Türkçe
PILEVNELI, is pleased to present Refik Anadol’s new solo exhibition after three years. On view through March 19 – April 25, 2021 at PILEVNELI’s location in Dolapdere, the exhibition includes Anadol’s new body of works to be exhibited for the first time. “Machine Memoirs: Space” is the artist’s third exhibition under PILEVNELI’s roof. Anadol’s first gallery exhibition “Sceptical Interventions” was also presented by PILEVNELI in 2012.
“Machine Memoirs: Space” is realized with the special support of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and is sponsored by BMW distributed by Borusan Otomotiv in Turkey, IMM subsidiary Kültür AŞ and Samsung Galaxy S21 Series. Also supported by Beyoğlu Municipality, the exhibition’s contributors are ABC Deterjan, Atelier Rebul, Fuudy, Jotun, Kahve Dünyası Algötür, MG International Fragrance Company, Swissôtel the Bosphorus Istanbul, its media sponsor is Joy Fm and its advertisement and publicity sponsors are City’s, IstanbulArtNews, Just Work, Kentvizyon, Panoffect and Panout.
As the symbiotic relationship between human life, science and technology continually transforms, the role of machines in pushing the boundaries of imagination generates intriguing discussions about successful human-machine teams. Refik Anadol, who sees artificial intelligence as collaborator rather than a mere tool, has been exploring interrelated key concepts for challenging our conventional understanding of the cosmos, human senses, machines, and the mind. Machine Memoirs: Space, the most comprehensive solo exhibition by Refik Anadol Studio in Istanbul to date, speculates a new conceptual framework to turn the spotlight on the vast photographic archives that document the history of space exploration.
In Machine Memoirs: Space, machine-based visual speculations about space, and humanity’s historical attempts to explore its depths unveil intricate connections between obscurity and openness, creating an alternate data universe of abstract forms where reams of information produce open-ended aesthetic possibilities. In 1980, in an episode of his TV show Cosmos, astrophysicist Carl Sagan said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” Forty-one years after Sagan’s statement, Refik Anadol Studio presents yet another speculation of imagining a (data) universe as a first step to reach its unseen dimensions with a poetic flow of metaphors that connect photographic astronomic data with observable human emotions formed around public art.
Memoirs and Dreams
The exhibition consists of two interrelated chapters titled Memoirs and Dreams both of them approaching humanity’s explorations of space from a distinct aesthetic perspective and thematic orientation. Revealing the artistic expressions of the Studio’s long-term groundbreaking research projects on space-related data visualization through machine learning, these chapters will walk the audience through simulations of how an artificial intelligence generates novel experiences to be perceived collectively.
The first chapter, Memoirs, will exhibit a series of Anadol’s un-interpreted, raw datadriven installations, each with a unique path and journey throughout our machine’s collection of space-related visual data. These data paintings utilize over 2 million images that were captured and recorded by the ISS, Hubble, and MRO telescopes and other sensors and satellites – the largest dataset ever used to train a generative adversarial network (GAN) on the possible shapes of varied celestial bodies. When viewed together as the most advanced astronomic “machine memories,” these works disclose the functionality of the tools that give rise to their aesthetic content in an interactive component that allow the audience engage with raw data. The aim is to expand our sense of the universe not only through abstract images, but also through fragmented evidence of a sublime totality that we can only imagine.
The second chapter, Dreams, will feature 3D data sculptures and a 15-minute immersive AI cinema installation. The sculptures generated by the latest 3D printing techniques to represent synthetic landscapes inspired by the Hubble, ISS, and MRO telescope’s visual memories. These sculpture pieces exhibit multiple flow of networks between data points made up of Earth’s and other celestial objects’ topologies. Storytelling with data to reach the collective unconscious has been a foundational aspect of Refik Anadol’s body of work since his first exhibition in Istanbul in 2011. The cinematic part of this chapter, titled Machine Memoirs v.2, explores this theme in the form of a 15-minute immersive AI cinema that invites the audience to step into the mind of a machine. Experiencing a multi-dimensional, dynamic visualization of how artificial intelligence makes connections between these vast data clusters, the audience finds themselves in an expanding data universe. This space not only represents the interpolation of photographic space archives as synthesis, but also becomes a latent cosmos in which dreams are the main currency of artistic creativity. As a masterfully curated multi-channel experience, Dreams offers an avant-garde form of multi-dimensional cartographic aesthetics. The installation’s intricate and abstract layers of machine-generated space dreams allude to a connection with a cosmos of unimaginable vastness while its natural pigments trigger a sense of belonging to the earth and to our immediate environments.
