Tag Archives: installation

Kaya Hacaloğlu: cinema as a containing medium

Pau Waelder

Kaya Hacaloğlu (Ankara, Republic of Türkiye, 1975) is an artist who works in video and photography, experimenting with live cinema, documentary, and video painting in individual projects and collaborations with other artists and creators, combining video with literature, poetry, music, painting, and performance. With a group of artists he developed the projects Mugwump and Cotton AV, consisting of live cinema performances combining found footage with electro/acoustic and atmospheric music. His work has been exhibited in international art festivals and biennials in Istanbul, Zurich, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin and many other cities. 

Hacaloğlu recently presented on Niio the series Pensive Tree, a photographic project that merges images from a plane tree standing at the entrance of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul and a madrone tree in Austin, Texas into an ever-changing, flowing abstract composition that evokes multiple states of matter. Hacaloğlu chose the term Agâh to describe this morphing shape, a word that in Turkish and other languages means “aware,” or “knowledgeable.” In the following interview, he discusses his video and live performance work, the making of Pensive Tree and the inspiration he has drawn from legendary filmmakers.

Explore the Pensive Tree series by Kaya Hacaloğlu

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Kaya Hacaloğlu. Pensive Tree Fluffy Tissue / Agah, 2022

Your background is in cinema studies. How has the cinematic narrative influenced your work? What has driven your transition towards abstract or semi-abstract works and to video paintings?

The cinematic narrative gave me a taste, an ability, and an interest to comprehend a ‘language’ which comes with a long history of collective creation. It opened a door which influenced me to get together with other cinephiles and people of interest in creating work. 

I regard cinema as a containing medium. 

The quintessential auteur who has made the leap from cinema to the lands of deconstructing his own visual narrative films and projecting them in rooms and cisterns  would be Peter Greenaway, whose techniques and abilities are particularly influenced by art history and classical paintings. Other filmmakers that have profoundly influenced me are Chris Marker, Derek Jarman, and Jean-Luc Godard. Marker’s approach into making a film, for instance La Jeteé, is made of a series of still photographs as opposed to filming them with a film camera by taking 25 photographs a second. He therefore plays with the sense of motion in film (although motion appears one time and only briefly at a certain point in the film.) Marker started in the movement of Cinema Verité, which takes video journalism approaches to everyday street life in Paris. Godard’s and Anne-Marie Miéville’s ways of editing and implementing found footage, archival images, sounds, music and narration, add a sense of belonging and nostalgia to the cinematic narrative, connected to a certain moment of the history of the 20th century. Jarman’s methods of multi-layer editing using video-synthesizer and his experimental approach into dance, queer cinema and his brave character have made him a landmark in Cinema culture. And of course Guy Debord and his slogan “le monde a été déjà filmé, il s’agit maintenant de le transformer:” The world is already filmed, it is time to change it. All of which I believe belongs to the tradition of filming and projecting that is part of the influences of cinema in my work.

“As Guy Debord once said: The world is already filmed, it is time to change it.”

Working a little bit at the University’s local television station channel 2 and watching displays of student works of the video art department’s ASTV is what drove me to study cinema and later take video classes at the Art School. The works I have come up with during my first years of learning were not exactly abstract works, at least the ones which got completed, but planned-constructed scripted works which were made in the university’s facilities. These works were very structural with usage of intellectual property. My transition from the realm of cinema into studies of non-narrative video making came after a work I have made mixing super8 and miniDV footage through the use of my digital NLE station at home in 2001.        

Cotton AV at Mute Club, 2011

In your video work one sees an attention to everyday life but also experiments with overlaying of images that lead to quasi abstract compositions, particularly Cotton AV which seems to be a precursor of the series we now show on Niio. Can you explain the process behind Cotton AV? How would you say this work relates to Pensive Tree?

Cotton AV  and its precursor Mugwump were made, as you say, by combining materials taped by Ozan Akıncı and myself and materials from public archives and footage from movies. Clips were created, looped in the most perfect possible way which were later fed to a software running on a laptop connected to a projector. By the time we started Mugwump none of us owned a laptop, and as the music was also live: there was a band of two musicians on stage, Şevket Akıncı and Korhan Erel, and a vocalist. We recorded the finished material on a DVD and connected a DVD player to the projector. As the band was playing live, starting and pausing at a certain time was crucial to keep the music synchronized with the images, which we had to do manually. We played mainly on a theater stage in Galata called Perform. Ozan got himself a laptop and as I was already used to being on stage and feeding loops, downloading loads of materials through eMule for my VJ mentor Exiled Surfer, we started using a software called Grid quite quickly. As we moved on I had a laptop and a V4 Edirol video mixer and were able to cut and fade between each other’s machines and mixes. Cotton AV had its last show at VJFest in 2012 organized by Burcu Gündüz, and ended after having performed with Gevende. 

Cotton AV and Pensive Tree may seem to be connected but are in fact quite different in their production and concept. Cotton AV is a group performing live on stage, whose visuals are created on-the-fly and whether or not they are being recorded they are just like live-music, which means they will never repeat themselves the exact same way but have been improvised. Pensive Tree is a series of works. Each work is a continuing display which starts and ends. And is not necessarily a loop. It is not a collaboration but made during a different time, in the presence of Leyla Atavi who was there as both a muse and an inspiration, she is a graphic designer. 

I first saw Framed digital art at a coffee shop in Moscow in the year 2010 at the commemoration of the famous poet Nazım Hikmet as we were performing with the team that created Mugwump. The screens were as big as iPads and were framed. Various softwares were also coming along and methods of projections in clubs especially had moved along which were tiresome, at times. I had an idea of using a screen as a mirror and implementing algorithms to create effects similar to those on Instagram, but that didn’t progress. By the time I started working on Pensive Tree I found people who created their own software, used RasberryPi microcontrollers and provided complete instructions on woodcutting and fitting a monitor into a frame for displaying still or digital video. There have been previous encounters such as the famous fireplace video which I first saw in Switzerland. 

“Photography is a containing medium, an archive of a certain moment a fragment of a place in time. It has a natal relation with reality.”

Your photography work is strongly inspired by nature and also plays with textures and blurs to deconstruct the image and suggest a painterly composition. Which is your approach to photography? How does it relate to your video work?

Photography is a containing medium, an archive of a certain moment a fragment of a place in time. It has a natal relation with reality. It is made to replicate what the camera is seeing, thus what one eye is seeing is shaped to be seen and interpreted by many. I think of it as a womb which contains the infant prior to giving birth and where its child comes into encounter with light, as the most extreme example one can give as its relation to reality. As being begotten with the source of light. Just as, in some eastern cultures it is treated so sacredly. My brother during his trips to the Far East told me of some people who wouldn’t let him take their pictures as they thought their souls would be stolen. My relation with the camera and especially the question with the subject has somehow become an ethical matter, and questions about quasi experiencing the present, the happening has led me to nature and visual compositions.

I do not have a certain approach in photography. Looking and capturing is a certain skill which has to do with the correlation in respect to the human senses and the refinement of the experience and the person who experiences. The subject behind the works in the Pensive Tree is a photograph of a tree. The essence is a photograph started progressing through circular motion, and advanced its way with changes of the image’s pixel points and alterations in the duration and colors of the pixels that gave its textural and blurry forms and painterly character through the utilization of computer software.  

Kaya Hacaloğlu. Pensive Tree Dervishes Adrift / Agah, 2022

You have collaborated with different artists, including writers, poets, musicians, and performers. Can you describe these collaborations? How have they contributed to shaping your artistic practice and the subjects you address?

The collaborations helped me to enhance my skills in editing and shaped my personal approach to the creation of later works. They have given inspiration and also reasons and responsibilities. It would have been impossible for most of the underground or non-mainstream works in Türkiye to be made if it was not for the sense of solidarity and companionship here in Türkiye.

