At the Meet Digital Cultural Center in Milan, on 2 October, the audience can attend a lecture of the Turkish artist Refik Anadol, pioneer of the aesthetics of artificial intelligence and explorer of the great changes in the perception of time and space with the advent of technology, a subject that has extended to all aspects of daily life.
Life also exists in the form of the structures that inhabit it and found in post-digital architecture, alternative realities redefined by the functionality of internal and external elements and realised in hybrid forms, involving architecture, media art and machine intelligence. In Anadol’s work, data materialises in the form of sculpture, painting and architecture, taking shape and coming to life in both physical and virtual space.
In the new spaces of MEET Digital Culture Center in Milan, Refik Anadol has created Renaissance Dreams, a site-specific installation, generated from a million images and texts produced between 1300 and 1600 in Italy. The work consists of four “chapters”: painting, sculpture, literature and architecture. The data in each chapter was processed by artificial intelligence using GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) algorithms with the ability to identify common features in images and texts from the Italian Renaissance and produce original creations.
It will be interesting to listen to the journey of an artist and visionary who began working at a time when Artificial Intelligence was a topic addressed by a small circle of experts, but still far from being considered as a new developing species, with technology being seen as an auxiliary tool.
Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio and RAS LAB, the Studio’s research practice centered around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives and artificial intelligence. Anadol is also a lecturer for UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts from which he obtained his second Master of Fine Arts. Refik Anadol Studio comprises designers, architects, data scientists, and researchers from diverse professional and personal backgrounds, embracing principles of inclusion and equity throughout every stage of production. Studio members originate from 10 different countries and are collectively fluent in 14 languages. The Studio’s internship program also demonstrates a strong commitment to mentoring young people from a variety of personal experiences, values, and world views (you can visit here his website for the complete bio and information about his work).
Refik Anadol, Meet the Media Guru, MEET Digital Culture Center, Milan, 2 October 2021, 18.30 (reserve your ticket on Eventbrite
Refik Anadol, Renaissance Dreams, MEET. Digital Culture Center, immersive installation, 01.09 – 31.12.2021
