Maps & Networks #3: Refik Anadol

 

I came across a media artist, Refik Anadol, on instagram and became immediately drawn to his digital art works. He works with data, artificial intelligence and architectural spaces within his work which is primarily humancentric. He explores the mind and different aspects of it in each of his pieces. I was first drawn to the piece 'Quantam Memories - Nature Dreams' which depicts his most recent work with AI and quantum mechanics. He uses 200 million photographic landscape of earth to memories to create a hallucination of different realities. The piece merges all the photographs together and creates a morphing, other worldly effect. I loved the idea of having a mass of data to reflect the memory and perception of landscapes. This reminded me of the task Jeremiah gave to us with documenting our journey on google maps which I really enjoyed.

12/200 Million Shots from 'Quantam Memories - Nature Dreams' (from instagram):

After delving in to his page, I found a TedTalks Link that he does "Art in the Age of machine Intelligence" in which he discusses what it would be like to look inside a machines mind.

https://www.ted.com/talks/refik_anadol_art_in_the_age_of_machine_intelligence?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

I think this talk was possibly one of the most inspiring videos. As I share the interest of looking at memory and how technology can reflect this, I picked out some key questions, ideas and phrases that stuck with me and wrote down some basic ideas that sprung to mind whilst watching it:  

- What does it mean to be an AI in the 21st century?

- Can machines Learn and process memories?

- Can machines dream, hallucinate or involuntarily remember?

- Collision or virtual and physical worlds

- Short story: 'The Library of Babel' by Jorge Luis Borges

- *Not necessarily showing or focusing on memories them self but the process of remembering, how memory is stored, lost and recreated. 

- collecting a mass of data which could represent memory

-painting the mind and unconsciousness 

Ideas: 

- Maybe record features of my day or group of people (who are connected) who would be willing to share 5 photos each day, every day for 2 weeks or a month, including, photos, videos, songs I or they have listened to and break down this set of data and explore how I could reflect this digitally particularly in reference to the process of remembering, how memory is stored and lost. 

- choose a place and look in to historical information, documents, photos, events, newspapers, artefacts and use this information to create a digital memory bank of this said place and how explore different ways of presenting this.

Could these be presented on After Effects, a 3D digital collage...?

MELTING MEMORIES

https://refikanadol.com/works/melting-memories/

This piece was created when Anold found out that his uncle had alzheimers disease. Upon reflection, he wanted to celebrate how and what he remembered. He began to think of memories not as disappearing but melting or changing shape.  In the piece he reflects the movement of motor movements inside the human brain, focusing on the process of remembering, how memory is stored and lost rather than the memories themselves. To do so he worked with the Neuroscape Laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, using their equiptment he was able to carry out lots of experiments to see how memories are carried and stored in the brain. 

I'd like to look more in to howI could use AI within my work. I obviously am not that well versed in computer science but maybe I could find a programme which I could teach my self how to use.