An example of a collaboration I would like to give is from a performance that I have organized for the ending and closure of the first screenings of the works of Pensive tree. The exhibition took place in 2019 at the Taksim Art Gallery, an ancient water cistern, as part of the Istanbul International Art Biennial. The renowned Istanbul Biennial, which is sponsored by the municipality, features the work of numerous artists, mainly in the form of painting, sculpture, photography, fabric art, and installations. The new Taksim Mosque was being newly built right across the Ataturk Opera House. The closing performance consisted of guitar player Şevket Akıncı, musician Özün Usta who improvised music and artist Eymen Aktel who painted on a canvas while I was projecting or mixing works of the Pensive Tree series. A line I wrote, “I hug where you stand out, in the shadow of what is called admiration, I rest.” was read by Eymen who improvised spoken word along the show.  

“I would say that the video and digital art scene in Türkiye has evolved into a very rich and confident art scene.”

Can you tell us about the video and digital art scene in Türkiye? What is it like, how has it evolved in recent years given the growing presence of art fairs and international events? 

The video art scene started with a few people many years ago who voluntarily curated artists who had limited ways of displaying their works. This was before Youtube. I would recall VideoIst, and other collections such as Turkish Delight by Genco Gülan and other camps back in the 2000’s where shooting and editing video was taught and required collective work such as Barış için Sinema (Cinema for Peace.)

Displaying digital video requires expensive display equipment like a Digital Panel or a Digital Projection. Along the years many organizations with panels with artists and curators, and solo shows the scene has made its peak I would say with the help of sponsorship. Many Turkish artists are in the international arena. Mappings, public projections to historical monuments and the usage of ancient spaces are being organized for exhibiting digital artwork.

 

Kaya Hacaloğlu. White Tree.

Your work is present in several online digital art platforms. What is your experience with the digital art market? Which opportunities and challenges do you see in the way art is distributed and commercialized nowadays?

My experience with the digital art market is due to the medium’s properties, the ownership, “re-production,” and maintenance of the artist’s rights of the “original” artwork. It is a challenge for the art market to introduce digital artworks as there is a strong competition from “static” artworks such paintings and sculptures. But I believe the growing acceptance of digital art is coming through large installations in public spaces, and not only in ticketed entry shows. The main issues for the future of digital art, in my view, are the accessibility to the artworks, the fairness in remuneration for artists, and of course that the art is properly presented.

Digital art can be treated as wall art or framed art now and it is making its way into homes. I remember one platform which displays the works of painters throughout the history of art on a vertically mounted ‘television’ and this example only can show us how much it has evolved throughout the history of print making.

“The issue for the artist is to have their work exhibited and recognized. The way digital art can be distributed is already here, it is a technical matter for it to be installed and displayed almost anywhere.”

The opportunity is for the art is to be visible. The invention of NFT granted the digital artwork an ‘original’ status because of its copying properties being hundred percent undetectable, a digital artwork becoming a digital token marks it as valuable.

The issue for the artist is to have their work exhibited and recognized. The way digital art can be distributed is already here, it is a technical matter for it to be installed and displayed almost anywhere. The challenge is how will it be creating a revenue for the artist and how will the preservation of the work be possible. Is it ok for some works to be available publicly or do they belong to private institutions, as video art has been treated and distributed as videotapes or film?

Kaya Hacaloğlu. Plane Tree.

Solimán López: becoming a Terran artist

Pau Waelder

Spanish new media conceptual artist and researcher Solimán López has developed over the course of a decade and a half a body of work that connects contemporary art with scientific research, 3D imaging, geolocation, biotechnology, and lately blockchain and web3.0. An indefatigable experimenter, he has explored numerous technologies to create his artistic projects and always kept a connection with traditional techniques such as painting and sculpture, although reconfigured through digital imaging and computer-aided manufacturing. 

The artist recently presented on Niio several artworks related to OLEA, an ongoing project that consists of the production of a substance composed of olive oil that contains the code of a smart contract, synthesized in DNA. Solimán has created a number of NFTs and installations around the concept of OLEA. In the following interview, he elaborates on the making of this project and the main themes he addresses in his work.

Explore the visualizations of OLEA on Niio

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Solimán López, OLEA Genesis Space, 2023

Throughout your career you have used a wide variety of technological resources. How have they influenced the development of your work? Has it been technology that has inspired the creation of a work, or have you sought the necessary resources to carry out an idea you had developed? Or has it been both?

My background is in art history. That is why I have finally become what we could call a “new media conceptual artist”. This means that I consider my work to be essentially conceptual. During my training I quickly understood that much of the relevance in today’s artistic discourses can be found in uses of technology because of its social, ethical, moral and sensory impact. In order to talk about the changes derived from this revolution, I also understood that it was necessary to know very well its origins, motivations and functioning logic, and that is why I started doing research on different new technologies, thinking that their understanding would allow me to make poetry, as the poet does with words.

“What is clear to me is that a good concept ages better than any technique.”

For this reason, my use of technology is always subordinated to a particular idea that I understand is expressed in a successful way with those means. But at the same time, there is a sort of parallel learning about the message and techniques. Nowadays it is difficult to choose the technique with which something makes sense, since there are a great number of formats that are beginning to be accepted. What is clear to me is that a good concept ages better than any technique and that, together with other professionals in the sector, I think that in new media art, the artworks are generated every time they are exhibited, since technically they are running on software and hardware.

It is perhaps for this reason that some obsessions I have with the materiality of the digital arise, issues that we see very evidently in projects such as the Harddiskmuseum or OLEA.

Solimán López, OLEA Space 01, 2023

Your previous work has focused on data collection, geolocation and data storage in relation to the concept of memory. How does OLEA relate to these concepts?

OLEA is becoming a whole universe in itself! It has opened up a Pandora’s box of conceptual possibilities. With the passing of time, I myself have been surprised by the way in which my works fit together in a discourse that makes a lot of sense to me. The obligation to have a “style”, which worried me when I was younger, has simply become a set of features and themes that naturally emerge in my projects. 

OLEA relates to the storage of data as it is actually code stored in DNA and then preserved in olive oil. It is also a time capsule, in this case related to the evolution of the concept of value in the history of mankind and the understanding of data, which now encompasses genomics. Human beings have left traces throughout their evolution, and let’s not forget that technology is the true economy. That is why OLEA appeals to the collective memory in the history of mankind, where as early as 15 BC we have traces of genetic alterations in cereals, which led to the birth of added value in the exploitation of the land and gave rise to the concept of agriculture, a sort of value-added structure to a fractal production ecosystem. It is, in a synthetic way, the same thing that happens with the blockchain, a territory that is endowed with value through the creation of tokens. All these ingredients led to the production of this project.

It is true that I left behind more individual concepts related to personal data to appeal to something less individualistic. In recent interviews I keep repeating a phrase that perhaps explains this leap in my career: “In the era of fakes and empowered artificial intelligence, any personal story is possible. The challenge is to create collective stories that change us and influence us all. My work doesn’t talk about me in the first person, but about us.”

“In the era of fakes and empowered artificial intelligence, any personal story is possible. The challenge is to create collective stories that change us and influence us all.”

OLEA involves two very different technologies such as blockchain and genetic engineering, which however are both linked to the concept of registration and storage. What do these technologies bring to your work and how are they essential to the concept of this project?

Indeed, OLEA is a work that belongs to two intertwined worlds and that is what I intend to show when I exhibit it. Working with genetic code, which is still in a very primitive phase, requires a very interesting process of information synthesis, just as it happened back when we stored information on floppy discs.

This is also the case with the information stored “on-chain” in the blockchain, which also has its storage limitations, which is another interesting and common feature in the current state of these two technologies. Both are special to me for the way in which they leave their mark in their different materialities, as well as for their invitation to have faith in the technology or the value they bring to the ecosystem to which they belong.

Blockchain is basically based on a chain of blocks that stores metadata that actually have little meaning if they are decontextualized. Moreover, when we look at those blocks all we see is the hash in the log and the wallets involved in that transaction. It is something visible but that actually gives us very little information. It is we the users who assign it a value and presume it is a valid asset that refers to an artistic work or token.

We must have the same faith when we see a material containing DNA with the same information that resides on the blockchain. Now, we see the material it refers to but we do not see the code (we could see the DNA at a microscopic level). This game of consciousness, respect and trust in relation to the artistic object seems conceptually very interesting to me. It is also similar to the playfulness we find in great works of art that have questioned our beliefs and allowed us to overcome established assumptions as to what a work of art is. I believe that, as a contemporary artist, I should bring what I can to this constant reframing of our expectations towards art and that is why all these notions come together in OLEA.