An Artistic Exploration of Space, Machine and Human Relations
As the symbiotic relationship between human life, science and technology continually transforms, the role of machines in pushing the boundaries of imagination generates intriguing discussions about successful human-machine teams. Refik Anadol, who sees artificial intelligence as a collaborator, has been exploring interrelated key concepts for challenging our conventional understandings of the cosmos, human senses, machines, and the mind. Machine Memoirs: Space, the most comprehensive solo exhibition by Refik Anadol Studio in Istanbul to date, speculates a new conceptual framework to turn the spotlight on the vast photographic archives that document the history of space exploration.
In Machine Memoirs: Space, machine-based visual speculations about our universe, and humanity’s historical attempts to explore its depths unveil intricate connections between obscurity and openness, creating an alternate data universe of abstract forms where reams of information produce open-ended aesthetic possibilities. In 1980, in an episode of his TV show Cosmos, astrophysicist Carl Sagan said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” Forty-one years after Sagan’s statement, Refik Anadol Studio presents yet another speculation that connects photographic astronomic data with observable human emotions formed around public art, imagining a data universe as a first step to reach its unseen dimensions with a poetic flow of metaphors.
The exhibition consists of two interrelated chapters titled Memoirs and Dreams – both of them approaching humanity’s explorations of space from a distinct aesthetic perspective and thematic orientation. Revealing the artistic expressions of the Studio’s groundbreaking research projects on space-related data visualization through machine learning, these chapters will walk the audience through simulations of how an artificial intelligence generates novel experiences to be perceived collectively.
The first chapter, Memoirs, exhibits a series of data paintings that utilize over 2 million images that were captured and recorded by the ISS, Hubble, and MRO telescopes and other sensors and satellites – the largest space-related dataset ever used to train a generative adversarial network (GAN) for an artwork. When viewed together as the most advanced astronomic “machine memories,” these works also disclose the functionality of the tools that give rise to their aesthetic content in a “Data Tunnel” that displays raw data. The aim is to expand our sense of the universe not only through abstract images, but also through fragmented evidence of a sublime totality that we can only imagine.
The second chapter, Dreams, features 3D data sculptures and a 15-minute immersive AI cinema installation. The sculptures were generated using the latest 3D printing techniques and represent synthetic landscapes inspired by the Hubble, ISS, and MRO telescope’s visual memories. They exhibit multiple flow of networks between data points made up of Earth’s and other celestial objects’ topologies. Storytelling with data to reach the collective unconscious has been a foundational aspect of Refik Anadol’s body of work since his first exhibition in Istanbul in 2011. The cinematic part of this chapter, titled Machine Memoirs v.2, explores this theme in the form of a 15- minute immersive AI cinema that invites the audience to step into the mind of a machine. Experiencing a multi-dimensional, dynamic visualization of how artificial intelligence makes connections between these vast data clusters, the audience finds themselves in an expanding data universe. This space not only represents the interpolation of photographic space archives as synthesis, but also becomes a latent cosmos in which dreams are the main currency of artistic creativity. As a masterfully curated multi-channel experience, Dreams offers an avant-garde form of multi-dimensional cartographic aesthetics. The installation’s intricate and abstract layers of machine-generated space dreams allude to a connection with a cosmos of unimaginable vastness while its natural pigments trigger a sense of belonging to the earth and to our immediate environments.
(Istanbul, Turkey / 19 March 2021 / Pilevneli Gallery)
On ”Machine Memoirs: Space” with Refik Anadol
How did you begin your collaboration with NASA JPL, which inspired this exhibition? How long did it take you to turn this collaboration into an exhibition? And how has it influenced your art practice in the long run?
