work with 75 million flowers from the Amazonia to any creatures that exist in nature and train a model on that. And then suddenly, I have a brush that remembers all the colors of the species that can paint with infinite possibilities of these beautiful creatures. So I see that it's not so different than Monet, back in time, inspired from the atmosphere, but now we have a thinking brush that can still, in the same context, but in different technology. So I see that we have so much similarities. And, of course, we can go next level there. And this time, the artwork can be never the same, which can be living works by using sensors, weather data, heartbeat, brain signals, and we can give a different context of the conversation. And then that can also apply on top of it. By the way, I believe if one day data becomes a pigment, I don't think it is dry. It can be non-Newtonian. It can be ever-changing. So I love fluid dynamics so much. In our work, we have these small molecules that I am programming them to give a movement context. They can be in any fluidity. They can remember the previous frame, they will predict the next colors of the frame. So, they become these like living small organisms that are driven by the colors of nature or so forth. And plus music that we can also train the model. And then recently we are playing with the scent, the last four years, because I felt that we were missing something in those works. And as soon as we introduced the scent molecules, suddenly there is this new form of art which I'm calling it a generative reality. It's just kind of a new experience that all the time, ever-changing and living forms of experiences. So it's fascinating to imagine in this mind space.
Yeah. Well, maybe this is a good point to start talking more philosophically about what it is that you're doing. You've already said one thing about art, which is artists are and have historically been searching for things that are outside of reality, you're making a thing that's new to human experience. But I guess, one of the questions there is why, to what end? It gets back even to this thing that we were discussing earlier this year which is what is art? Because a lot of people, when a new tool shows up, and it doesn't need to be AI but AI is the AI particular tool that we're discussing right now, they're like, okay, well, I don't know what this means. Does this mean it's the end of art? Does it mean that art is all of a sudden going to become more vital and different? And it's happened in every generation, as soon as someone deviates from what the standard practice is, what the canon is, everyone's like, oh my God, this is kind of the end. So, I mean, maybe we start with that. In your mind, why do you do what you do? What is the purpose?
Incredible aspects and thank you for the question because I always felt that -- so first of all, I think, to me, art is humanity's capacity of imagination. And I feel that we as humans, we push to the edge of imagination. And that's what we found there. And I think that's the quest, I believe, in our DNA, in our genes, in our like practice of life and centuries and more. And I think this is all evolving with other parts of the life itself. And I think we are all artists. We are all basically artists. And what we do with our artistic capacity is really just unique and for everyone. And I also feel that to me art is something when the idea touches both mind and soul at the same time. And I really find that very challenging actually, because the mind is something we operate in another reality. We have soul concepts, spirituality, and emotions. And as humans, we have so complex fabric of life. So I feel like art is always intertwining these universes in different and unexpected, most likely, places. And I really got so inspired by the idea of technology for humanity, always and always make that a mirror effect. But in this case, AI is the mirror itself. It truly can become an exactly, in my mind at least, the most nearest material I can imagine is a mirror. It really reflects us, our thoughts, our feelings, if you want, and if you program it. And it's the first time we have a technology that has a cognitive capacity, has a reasoning capacity. It's a fascinating time to be alive, to really imagine with this technology. But I also feel that in my mind, my purpose of like, as I mentioned as a child, I never stopped bringing inspiration, joy, and hope to life. So that's always these layers of imagination and values and belief. So I use this technology to make those forms of art. And I believe that also triggered this beautiful community around the idea. And also, I felt that sometimes it's really easy to go the dark mode in our civilization. But I also felt that much harder is what else can we do with that? But what else can we create and what else can we imagine? So, I found myself in that purpose a lot with these beautiful moments.
Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because people are so energized right now about the intersection of AI and art. I've been thinking a lot about what a definition of art is. And I think the only conclusion that I've been able to reach after reading a whole bunch about art history and talking to a bunch of artists is there really isn't one definition for art. Some people have defined it like you already alluded to this. It's like art is what can be collected. If you can't put something in a gallery or a museum - not art, I think that's a bad definition of art, by the way. But it strikes me that there's some really interesting things about art, which is, for me at least, art seems to be a thing that you are trying to express that just isn't another good way to express. And it's in you, and you've got to get it out, and you must get it out. And it has value and meaning and worth whether or not anyone else sees it, or gets to experience it. But it can be enriched when other people experience it and they sort of -- because I think we all sort of seek out art, we seek out this novelty and we look at what other people are expressing to us through their art and try to understand what is it that they're trying to express. What did they mean? What does this mean to me? And so, it just feels like this unbelievably human thing. If you sort of take these things out of it that you have a human being who has something in them they need to express and you have another human being who has something in them that needs to connect, then, I don't know, is it art? So in a sense, like AI making an image that it shares with another AI, maybe that's art, but I don't know that I care.
Yeah, exactly. Totally agree with you. Totally agree. And there's a moment that you mentioned the care moment. I feel like it's exactly where it's so inspiring because, as you mentioned, I think at the end of the day, I always believe it's all about being human. I mean, I hope the common fabric of humanity and our conscious model. And I feel like even -- yes, you mentioned maybe multiple AIs can be in the conversation. Sure, multiple AIs can do things together. But do we have meaning and purpose there? Is it any form of imagination versus there's always this human intellect and quest, right, nature of the quest? And I feel like that's where the super inspiring and infinite possibilities come in the game. So I think the good news I will say for the feeling of art making, I agree with you, it's this like urgency to create also an output, I mean, a beautiful food, to beautiful music, to like poetry, to any craftsmanship. I don't think there's any limit at all in our, I guess, capacity. But that's just enablers in this case, that what we couldn't play with the reasoning before, that we -- I mean, we've never had a tool that doesn't forget before. We have all these amazing breakthroughs back-to-back for human intellect, right, and imagination. So I think it's very inspiring to be alive, to push those new frontiers every single moment.