Solimán López, Celeste, 2022

What do you make of the irruption of the NFT market, its boom and bust? What has it meant for you in your work as an artist? What is your perception of NFTs and what future evolution do you see in them?

I see NFTs as something that was bound to come sooner or later. I imagined them when I founded the Harddiskmuseum in 2013 as a museum that houses unique files or in the File Genesis exhibition (2017) where unique files are generated in real time that are stored in marble stones equipped with a USB stick, or the CELESTE project from 2016, in which we generated tokens from the digital images obtained from different colors of different skies distributed around the world. 

With this experience, I was ready to take on NFTs in a very natural way, including their market decline. A decline that, in fact, corresponds with all the hypes in the history of technology, sports and other disciplines.

In my work, NFTs are a practicality and a conceptual field of work. Accepting the blockchain as a fractal environment easily connectable with nature is a great evolution in technology, and to me it is a great milestone to have incorporated it into my work.

Let’s also remember that I was the first artist to sell an NFT at a contemporary art fair in Europe and possibly worldwide, since ARCO was the first post-pandemic fair to come to light. This sale renewed my confidence in a format that I still think is here to stay and that is becoming normalized and naturalized in its use, as it is a fair and necessary format for digital art.

I see the future of NFTs as being even more integrated with real objects (I myself am still working on this and in the process of patenting what I call biotokens) and above all we will stop talking about NFTs merely linked to art. This technology will be in our daily lives as soon as the capitalist and mass control systems loosen their grip and allow WEB3.0 to develop freely, including those belonging to the art world.

Solimán López, OLEA Space 03, 2023

NFTs have brought renewed attention to the use of blockchain in art projects, which already had a first boom in 2018. Regardless of its use for the registration of non-fungible tokens, what possibilities do you see in blockchain in the creation and commercialization of digital art?

Art has a history of occupation of spaces. This is made clear after modernity. Let’s remember the occupation of the streets by urban art, or of the internet by net artists or social media artists. Now the same is happening with blockchain, where we are witnessing an occupation of this technological medium as well. The possibilities are many, but let’s not forget that without a solid concept, in the era of the mechanization of tasks, robotics and artificial intelligence, the word Art with a capital “A” is easily refuted.

That is why I believe that we must continue to resignify this space of creation and provide it with powerful conceptual contents that generate thought and offer value. The possibilities of creation that I see with blockchain go through its own evolution as a medium and its insertion and conjugation with other technologies, including biotechnology, a place where I am currently very comfortable conceptually.

“Art is going through a very convulsive moment, trying to resist the cannons of a sustainable, dematerialized and conceptually advanced future.”

On the other hand, the possibilities of WEB3.0 and blockchain in the construction of spaces of thought and communities, has no historical comparison. This notion is very interesting and opens the door to a new concept of the artwork as a social ecosystem mediated by itself and not by museums or other cultural structures, including the self-management of sales and dissemination of the artworks, which is opening the door to other agents with its consequent mutations.

Undoubtedly, art is going through a very convulsive moment in its own foundations, finding great threats in the already traditional contemporaneity, which continues to defend its castle of post-industrial tangibility, trying to resist the cannons of a sustainable, dematerialized and conceptually advanced future.

OLEA in the lab. Photo by Solimán López.

Your work is closely linked to scientific research. How do you collaborate with teams of researchers and how do you conceive the role of art in relation to scientific dissemination?

I feel that real art has always been linked to science and its connections with scientific research and its other main actors. Let’s not forget examples such as the influence of the work of microbiologists James Watson and Francis Crick in the paintings of Salvador Dalí: Dalí was captivated by the discoveries published by the two scientists and did everything he could to get in touch with them. His interest in the findings about DNA led to the appearance in many of the artist’s paintings of the famous representation of the double helix (incidentally thanks to the photographs of the scientist Rosalind Franklin).

I believe that the role of art is established when the work is scientifically solid and the resignification of both researches is achieved for the benefit of a common one. It is at that moment where the culmination comes and a great excitement in which you feel that the pieces are conceptually fitting together. I also believe that art is a fundamental tool for the changes of our time and in this field we cannot leave behind the scientific discoveries that are conditioning our future.

“I feel that scientists are also artists in their own way and with their own intentions, so the relationship is always very fluid and of mutual learning.” 

In 100% of the cases, I have had excellent responses and collaborations. I feel that scientists are also artists in their own way and with their own intentions, so the relationship is always very fluid and of mutual learning. Undoubtedly an extremely rich and mandatory field to continue making contemporary art.

Normally I start with a crazy idea by linking some strands that a priori were disconnected. At that moment my scientific research begins and I start looking for papers, publications and records of what interests me and alludes technically to the work that is already in process. This is where I start to identify some key players, both companies and individuals, and I start to communicate with them, explaining my objectives and joint opportunities. At this point, a very rich production process is born, in which conversation is fundamental and sharing is evolving.

Image from Manifesto Terricola by Solimán López, 2023.

Your most recent project, Manifesto Terricola, combines the theme of memory with biotechnology and climate change, in what can be interpreted as an increasingly clear transition from the individual to natural systems and ultimately the relationship between humanity and the planet. What new aspects does this project bring to your work and what thematic avenues do you plan to develop in the future?

Manifesto Terricola is perhaps the most social project I have ever developed. Along with the Harddiskmuseum, it is a kind of project that you know will accompany you for a long time and that will be revised and even evolved or reinterpreted in the future (if we have any left). It brings me perhaps the possibility to engage with a more global community and not just the art niche, and of course it offers a pragmatic solution to the storage of our digital legacy through DNA and glaciers.

When you travel to a place like the Arctic you ask yourself questions that are already implicit in the manifesto, such as the habitability of the Earth for humans in the near future and the drift of the human species because of this issue and because of technology itself. In this sense, there is a mental doppler effect that forces you to want to go further and further with your work.

That is why the limits of my work are now also focused on space missions for example and to continue exploring those conceptual missives that the natural and the digital can send each other through the action of art and biotechnology until they live in harmony.

This line of work will continue to be very present, because as I mentioned before, these are places where I feel very comfortable since I believe that biotechnology will change the way in which human beings will relate to an unstable environment in changing conditions. Art can only survive from this position and from the understanding that we are Terran artists.

Antoine Schmitt: coding movement

Pau Waelder

Paris-based artist Antoine Schmitt describes himself as a “heir of kinetic art and cybernetic art,” aptly indicating the two main aspects of his work: the interest in all processes of movement, and the use of computers to create generative and interactive artworks. With a background as a programming engineer in human computer relations and artificial intelligence, his career spans almost three decades and is characterized by a combination of interactive installations, process-based abstract pieces, and performances. He has collaborated with a wide range of professionals from the fields of music, dance, architecture, literature, and cinema. He also performs in live concerts and writes about programmed art.

Schmitt’s award-winning artworks have been exhibited internationally, in prestigious venues such as the Centre Georges Pompidou and Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and world-renown festivals Sonar (Barcelona), and Ars Electronica (Linz). A selection of video recordings from his generative works have been featured in our curated art program, including the artcasts Unvirtual Art Fair (Paris) and Possibles, which was exhibited at the ISEA2022 Barcelona Symposium. The artist kindly answered a series of questions about the concepts and processes behind his work.

Antoine Schmitt and Franck Vigroux. ATOTAL. Audiovisual concert, 2021

From your early works to the latest installations, there is a constant interest in the relationship between the artwork and the viewer, and more generally between a human and a machine, that often become intimate, connected to emotions and to physical proximity. What do you find interesting about this strange relationship between an individual and a machine, or an apparently sentient entity?

Programming has always been for me a means to approach reality, by recreating it. I consider programming as a radically new material, in art and in general, because of its active nature: programs are processes embedded in reality and can react to it and act upon it. This specificity allows me to recreate programmatically aspects of nature that interest me. One of the most complex entities in reality (known so far) is the human being. Many of my artworks stage a programmed artificial entity that embodies a deep aspect of human nature. These artworks act for me as mirrors for the viewer, a way to question deep human mechanisms or ways of being, like desire, curiosity, language, conflict, gravity, etc… not forgetting that humans are also animals, and are also bodies in space. 