We started a collaboration with NASA JPL in 2018 to visualize the institution’s 60-year-old space exploration archives and prepare a data sculpture for their campus. The process itself was a very inspiring experience for an artist like me whose vision is so intertwined with science fiction, artificial intelligence and big data. Thinking of a work incorporating the visuals that have been brought to us by the most comprehensive telescopes sent to outer space and to other celestial bodies made me think about the idea that telescopes keep a sort of visual travel journals of spaces to where we cannot travel. And the possibility that telescopes that collect so many images in their memories, albeit artificial, could dream, thus emerged.
Your previous exhibition in Istanbul, Melting Memories, invited us to embark on a virtual journey about the invisible and intangible memories of humans. Now we are transitioning into the hidden memory of space. Can we say that both your artistic discoveries and scientific curiosities move around the question of whether we can know more about how memory and consciousness work?
Both human memory and the idea of “collective memory” – but more importantly, the intersection of the two – require further consideration in sciences and arts. Years ago, when I was working on Melting Memories, I tried to find an answer to the question “What can we do to avoid losing our memories?” by exploring how we can use the most recent AI technology to create art with and about memories. Since then, I have been reminding my teammates of this question every time we start a new project. For example, in the Machine Hallucination exhibition that we held in New York in 2019, and in the work we projected on one of the iconic buildings of the famous architect Zaha Hadid in Seoul, South Korea last year, we sought ways to represent the memories of a city and the concept of collective memory by manipulating architecture as a canvas. I can say that the works we have shared with you today in Pilevneli emerged from similar questions, but to understand a bigger, more ambiguous and therefore more speculative data set that I would call “memories of the universe.” I also have to point out that as we repeatedly ask this question in the light of different data sets, we often find ourselves somehow questioning the capacity of human memory. We are very excited about the recent news that there might be a possibility of using our Studio’s works for therapeutic purposes in the treatment of some neurological diseases and conditions that affect memory. We will be sharing more exciting new research projects on that front in the coming months.
In Melting Memories, you were inspired by the latest neuroscience research and showed us art that used the most special data coming from humans, their memories. Now, you turn your face to astronomy and interpret a completely different unknown through art. As an artist who has adopted the motto of “making the invisible visible,” can you explain the point where art, artificial intelligence and technology have reached regarding the interpretation of vast data?
For me, the word ‘invisible’ means “something that must change shape in order to appear” as well as “out of sight.” With the most recent AI tools, I think that not only data or information, but also everything material and spiritual that we can think of can change shape or form for us to better understand them. We can read this as contributing to my vision of creating digital art with a thinking brush and “machine consciousness.” For example, the crypto art world that I have recently joined – and a platform that I have been reflecting on for a long time – is a structure that questions the limited role of art galleries in supporting artists in the 21st century and speculates new forms of collectorship by showing us a way that had been invisible to most of us in the art world. I always start my pieces with the idea of the endless potential of transformation and change, so much so that sometimes the discoveries of the machine take us to places we have never imagined, or the data itself allows us to see some facts that have not been crystallized for us before. For example, during the preparation of the Renaissance Dreams exhibition that we held in Milan in the last months of 2020, it was very interesting to observe that the machine mind that we filled with literary works of the period ended up creating meaningful poetry. Similarly, the images taken from telescopes revealed some unique, earthly pigments that had always existed around without us noticing. I have been questioning the possibility of data becoming a pigment for ten years now and I have always been more concerned with bringing the machine closer to the human rather than mechanizing the human. If one day in the distant future machines cease to operate as mere collaborators and turn into conscious minds, it is up to us to make use of this transformation for the benefit of humanity or the universe.
Can you talk more about the research that you have done for this exhibition? How did you gain access to the archives of ISS, Hubble, and MRO telescopes?
We obtained all of the data we used in the exhibition from publicly available sources – that is, every data set behind the works can be found on the internet, which is in line with my principle of “making the invisible visible” from the previous question. Being able to draw attention to a public data that simply lies there is also an important part of my art practice. The empirical and the most demanding part of the job is that we regularly have to collect these data as a team. Each space mission has separate data, and as you can see especially in the data sculptures on the third floor, we can only collect the big data required for the creation of each work through a systematic study and analysis. In 2017, we started to use very complex artificial intelligence algorithms, thanks to the invaluable support of NVIDIA. We also were able to be a part of many pioneering studies in the field. In 2018, the whole journey became much more meaningful with the visit of the NASA JPL team to our studio and their collaboration proposal. For nearly three years, we were able to look at their 60- year-old archives with the help of NASA engineers and from different angles.
