“I think design will allow us to find a new perspective for humanity”. Interview with Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol is one of the most innovative and powerful artists on the international scene, director and pioneer in data aesthetics and artificial intelligence. The artist has been working with digital tools for fourteen years. He works in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

With the work Machine Memoirs: Space, he is one of the fifteen artists participating in the exhibition Digital Impact. In addition, he has recently participated in one of the parallel activities, the Barcelona: Digital Renaissance conference, in collaboration with Casa Batlló. The director of the Museu del Disseny, Jose Luis de Vicente, talks with Refik Anadol about his career, his work and the use of artificial intelligence.

You say that your work is made of archives of memories. What are archive memories like when they manifest in your pieces?

I think, first of all, my relationship with data is not just numbers. To me, data is a form of memory, and this memory can take any shape, form, colour, textures. And if I look at these memories, I find archives as a symbol of collective memories of humanity. This can be an art archive or public, nature, urban culture. And I also use AI as a means of understanding these big archives and finding similarities and differences. I try to create this pigmentation or this material that we can project on a building, create an immersive environment or a painting or a sculpture. So it's all really open to sound, image, text, even scent data.

In the piece that you are presenting here at Digital Impact at the DHUB, you're actually exploring a huge archive of the universe, of the things that we know about the universe. How did this project come to be?

Yes. So I mean, as any science fiction lover, space is a very fundamental inspiration. I've been dreaming that one day perhaps we can access these machines that are recording our memories for the space. So 2018, I was very lucky to become an artist working at the NASA JPL, and we are visualizing the last six years of NASA JPL's research. And while researching, I learned that NASA JPL has one of the largest open source archives about space and the galaxies, the universe, Mars and our world. So I focused on this research by looking at the ISS, which is, I guess, the telescope for selfies of the Earth, our planet, MRO, which is an amazing machine for almost 25 years, recording all the parts of Mars’ surface geographically, recording the images of the surface of Mars and of course, Hubble telescope. Just before the James Webb telescope, it was recording all the memories, I guess the lost history of the galaxies. So the artwork here in this unit in Digital Impact is visualizing three telescopes and their data sets and transforming them into a data sculpture and painting.

In one of your last few projects, you have to look at the full collection of one of the most important art institutions in the world, MoMA. What have you learned about art that you didn't know before, through this incredible zoom-in on a huge archive and a huge collection?

Yes. I think the one thing that I want to say is I really enjoy using AI to find similarities because differences are something that we can kind of understand in the real world. But the similarities is a really challenging part of understanding life around us. For MoMA, we were able to train our AI with 138,000 artworks in the entire MoMA collection. By the way, this art collection has many pioneers in painting and sculpture, games. Like there is Pac-Man, there is Tetris in this collection. So there are like, you know, the genius minds who explored new techniques, new worlds. For the MoMA piece “Unsupervised”, we didn't use the classical understanding of the art, such as “Here's a painting, here's a sculpture, here's a video”, and so on. We left AI unsupervised to learn from the entire archive and let it dream and hallucinate or create fantasies of new worlds. Normally AI is imposed on us to create a reality, mimic reality, create something very real. In fact, if we just turn this system into something else, hack it in a way, it can dream or hallucinate new forms and patterns. So the artwork is exploring three chapters, two of them real time, ever-changing, like life, using a real time sound and movement and weather data and constantly exploring new ways of chance and control in art-making.

As one of the first artists working in AI and creating and crafting your own AI models as your practice, I guess you have seen with interest and also with curiosity, the emergence, the huge explosion at the end of 2022, and beginning of 2023 of AI diffusion models and new AI technologies within society and the impact that it has achieved. What is your most or let me say it differently, what are you most hopeful about in terms of the impact of AI tools, systems and aesthetics in society and what are you most concerned about?

Yes. So I think first of all, seven years with AI feels like 70 years, starting with generative AI, in the very early years. To me it was always this uncomfortable zone. Every morning there is new evolution, new validation of a new idea and tool. AI, I think is a powerful technology, a tool that can enhance our mind and our cognitive capacity. But it's also very dangerous at the same time because it is using our memories, past memories, collective memories and transforming them into a tool and a product and a service. So there are lots of debates about the ethics of data collection, privacy and free will. These are like obvious concerns about AI. But what I'm hopeful about is truly creating a new genre, a new world of imagination. I think a very similar pattern happens across centuries and decades whenever a new technology like cinema, photography, printing press, they have a very similar impact for humanity. So right now there is a major, I guess, understanding of how to co-create with machines, how to think of machine intelligence as a mere extension of our mind. While it may create some job problems, it will most likely create more job opportunities for artists, for creators to understand those images, text and sounds. I do believe we will be exploring very soon hyper models, which is text to image, to sound, to video, to scent, most likely, to life. So we are on this interesting path of simulations and artificial realities, I am calling them. While we will question what is creativity and what is I mean who will define what is real? That's most likely. But I also believe that it will create much more inspiration, joy and hope for humanity.

Last question. You're an artist. You're a designer. You're a technologist. You operate within this space. What is your favourite definition of design, of what it is and what it can do in the world? And what do you think is the possibility of the opportunity today of design, of technology, of creativity to have an impact in a world that is clearly in crisis in a transitional moment?

Yes, I think design is a functional approach for humanity, for solving many problems or finding creative options for us, at least. Design is most likely a possibility that allows us to see, feel, understand, question things differently. But art is also something where, in my humble opinion, it's the capacity of humanity's imagination. So where the questions can be wild, answers can be unknown, journey can be the answer, and so on. But technology, art, science and technology, of course, design, science and technology, AI neuroscience and architecture. And eventually all these fields are now colliding together. As I mentioned, I think we are in the age of co-creation. In fact, the more disciplines coming together across different levels and layers, the more we will see breakthroughs, discoveries, innovations. I think design will allow us to find a new perspective for humanity. And I do believe that this will happen very quickly and ultimately and constantly.