This approach also allows me to reflect on the way we humans are programmed, by laws, evolution, society, etc… My artworks are, like deep science fiction, very much fueled by philosophy, physics, metaphysics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc… Using programming to create artificial entities, more or less intelligent, more or less sentient, but all embodying dynamic aspects of human life, allows me to focus each artwork on a specific concept or aspect of human nature. They are forms of living caricatures that are all the more effective.

“I consider programming as a radically new material because of its active nature: programs are processes embedded in reality and can react to it and act upon it.”

Your work is characterized both by its interactivity and the generative processes that bring it to life. What do you find most interesting about these two types of processes, the one carried out by an autopoietic generative artwork and the one carried out by an interactive installation?

All my artworks are active and exist in real time, i.e. the same time as the spectator. Some artworks are not sensitive to the real world, they are not interactive, they live their life in their own universe, and we watch them like we would watch a strange animal in an aquarium. With these artworks, the main link between the audience and the artwork is through empathy. By projecting oneself in the existential universe of the artwork, the spectator recognizes and feels the situation. It is the same process as with movies and books, with the additional dimension of the real time: with realtime artworks the spectator knows, or feels, that what happens happens here and now. It is not a recording. This gives a different dimension to the empathy, like when watching a live performance which also happens here and now.

Antoine Schmitt. Systemic. Interactive installation, 2010

With interactive artworks, I usually want to question the behaviors and inner mechanisms of the audience themselves. It is the actions of the viewer which are the artwork, I create the dynamic situation in which the viewer is immersed and I orient it so as to highlight and question certain deep ways of being. For example, the Systemic (2010), Lignes-mobiles (1999) and La chance (2017) installations draw dynamic arrows on the floor in front of passers-by to question their intention. In Psychic (2007), a text on the wall describes the movements and intentions of the spectators in the exhibition space (“Somebody is coming”).

I tend to adopt a minimalist approach: I don’t use an artistic dimension (color, figure, interactivity) unless it is mandatory for the artwork. So I don’t use interactivity unless the artwork’s subject is the spectator themselves.

“In my interactive installations it is the actions of the viewer which are the artwork, I create the dynamic situation in which the viewer is immersed and I orient it so as to highlight and question certain deep ways of being.”

Since the beginning of your career, you have collaborated with performing artists, among which composers such as Vincent Epplay, Franck Vigroux, and Jean-Jacques Birgé, performers such as Hortense Gauthier, and choreographers such as Jean-Marc Matos and Anne Holst. How did these collaborations take place? What have they brought to your own work and your creative process?

I have two different approaches to performance, whether I’m on stage or not. When I work with professional performers who use their body and actions as their main material, we craft situations where the human entity is confronted to an artificial one. This allows us to precisely stage the encounter and focus precisely on certain aspects, which become the subject of the performance. The situation usually centers on the concept of an encounter with an “other” and on the modalities of dialog. In Myselves with Jean-Marc Matos, it is about exploring various modes of dialog like imitation, fight or fusion. In CliMax with Hortense Gauthier, it is about finding mutual pleasure. In these setups, the mirror effect happens between the performer and the artificial entity rather than with the audience. The audience is watching the encounter. The artificial creature becomes an actor of the performance, in the spirit of performance: taking risks in a staged delicate situation. 

Antoine Schmitt and Hortense Gauthier. CliMax (Préliminaires), 2018

When I am on stage, I usually play live images, using a videogame-like visual instrument that I program myself and that recreates a specific abstract though consistent live universe, while the other performer plays live music. We are in a situation of semi-improvisation and we create an audio-visual temporal exploratory journey around a specific theme (the birth of shapes in Tempest, the cohabitations of multiple timelines in Chronostasis, totalities in ATOTAL, flows in Cascades, etc…). As a performer, I appreciate sharing the energy of the present moment with the audience, especially while being delved into an artificial universe and struggling with it, which the audience can feel.

Antoine Schmitt. Generative Quantum Ballet 21 Video Recording, 2022

Besides the performing arts, another strong reference in your work is scientific research: you often mention theories from mathematics or physics as the conceptual ground for your pieces. What does science bring to your work? How do you build a bridge between the scientific method and your creative process?

I am very sensitive to the deep and strong laws of the universe that math and physic theories can give us, as they allow me to both approach our reality and imagine other possible realities. What is interesting with these laws is that they are programmable so I can recreate them using programs, thus focusing on deep mechanisms, to stage them or alter them. For example, in the Tempest show, I created a universe containing many of the forces of our universe but also invented forces, thus opening the doors to parallel universes.

I often say that science and art are interested in the same subject : the crack that exists between reality and our abstraction of it. This crack is our curse as human beings. Animals do not feel this pain but as soon as one has the gift of abstraction, the distance between what we abstract and what is, is the source of all mental suffering. Science tries to close that crack by explaining as much as possible through theories and language, more and more precisely, even though it is an impossible task (as was demonstrated in the 20th century by the scientists Heisenberg and Gödel). On the contrary, Art delves in the depths of the crack, exploring all its modalities, playing with all the emotions that stem from it. And the narrower the crack, the deeper it is.

“I often say that science and art are interested in the same subject: the crack that exists between reality and our abstraction of it.”

The aspects of your work that we have previously addressed all point to a main subject which are the processes of movement, as clearly highlighted in your artist’s statement. These processes are explored in a wide range of contexts, from the quantum realm to urban societies, and among different actors, be it people, bodies, or particles. Why are these processes so important to your work, and which of these contexts is more rich, engaging or interesting to you?

I think that I’ve always had this abstract approach to reality which can be synthesized in the question “why does it move like this?”. I started with a rather scientific approach through my studies as an engineer, and when I decided to become an artist, I continued to explore this question in a different way. It is an analytical approach, a way of looking at the world, and a way to question it. I frankly appreciate all the dimensions of it and will continue to explore them, but I think that the strongest and the ones that give me the biggest satisfaction are the most abstract approaches, the ones that are the most remote from reality and still apply to many aspects of reality, existing or perceived. Black Square (2016), where a flock of white pixels try to enter an invisible square and bounce on it thus revealing it, can lead to multiple interpretations. It is a fundamental delicate situation. 

Antoine Schmitt. Black Square Video Recording, 2016

The signature element in your work, the pixel, is introduced in Le Pixel Blanc (1996). There, you describe it as “a minimal artificial presence… something that almost did not appear, but that still would be «there».” Over time, the pixel has gained more presence and become as much an object, a presence, and an absence, as part of a flow or the representation of an individual. How would you describe the evolution of your conception of this basic element and its influence on your work?

The pixel and the square are omnipresent in my work. I like my artworks to be minimal, like mathematical theorems. This naturally led to the pixel, the minimal visual element in the universe of the computer. A pixel is a small square, and by enlarging it, you get a large square. And like Malevich, I consider the square like the symptom of the human being’s power and curse: the ability of abstraction These two elements are the basis of most of my artworks. What I work on is their movement, relatively to the space around them, or relatively to the other elements. They are minimal but open to all the possibles, through their movements and the infinitely rich possibilities of programming.

“The pixel and the square are minimal but open to all the possibles, through their movements and the infinitely rich possibilities of programming.”

Your career spans almost three decades, in which you have explored many different formats of creation and distribution, from multimedia projects on CD-ROM, to Internet-based artworks, interactive installations, video mapping, screen-based pieces, software art, live performances, generative cinema, NFTs, and much more. What is your opinion on the way technology has evolved over these decades and how it has influenced art making? How have you experienced this period of constant innovation and obsolescence?

These have been very exciting years, for one because computers are more and more pervasive (we all now have a powerful computer in our pocket) and also because art made with computers is now widely accepted. It is therefore easier to create programmed artworks and to show them. The technology is more easily available, the distribution channels — in the wide sense — are numerous and the audience is listening.

On the other hand, technology is nowadays mainly used for advertising, surveillance, entertainment and manipulation of opinions, which is a social problem and has an effect on art made with technology. Many approaches build upon or react to these social dimensions, which are all needed and interesting but leave little room for the more conceptual and radical approaches. This may be true for all forms of art, but it is stronger with technological art as technology so much shapes our society these days.