It is striking that you use the concepts of memory, data, information, archive, history, and even pigment interchangeably in your works. How did the similarities and connections between these concepts inspire you when using space data?
Actually, I can gather all these concepts and words in my mind under the title “the heritage of humanity.” Data alone or historical narratives alone, unfortunately, cannot provide enough information about humanity. With so many tools at our disposal, from artificial intelligence to machine learning, from the latest data visualization techniques to artistic creativity, it is both a responsibility and an unlimited trigger of imagination to preserve the data on space-machine- human relations as much as possible and carry it into the future. So my main concern is to carry the past to the future through art; and Machine Memoirs: Space is born from a narrative where the past and the future are intertwined. Space exploration has come a long way in a very short period of time, and it is a discipline where exploration and learning take place almost simultaneously, so much so that sometimes we feel like we are in a science fiction movie. When we watch a movie about space, we can easily think that what we are seeing on the big screen might actually come true in a few decades. In other words, history in space is kind of folding into the future. In the exhibition, we tried to represent the multiple definitions and ways of perceiving time, history, and memories with the multiple layers of experience that our works generate.
Space exploration and the possible consequences of these discoveries are issues that have occupied the world’s agenda for decades. Even though Machine Memoirs: Space gives the impression of a retrospective exhibition with an emphasis on memory, it actually invites speculations about the future. Could you talk about the exhibition’s roots in the past as well as its futuristic elements?
One of the themes of the exhibition that I haven’t discussed until now is the idea of looking at humanity from a point outside of history, as well as literally looking at the world and ourselves “from outer space.” One of the most frequently asked questions about my works is how I interpret the relationship between dreams and imagination. I think Machine Memoirs: Space has been one of the exhibitions in which I was able to explain this relationship, because, in my opinion, both dreams and imagination are feelings or situations associated with “places we cannot go.” In one, we are conscious and aware of our desires, in the other we are confronted by our repressed desires while we sleep. When I apply this analogy to space, the first thing that comes to mind is that a machine traveling through the galaxy indeed does this for us. With the machine, we are able to approach the places we dream of and want to explore further as humans. Artificial intelligence can also store data that we cannot keep in our minds and make connections between them just as our mind does to us while we are dreaming, and introduce us to desires, goals and potentials that we are not aware of. The 21st century is definitely the age of space and artificial intelligence, and it was very important for me to be able to bring the two together in one exhibition.
In the second part of the exhibition, we encounter a multi-dimensional “AI cinema” that is designed to make the audience move inside a “machine-mind space” that is immersed in architecture. Can you explain what you mean by this definition?
I can define AI cinema as visual stories composed of deliberately designed artificial intelligence outputs. If I explain it with an analogy, it is a narrative that emerges as a result of the machine falling in love with a data set and trying to unravel all the connections related to that data. Like any complex love story that involves multiple layers of information exchange, it is complex and beautiful at the same time. But even though I explain it as a narrative or a story, my goal is to create a feeling, or a new system of consciousness, as the film and new media professor Gene Youngblood explored in his theory of “Expanded Cinema.” While doing this, it is very important to use the space as a canvas and to be able to integrate new systems and technologies with old information and spaces. Again, as Youngblood said, we are in an age in which every artist should be a “design scientist.” Here, we speculate a cinematic experience that can be experienced at the intersection of physical and virtual spaces without depending on apparatuses such as VR, AR or XR.
You have chosen the title Machine Memoirs v.2 for the part of the exhibition that you define as AI cinema. Where was the first installation of the series exhibited? What data did you use for?
“Infinite Space,” which we created using a similar technique and exhibited at Artechouse in Washington, D.C. in 2019, was one of the most popular exhibitions of that year. It was an installation for which we examined the philosophical and poetic relationships between infinity and perception and the concept of memory through several channels such as human memories, Mars photographs taken from the MRO telescope, and sea surface activities. Our data sculptures made such a splash in the U.S. capital that the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution asked us to work with their archives and create a sculpture for them. About a year later, we developed a novel version of the same technique for the opening of the New York venue of Artechouse, and our first artificial intelligence cinema experiment emerged there. The exhibition, which was visited by thousands of people over three months, was my biggest exhibition in North America. Using over three million New York images we collected from public databases, we created a synesthetic reality experiment and invited visitors to experience being inside a work of art. For Machine Memoirs v.2 at Pilevneli, we transformed millions of space images into an artistic experience using a similar technique.