Antoine Schmitt. FaçadeLifeGrandPalais. Generative mapping at the Grand Palais in Paris, 2016

What is interesting also is that I think that no new concept was really born in the field since Alan Turing invented the computer, the “universal machine”. All computer-based technologies are avatars of this unique concept. This can probably account for the fact that my artworks have not radically changed since I started. My work does not reflect on the social impacts of technology on society, nor are impacted by the various technological “innovations” and obsolescence. It is minimal so does not make use of the innovations toward more “power”, and it is rather rooted deeply in the concepts of the universal machine which have not changed : with a universal machine, all thinkable processes are programmable.

“Art made with technology often builds upon its social dimensions, which are all needed and interesting but leave little room for the more conceptual and radical approaches.”

You were already working with generative text twenty years ago, in The Automatic Critic (1999). What is your opinion about the current trend among artists to use machine learning models such as ChatGPT?

Although I am quite impressed by the quality of the interactions of users with ChatGPT (I thought that this level of quality would take more years to happen), the generative approach on these systems are in the normal continuation of the original concept of the computer. We are at the stage of imitation: these algorithms generate media that look like media created by humans, as the central mechanism of neural networks is pattern recognition and pattern generation, whether it is text, images, music, reasoning, etc… This is quite fascinating for users and it is similar to the caricatural mirror effect that I was referring to at the beginning. The art, or more generally the forms of expression, created by these algorithms in imitation of ours are a mirror to our forms of expression and thus question them.

But art is intention and responsibility. These two notions are still unique to humans. But maybe one day, we will be able to create an algorithm able to feel pain, express it with intention towards its fellow humans and take responsibility for it. There is no theoretical impossibility for this in the theory of the universal machine and I look forward to it.

In the meantime, as an artist, the most interesting aspect of AI systems remains for me the creation of biased algorithms which focus on some dimension of human nature, like Deep Love (2017) which answers all questions with “I don’t know, but I love you.”

Antoine Schmitt and Franck Vigroux. Tempest. Audiovisual concert, 2013

You entered the NFT scene in 2021 with Buy Me! a particularly conceptual, and generative piece. What has the NFT market brought to your practice? Has it influenced your production? Have you found new forms of creation or sources of inspiration, beyond its commercial dimension?

It took me some time to understand that the main new concept behind the NFT market boom was the perspective of financial profit, for collectors and for artists. This is the reason I created the satirical piece Buy Me! (2021), which embodies an algorithm desperately trying to convince its viewers to buy it, using language techniques inspired by advertising and psychological manipulation. It is a piece on the processes of marketing.

Apart from greed, the NFT market has opened the field of computer art to a new audience, which was really interesting, but I am eager to see the fusion of the traditional art market with NFT seen as a new way to buy and collect artworks.

Antoine Schmitt. The Fall of Leviathan. Interactive installation, 2021. Photo: Quentin Chevrier

You recently quoted the mathematical theory of catastrophes to describe the year that has begun and may bring sudden change, positive or negative. How does this year look for you? Which upcoming projects can you share with us?

I am very excited to start a collaboration with the DAM Projects gallery in Berlin. Its owner, Wolf Lieser, has been involved in computer art for a few decades and I look forward to working with him and his team. We will start with a solo show next autumn, with a selection of historical works and new artworks.

I am also very excited by two new live audiovisual performances, Videoscope and Nacht, with Franck Vigroux, which are in the making, and that will tour the world along with the existing performances (Melbourne, Gijón, San Francisco, etc..).

Spøgelsesmaskinen: invoking the ghost in the machine

Pau Waelder

Rune Brink Hansen (Denmark, 1979) is a digital designer and artist who has developed a career in web design, 3D modeling and VJing since the early 2000s, creating stage design for operas, concerts, and festivals, as well as spatial design for museum exhibitions. Since 2010, he has created a wide range of immersive and interactive light installation pieces in Danish galleries and museums and has also worked as curator in several contemporary art projects. In May 2021, he created Spøgelsesmaskinen (“the ghost machine,” in Danish), an alter ego and a specific project for the NFT scene that focuses on creating short 3D animations in a distinctive pixelated style that depict surreal and eerie scenes involving computers and other machines. After successfully selling his NFTs on Tezos, Ethereum, and Solana, he is now preparing screen-based pieces to exhibit in art galleries.

On the occasion of his solo artcast Abnor Mall, we spoke about his career, his aesthetic and conceptual choices, and the influence that the NFT scene has had on this production and creative process.

Rune Brink and Yoke Aps, KONSTRUKTUR. Interactive installation at Nikolaj Kunsthal, 2018

You are known for your interactive and kinetic light installations, which often create a novel experience of the surrounding space. What interests you about working with light and the architectural space?

I have always been interested in telling a story in a different way than you would normally find in a movie or a book, a way in which you can become the main protagonist of an experience that the story creates. I have done a lot of installations for cultural heritage museums, and in them I’ve tried to develop a visual language that would keep a certain level of abstraction, in a way to focus on telling the story. And then by doing spatial projections, or light installations, I have created a landscape around the visitors that would trigger their imagination to feel that they are the main character of the story, instead of watching something at a distance. For instance, if I had to depict a war zone, I’d rather create an atmosphere of anxiety and work with the feelings it generates rather than show images. 

So I would say that this is the reason why, when I started to work in art installations, coming from a design background and then doing visuals for music, I decided to create these spaces for the audiences where they really feel immersed and not just watching someone else. I have always been hesitant to create a narrative that is too defined and detached from the viewer, even when I did live visuals for music. I didn’t want to create a perception of the music that was too concrete, too pre-defined.

Spøgelsesmaskinen. Abnormall: Parking, 2022

The animations you create as Spøgelsesmaskinen usually depict scenes in carefully set up spaces, how do they relate to your artistic installations?

In 2009 I did a stage design for the opera Konsumia by Rasmus Zwicki. The story was about a group of people trapped inside a digital illusion. The opera singers would have to sing to make sure that the computer controlling the illusion couldn’t understand what they were talking about. All of this was situated in this dull, eerie, office landscape that represented the capitalistic world. I did the stage design in the exact style I’m now using with Spøgelsesmaskinen, with non-antialiased, very hard pixels and low resolution. 

So I thought, okay, I would really like to go back to this world. It was really a very nice world for me to work in. So that led to what is Spøgelsesmaskinen, basically. And then things started to take off, I started to go into different directions, but I also went back into doing more abstract experimentations. But obviously, the style that is identified with Spøgelsesmaskinen comes from stage design and probably that is why they look like tableaus, in small spaces, although without any characters. But there may be a spirit somewhere in the room…

“The style of Spøgelsesmaskinen comes from stage design. That is why they look like tableaus, in small spaces, although without any characters.”

Spøgelsesmaskinen means “The Ghost Machine:” why did you choose this alias? Is that connected to the idea of “the ghost in the machine” and the use of glitches?

In my early childhood, maybe at the age of eight or nine, the first computer came into my home. To me, the computer was always surrounded by mystery, an uncanny feeling. The computer was in a corner of my bedroom. I was in my bed at night, and I was looking at it and just expecting it to wake up on its own. Because for me, this was magic. In Microsoft DOS, there was this application called Q Basic, where you could write small applications. And I wrote my first chatbot, which would just reply to different prompts. And I could sit for hours chatting with the bot, having a pre-programmed conversation, and feeling that there might be a spirit in this machine, somehow. This continues coming back to me: the complexity of the machine is still enough to fool me into believing it’s alive, in a way.

And how do the glitches come in?

The glitches are what the computer does that is unexpected to the human. I guess that’s why glitches are celebrated, especially right now, as the computer’s capability of being an artist on its own, in a way creating things that are unexpected. Design today is very inspired by how HTML is wrapping different boxes around and making mistakes. There is a huge trend of putting text on top of images halfway, all these different things are coming out of what the computer can do. And so the glitch is proof that the computer is superior or that the computer can surprise us.

“The complexity of the machine is still enough to fool me into believing it’s alive, in a way.”

In relation to this ability of the computer to create, now that artists are increasingly integrating AI tools into their creative processes, are you interested in this possibility?

Yes, certainly. I recently did an installation for YOKE with AI Sweden for the Nobel Prize Museum’s new exhibition, Life Eternal, at Liljevalchs art gallery in Stockholm. The installation is based on GPT SW3, a Swedish version of the GPT-3 generative language model, and used the text of the novel Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Visitors can have a conversation with an AI system modeled after the protagonist of the book on the theme of eternal life. So, I have worked with AI in the facet of my work related to installations and stage design, but not yet as a tool to create visual compositions. I’m very open to doing so, but I just haven’t found the right opportunity.

Spøgelsesmaskinen. Abnormall: Electro, 2022

The aesthetics of your work as Spøgelsesmaskine are clearly influenced by computer graphics from the early 1990s, which is about the time you started doing 3D animations before becoming a graphic designer and VJ. How do all these experiences collide in your present work?

I have this background as a graphic designer, and then I’ve worked with a lot of installations, festivals, and live events, building big physical installations that are very costly, so I’m used to dealing with all the pressures and limitations, making sure that things are not coming down from the walls or that I don’t go over the budget. In this work with 3D animations I feel that I have the complete freedom to do anything I want, to experiment in any crazy way I like to. And sometimes it seems to me that I am also sketching physical works to come. So in a way, they are a sort of doodle, or a sketch. Even though they are self contained pieces on their own.

“The glitch is proof that the computer is superior or that the computer can surprise us.”

Your low pixel resolution work becomes instantly recognizable. Do you feel that in an environment saturated with images, and particularly in the NFT community, with many similar artworks, it is important to stand out with a distinctive visual style?

Yes, I’m trying to stick to it. Because I feel that it’s becoming my signature. And I never really had a style before, I never drew, or painted. So it feels like I’m finally coming to a place where I can connect with what I create very easily. Working with 3D has always been limited by the looks of the final render, because the final render never looks like reality, it’s very hard to make it look realistic. And so I’ve always been struggling with 3D, but now I found a render style that is actually taking me into a more humble space. I think it was p1xelfool who said that the lower the resolution, the more connected to the machine he felt. I agree and I think that working in low resolution is a way for us to feel this craftsmanship and also to feel that the computer is not overdoing it, that you can still be in control. It’s not this hyper technological thing that you need the robots to do it for you. It is also a way to say: I don’t need 204k screens, I don’t need to buy new things all the time. I can work with what I have, what has been here for a long time.

In that sense, you have mentioned that you find a lot of 3D models in libraries of objects that no one uses anymore, and that you include in your scenes.

Yes, there are so many 3D models on different platforms that represent different times in history, for instance old mobile phones that are not being used anymore for the commercial purpose they were built for. So it’s a fun way of diving into the history of 3D models, and it’s interesting to see how much time and thought went into modeling all these objects that are now lying in digital junkyards.

Spøgelsesmaskinen. Abnormall: Flash, 2022

So, to better understand the process, you create the whole model in 3D, and then you apply the rendering in a very low resolution, is that correct?

Yes. For some of the scenes I’ve used all these different 3D models I’ve found and put them together, and for others I model from scratch because I need to build a specific scene. Then an interesting thing happens with the loss of information when rendering at a low resolution: sometimes it doesn’t look good the first time, and I have to change the objects, the positions, maybe zoom in more, get more or less details, and so on. I render them in 320 x 240 pixels and scale them up frame by frame, to double the size, and then turn them into GIFs. I think Photoshop is getting rid of GIFs, so maybe soon I will probably have to start working on older machines to actually be able to run the software

Right now I’m working with a company that builds LED screens and I’m doing tests to have an animation run in the screen at the exact size, each pixel an LED, with no scaling, a sharp image. For that I need to avoid any form of antialiasing, which luckily can still be the disabled in some software. 

You have decades of experience with 3D imaging and digital creation tools. What do you think about the development of digital technologies for creatives? Do you consider that open source software has had a major impact on creativity?

I wouldn’t be able to use abandoned software and hardware in the future if there wasn’t an open source community. I did a small project called Memory Leaks in which I worked on the Classic Mac OS. And that was only possible because of the community that is still putting up the software online, hosting it, and making it available for free. The same goes for the 3D models. I’m working on a series of assets for people to create their own scenes. So I’m planning to do a series in which every model is made by me from scratch and everything is released for people to use in different ways.

“The NFT scene has changed my life completely.”

What has the NFT market brought to your practice and its sustainability?

It changed my life completely. I went from working freelance for museums, and very rarely doing my own installations, maybe once a year, to only being on my own now. So it has completely changed everything. In Denmark, there is a lot of interest in blockchain because it is still so new and few people work on it. So basically every week, I have five phone calls with organizations asking me how they can implement blockchain and what they can do with it. I started a small think tank with two friends of mine, called Korridor.digital, which is a shared workspace for blockchain projects in the field of art. We try to help other artists, we do workshops. And we just recently moved into an art foundation where we are now helping to consult in this field.

My network has really changed, I have made so many friends all over the globe in the last few years, and such a huge network, having places to crash in all the major cities of the world, that it is completely mind blowing, and amazing. Even if NFTs are a capitalistic project, they have become a huge social movement. I also worked for some time on the Afghan NFT project where we try to raise money for African artists and Africans in general in need. About 50 artists donated works, and we raised around $18,000. Unfortunately crypto is currently banned there.

Spøgelsesmaskinen. Abnormall: Escalation, 2022

You work under two different names, one of them specifically directed to the NFT market. How does that affect your practice? Can you balance both aspects of your work?

I don’t know. What should I do? Help me! The Spøgelsesmaskinen project is growing, now I’m going to do exhibitions in Copenhagen, so I guess I will start to work with some specialists who can help me out a little bit. Because I recently did a permanent light installation in a park which is like a playground where you can play with light, and that has really nothing to do with the concept of Spøgelsesmaskinen. So for me it is good to have these two names and separate the kind of work that I do. Being online as a different person that is not related to my real identity or my personal life is very interesting. And starting from scratch Twitter and Instagram accounts that are now outnumbering my other accounts, this gives so much energy. So in that sense, I am enjoying the freedom it gives me to try out something new.

Refik Anadol: art in a latent space

Pau Waelder

Refik Anadol. Unsupervised: Machine Hallucinations MoMA (2022)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Türkiye) is a media artist and lecturer, whose meteoric career has taken him from creating video mappings on building façades in several European cities, to being one of the first artists in residence at Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Program, the founder and director of Refik Anadol Studio RAS LAB in Los Angeles, a lecturer for UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts, and a successful artist with global recognition in the contemporary art world. In just 15 years, Anadol has amassed numerous awards and presented his site-specific audio/visual performances at iconic museums and events such as the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Centre Pompidou, Daejeon Museum of Art, Art Basel, Ars Electronica Festival, and the Istanbul Design Biennial, among many others.

He works with a large team of designers, architects, data scientists, and researchers from 10 different countries and has partnered with teams at Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Intel, IBM, Panasonic, JPL/NASA, Siemens, Epson, MIT, Harvard, UCLA, Stanford University, and UCSF, to apply the most innovative technologies to his body of work. He is represented by bitforms gallery in New York. 

bitforms is participating in the Art SG art fair in Singapore from 12 to 15 January 2023, presenting a selection of generative artworks by Refik Anadol. Niio supports the exhibition as technical partner, in collaboration with SAMSUNG, and is proud to present the artcast Refik Anadol: Pacific Ocean, which features excerpts from three pieces by the Turkish artist. The following article offers a brief introduction to the main aspects of Refik’s work.

Refik Anadol. Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations — MoMA Dreams — F
Image sold on Feral File as NFT. 100 editions, 1 AP

Building a latent space

A trailblazing artist in the field of art and artificial intelligence, Refik Anadol uses large amounts of data and machine learning techniques to create his generative artworks and site-specific installations. His creative process often implies the creation of a data set from an archive of images, sounds, and documents or from measurements taken by sensors, radars, and other devices. The data set feeds a series of machine learning processes that generate an endless succession of audio-visual compositions, which can fill a large screen, a whole room, or the façade of a building. 