Each work in this exhibition brings together many technical elements and thus promises unique artistic experiences for the audience. Could you briefly describe the process from the moment you start collecting data to the final version of the work?
The process began with a regular review of NASA archives. Afterwards, we analyzed and classified the collection of visual data conceptually with the help of machine intelligence. We also analyzed data for each machine separately. Afterwards, we taught the visual memories of each machine to artificial intelligence with the GAN algorithm named StyleGAN2ADA. We then created the content of the exhibition with these results. We were able to create a poetic experience by combining fluid dynamics algorithms, which I have been using with great enthusiasm in my works, and artificial intelligence outputs. The sound experience in the exhibition was designed by Kerim Karaoğlu also using the same data.
How did Istanbul – or being from Istanbul – shape your artistic vision? Why did you want to show this exhibition to Istanbulites before anyone else?
The inspiration that I receive from the city where I was born and raised lies at the heart of my works such as Infinity Room, Archive Dreaming and Melting Memories. In all of these exhibitions, they were works that touched what Istanbul taught me and spoke to the undeniable effect of how the city developed my artistic perspective. I think Istanbul is the most beautiful city in the world and deserves the best of everything. It makes me very, very happy to bring such a unique exhibition to Pilevneli free of charge, thanks to the contributions of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.
Which artist/s do you get inspiration from for your artwork?
My role model and sources of inspiration are people who change the world and the don’t necessarily have to be artists. Neuroscientists, researchers working on artificial intelligence, Nobel Prize Laureate geniuses are my greatest sources of inspiration. I have always admired hard- working people who find the inner strength to change things in the world.
What kind of feelings and thoughts do you foresee the audience will experience when encountering Machine Memoirs: Space at Pilevneli?
After the pandemic, we will enter a period when art will be much more important. I firmly believe that art can heal us. I would be very happy if I could make a positive contribution to such a difficult and painful process, even if it is as small as a positive feeling. I wish the audience to leave the exhibition with hope, be able to ask new questions about the world and the universe, and be inspired.
About Refik Anadol
Refik Anadol was born on November 7, 1985 in Istanbul. He completed his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Communication Design in the field of Photography and Video. He then completed his master’s degree of Design Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is still working as a lecturer and visiting fellow in the same department of UCLA.
In the early years of his career as an artist, Anadol was creating sculptures of architectural data, which he exhibited commonly in public spaces. Over time, he concentrated on major projects, in which he ‘fed’ artificial intelligence programs with data gathered from various fields; still preferring public spaces for exhibition. Lately, he has focused on machine memory; namely ways in which machines perceive and contemplate raw data. During his research for these projects, Anadol, in collaboration with mega institutions and corporations including NASA and Google, collects all kinds of data imaginable – be it visual, auditory, seismic, geographic, meteorological or cultural. These data, that the world and human beings create on impulse and involuntarily over the course of their lifetime, are later on served to the artificial intelligence program, which works with algorithms written specifically for the project. Thus, the artist creates data sculptures that demonstrate how technology and the machines we share our lives with comprehend and interpret the data we leave behind.
Refik Anadol, who has been in association with international corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Intel, IBM and Samsung, lives and works in Los Angeles.
Selected public site-specific auditory and visual performances and exhibitions include National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Australia); MEET Digital Culture Center (Italy), Artechouse New York (USA); Walt Disney Concert Hall (USA); Hammer Museum (USA); International Digital Arts Biennial Montreal (Canada), Ars Electronica Festival (Austria); L’Usine Geneve (Switzerland); Arc de Triomf (Spain); Zollverein SANAA’s School of Design building (Germany); Istanbul Design Biennial (Turkey) and Sydney City Art (Australia). Anadol has also been granted many awards including The Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award in Exhibition Design, Microsoft Research Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Awards, SEGD Global Design Award and Google’s Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.