At the heart of the machine learning models that transform the original data into something else lies what is called a “latent space,” in which clusters of items are formed from similarities between them, which give rise to a set of variables. The latent space is therefore a space of possibilities, somewhat unpredictable, that contributes to shaping the final outcome. In Refik’s work, it is not only part of the machine learning model but also a concept that helps understand his generative pieces and installations as spaces in which creation is constantly exploring its latent qualities. Spaces in which the artwork is never finished. 

His recent installation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Unsupervised: Machine Hallucinations MoMA (2022), clearly exemplifies the conception of the artwork as a latent space. Using the public metadata of The Museum of Modern Art’s collection, which comprises more than 130,000 pieces including paintings, drawings, photographs, and video games, the artist and his studio created a series of artworks that result from the interpretation of this data by means of a machine learning algorithm. The initial series was sold as NFTs in the exhibition Unsupervised on the online platform Feral File, the project being further expanded into the generative artwork installed at MoMA’s lobby. Casey Reas, artist and co-founder of Feral File, aptly described the artwork in terms of its latency: “What I find really interesting about Refik’s project with MoMA’s dataset, with your collection, is that it speculates about possible images that could have been made, but that were never made before” [1]. The artwork can thus be seen as a space of possibilities, but also as a simulated environment that becomes particularly meaningful in the context of the building that houses it.

Casey Reas: “What I find really interesting about Refik’s project with MoMA’s dataset is that it speculates about possible images that could have been made, but that were never made before”

Refik Anadol Studio. WDCH Dreams, 2018.

The room as Merzbau

Architecture, and more generally a real or simulated three-dimensional space as a container, are key elements of Refik’s work. Artworks such as WDCH Dreams (2018) or Seoul Haemong (2019) use the exterior surfaces of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul as canvases, while Infinity Room (2015) and Pladis: Data Universe (2018) are conceived by the artist as “Temporary Immersive Environments.” The artist stresses this connection frequently in his interviews: “I’m interested in exploring the architectural domain as deeply as I can,” he has stated recently. “All my art works tend to have a physical connection to public space” [2]. However, the architectural space is not conceived in terms of static shapes and volumes, but as something fluid and malleable, a work in progress. 

Kurt Schwitters’ celebrated Merzbau installations from the 1920s and 1930s come to mind as an illustrative example of Refik’s conception of space. Schwitters began to alter the space of his studio in Hannover by putting together small artworks, found objects, and debris into structures that he would glue and fix with plaster, building columns and shapes that protruded from the walls. The sculpture was never completed, the artist always kept adding elements and reshaping the space [3]. In a similar way, the space occupied by Refik’s artworks is permanently reshaped through a process that stems from an accumulation of found materials, data that loses its original shape and merges into something new. In the Temporary Immersive Environment series, he specifically seeks to immerse the viewer in a “non-physical world” that questions their perception of space and their own presence [4]. The room is expanded and multiplied through optical effects, with the aim of creating a viewing experience that goes beyond staring at a flat projection.

Refik Anadol: “I’m interested in exploring the architectural domain as deeply as I can. All my art works tend to have a physical connection to public space.”

This conception of space as integrated into a Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art” that has been the aspiration of opera composers, architects and filmmakers, is not, however, the only connection with architecture in Refik’s work. Interestingly, while Schwitters sought to merge all of his artistic practice under one term (Merz), erasing distinctions between painting, sculpture, and architecture, Anadol describes some of his generative art works as “data paintings” and “data sculptures.” These references to classical formats speak of a different type of space, confined within the limits of a screen or a wall, which nevertheless intervenes in the surrounding space by means of a trompe-l’oeil effect that creates the impression of three-dimensional shapes pulsating beneath and beyond a solid, thick frame. Artworks such as Virtual depictions: San Francisco (2015), displayed on an L-shaped media wall inside the main lobby of the 350 Mission building in San Francisco, seek to create an imaginary space that stands out spectacularly, but at the same time embeds itself into the surrounding architecture. The connection between the artwork and its location, though, is not only expressed in terms of how the screen is placed on the wall, but also in the data that gives meaning to the fluid elements that inhabit the virtual space.

Refik Anadol Studio. Future of the City, 2020.

Data is not just a bunch of numbers

Coming back to the concept of latent space within machine learning models, it is important to remember that Refik Anadol’s artworks do not only have an aesthetic dimension, as colorful shapes in fluid transitions or enormous mosaics of distinct elements, but also a conceptual dimension, expressed by the data that feeds the whole process leading to the site-specific installations and performances. Speaking about his project Quantum Memories (2020), the artist states the importance of this data and the meaning it conveys: 

“For me, data is not just a bunch of numbers. For me, data is actually a memory. From that perspective, I’m always looking for what kind of collective memory that we are holding as humanity, and how can we use these memories and turn them into a pigment or a sculpture that represents who we are as humanity.” [5]

Conceiving data as memory resonates with his ongoing work with all kinds of archives, from the 1,700,000 documents found in the SALT Research collections to the 587,763 image files, 1,880 video files, 1,483 metadata files, and 17,773 audio files in the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra’s digital archives. Every bit of information in these files has its own history and meaning, and has a certain association with another file, enabling the clusters and variables that will emerge in the latent space. The artworks may appear as abstract compositions or massive collages, but they are actually visual representations of underlying stories and invisible structures. As the artist puts it, they aim to “make visible the invisible world of data that surrounds us” [6]. This statement may lead to considering Refik’s work as a form of data visualization, but it goes well beyond this task, into what media theorist Lev Manovich has described as “represent[ing] the personal subjective experience of a person living in a data society […] including its fundamental new dimension of being «immersed in data»” [7].

Lev Manovich: “The real challenge of data art is how to represent the personal subjective experience of a person living in a data society.”

Some of Refik’s installations directly address this condition of being immersed in data by means of projections that surround the viewer with visualizations of the data collected from archives, or in real time from sensors and other sources, as in Latent Being (2019) or Future of the City (2020). Others present data that relates to environmental systems that we usually ignore but that have a profound impact on our planet, and therefore in our lives. This is the case of Pacific Ocean (2022), the series presented by bitforms at Art SG in Singapore and on Niio as an artcast featuring three video excerpts.  

bitforms gallery booth at ArtSG Singapore presenting a series of artworks by Refik Anadol. Photo courtesy of bitforms.

Collecting data from High Frequency Radars (HFR) located in the Pacific coast of the United States, the artist has created a series of visualizations of ocean currents that seems abstract and realistic at the same time: the ebbs and flows of granular elements in shades ranging from dark blue to emerald green clearly evoke the surface of a raging sea, but they are also somehow unreal, impossibly merging numerous currents from different directions in beautifully chaotic, and even violent, clashes. HFRs are used to measure ocean currents and understand their impact and response to climate processes. The data collected from networks of radars in coastal zones around the world is crucial to protect the marine ecosystem and predict changes that will affect life on our planet. Seen from this perspective, the artworks acquire a somewhat unsettling tone and inspire an awareness of the ecosystems that we so often ignore, putting into question our anthropocentric view of the world.

Refik Anadol. Pacific Ocean A, 2022

Machine dreaming

Anthropocentrism and our inability to understand the agency of non-human entities and systems around us are underlying subjects in most approaches to art created with artificial intelligence. The perennial question of whether it is the artist of the machine that creates the artwork is still debated after 60 years of algorithmic art, now reinforced by the spectacular achievements of machine learning models in producing realistic images and coherent texts. In Refik Anadol’s work, the use of artificially intelligent systems leads to two interesting aspects of artistic creation: the notions of control and authorship. 

Terms like “machine learning,” “supervised learning,” “reinforcement learning,” and “training model” speak of the intention to use artificial intelligence as a tool to obtain predictable results, in which the machine is meant to produce a specific output. This perception of the machine as a mere instrument, fully controlled by a human, contradicts the way artists have used generative algorithms and AI systems to create their artworks. Nowadays, artists working with artificial intelligence understand machine learning as a way of exploring post-anthropocentric creativity, therefore using AI to reach beyond the confines of human imagination and let the machine bring in the unexpected, the incongruous, the unsettling, and even the impossible. In Refik’s work this approach is made clear in the use of machine learning models to create “dreams” and “hallucinations.” He has described AI as “a thinking brush, a brush that can think, that can remember, and that can dream.” This statement implies an interesting balance between letting the system loose and keeping it under control. In Archive Dreaming (2017), the installation is allowed to “dream” when a viewer is not interacting with it, so that this state is interrupted when a human takes control. In other installations, such as Machine Hallucination (2019), the system can create its own associations and reimaginings of the contents of a very precise dataset, so that its “unconscious” is nevertheless under a certain level of control. 

Refik Anadol: “the most important thing for me is creating a thinking brush, a brush that can think, that can remember, and that can dream.”

The question of authorship stems from the perceived control over the final output: if the artist had no control over it, is he the author of the artwork? Interestingly, while the Dadaists and Surrealists already integrated randomness into their artistic practices and many other artists have incorporated unpredictable processes or external agents into their work, authorship tends to be more fiercely contested when a computer is involved. Refik Anadol’s authorship is nevertheless palpable in the aesthetic and conceptual foundations of his work, which remain consistent throughout his career despite considering himself part of a large team of experts and working with increasingly complex AI technologies. He conceives the process as a collaboration, both when dealing with software and hardware and when teaming up with designers, coders, and researchers to develop a project. There are, however, crucial moments when decisions are made, and these are the moments when the artist states his authorship:

“There’s a collaboration between machine and human. With the same data, we can generate infinite versions of the same sculpture, but choosing this moment, and creating this moment in time and space, is the moment of creation.” [8]

Out of infinite possibilities, making a choice that determines the next step in the process and shapes the final output is a prerogative of the artist, who is finally the author of the artwork that emerges from a latent space.

Notes

[1] Refik Anadol, Casey Reas, Michelle Kuo, and Paola Antonelli. Modern Dream: How Refik Anadol Is Using Machine Learning and NFTs to Interpret MoMA’s Collection. MoMA | Magazine, November 15, 2021.

[2] Dorian Batycka. Digital Art Star Refik Anadol’s First Supporters Were in the Tech World. All of a Sudden, His Work Has Become White-Hot at Auction, Too. Artnet, May 18, 2022.

[3] Gwendolen Webster. Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau. A dissertation presented to the Open University, Milton Keynes, 2007.

[4] Refik Anadol. Liminal Room. Refik Anadol Studio, November 19, 2015.

[5] Claudia Pelosi. Machine intelligence as a narrative tool in experiential art – Interview with Refik Anadol. Designwanted, December 19, 2020.

[6] Refik Anadol. Virtual Depictions: San Francisco. Refik Anadol Studio, October 1, 2015.

[7] Lev Manovich. Data Visualization as New Abstraction and Anti-Sublime. Manovich.net, 2002.

[8] Refik Anadol, Casey Reas, Michelle Kuo, and Paola Antonelli. Modern Dream. op.cit.

Alona Rodeh: Automated Fantasy

Roxanne Vardi

Alona Rodeh is an Israeli visual artist and individual researcher who currently lives and works in Berlin. Rodeh is a cross-disciplinary artist whose works include immersive environments, video works, sculpture, and public art projects. Rodeh’s artworks are currently focused on the presence of artificial illumination in the public sphere, and in turn its influence on humans and non-humans. Rosenfeld Gallery is presently exhibiting its third solo show of Rodeh’s works, this time focusing on a collaboration with artist Rachid Moro. The exhibition titled CITY DUMMIES is made up of CGI works which were all created in the past year, and which mark a shift in the artist’s oeuvre from video and cinema to the practice of post-cinema. Rodeh’s artworks have been exhibited internationally at private as well as public spaces including Berlin, Vienna, Tel Aviv, and New York.

CITY DUMMIES, comprises of eight video artworks, powered by Niio Art, which are spread across Rosenfeld gallery’s space. The artist designed and engineered the space in a way which complements what the viewer is anticipated to see on the screens. The gallery space is painted in a dark grey tint to complement the video works, and the screens hang from industrial metal poles. The works exhibited are CGI works which all display familiar urban scenes that are deplete of humans, and instead all show inanimate objects as the protagonists of the presented scenes. The fictional urban scenes produced by the artist present viewers with different machines that vary from an ATM machine, to electric scooters, to drones which come to life during the nighttime hours and become the stars of the spectacle.

The hyper realistic works set within dystopian environments display a certain obedience to contemporary consumer society. The presented imaginary urban technology landscapes all show orchestrated plays between extraordinary lighting, movement, sound, and visual effects. The Juicer (Late Shift), shows a transit van pulling over down a driveway in reverse gear. The back doors of the car open and a stack of electric scooters flicker and play music from within the transit. The artist has stated that she feels she plays a kind of god-like figure of the fabricated events that are created within these artworks. The series of works created for the CITY DUMMIES exhibition were all created using 3D models which were inserted into gaming models as a kind of “puzzle of pieces which we put together”. Moreover, Rodeh has shared with us that the work here is of a scenographer of built environments, and that many of the final artworks allude to movies such as the work Runway Freefall Deluxe which references Magnolia.

Alona Rodeh, The Juicer (Late Shift), 2022.

You started your artistic career working mostly with sculpture and installation, whereas lately you have been working mostly in the digital space and specifically focusing on Unreal projects. Can you walk us through this trajectory and how one medium led you or complemented the other on your artistic journey?

CITY DUMMIES is–also–a sculpture and installation show, though it might not look like it at first glance. But going into the creation of digitally-fabricated environments had much to do with the pandemic. When reality as we knew it came to a halt in 2020 and into 2021, I felt it as a life-changing experience. My plans were shattered time and time again. I, among so many others, lost a sense of control over my present and near future. This project, slowly but surely, grew out of an almost existential urge to create my work on my terms, without relying on institutions and their commissions. Not by coincidence, it’s an imaginative space that can be seen online and offline. It’s a huge bet, and hopefully, it also pays back. 

“This project, slowly but surely, grew out of an almost existential urge to create my work on my terms, without relying on institutions and their commissions.”

Alona Rodeh, Gearing Up, 2022.

The artworks which are part of the CITY DUMMIES all insinuate human intervention but are in fact completely deplete of people. What is your intention towards this definite decision? Does it in your opinion also point to what is expected to come in the future?

People’s presence is felt even if they are not visible since the built environment results from human production. Here, direct human presence is strictly ruled out; The series is a little love letter to all those precarious machines of the Zeitgeist acting out at night. Dancing as if nobody is watching. I don’t look so much at the future but comment on the shadow of the present. It’s a strange, automated fantasy.

Towards the creation of your new series of works and towards the CITY DUMMIES exhibition you discovered and worked with Unreal Engine. Can you share your experience working with this novel and advanced real-time rendering tool?

I heard “rumors” of Unreal Engine while using other render engines for presentations of sculpture, which I have been using for some time (Keyshot, Blender), and I thought I’d try it. No other software allows such powerful real-time rendering, which is a game-changer. There is no delay between design and output; The software is so well-optimized that it can run very complex scenes with little effort. I did one little work with it, and appetite comes with eating. My partner Rachid Moro (lead CGI in this project) and I had to shift all the studio equipment to feed the monster: getting the best graphic cards, extra memory cards, screens, and of course: expanding the team. Rachid dived in with all his attention to detail; I focused on the conceptual possibilities and steering this big ship; we gathered a few other people around us to contribute and learn together what this engine can allow. Some clips took a good few months; some are still in the works, and others are only in my head still. It’s complicated but gratifying.

“I find all my inspiration and ideas in the built environment. Therefore I’m always happy to do work in actual public space.”

You have also created artworks for public spaces in the past, can you elaborate on the differences, at least from your personal perspective, working in the public sphere as opposed to the private gallery sphere?

I find all my inspiration and ideas in the built environment. Therefore I’m always happy to do work in actual public space, and I focus on doing some of these in parallel. When I work on public art commissions, I have to consider a battery of limitations and challenges: safety, the resilience of materials, costs, communication with local authorities, public opinion, and so forth. With CITY DUMMIES, I don’t have all this baggage; it’s all up to me. At this point in my career, it feels liberating.