Portrait of an AI Artist

When you ask Refik Anadol to talk about himself, he inevitably winds up talking about others — and that’s kind of the point.

To explain how he became an artist, he cites with encyclopedic knowledge all the pioneers that came before him. To explain his approach to teaching, he talks about his students, underscoring that the key to adding value to their lives is “trusting their journey.” And when it comes to his artwork, one of the first words he uses is “public.”

“My focus is public art. It has been since day one, because I believe art is for anyone, at any age, from any background. There is no beginning, no ending, no door, no ceiling. It’s a mindset of openness,” Anadol told me during our hourlong interview for Huge Moves.

This is a pretty strong choice, considering Anadol’s lofty position in the art world right now. He’s one of the first modern artists to use artificial intelligence in public artwork, and he is internationally recognized as a pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. Essentially, his art lives at the intersection of humans, machines and creativity — making him the perfect partner for many of the largest titans in both tech and academia.

Google, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Nvidia, MIT, UCLA, Harvard University, Imperial College and Stanford University, among other brain trusts, have all partnered with the Refik Anadol Studio, powering it with the latest cutting-edge science, research and technologies. As a result, the output from Anadol’s studio is quite literally larger than life. Forget “finding your voice” in the traditional Artist’s Way sense — this guy has his own force field.

Standing before Anadol’s living data sculptures and paintings in “Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2022–2023), or watching weather data from the Amazon rainforest undulate in the mesmerizing tribal artwork series “Winds of Yawanawá” (2023) — it’s natural to experience a sense of awe. But it wasn’t until I listened to Anadol speak that I came to better understand the deeply radical, forcefully challenging energy that informs his life and work.

In this interview, you will hear directly from the bespectacled, black-haired artist about his stance on provenance, his true feelings about art critics, how he built his career without gallery representation — and what his next major global rainforest project is all about.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

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You studied photography at Istanbul Bilgi University. How did that shape your practice?

In my undergrad years, I was fortunate to deep dive into many mediums: typography, web and advanced photography — not just digital. I learned medium- and large-format photography. I experimented with Magnum Photos, not necessarily to document life, but to document space in a modern photography context. And then I deep dived into videography, computer graphics and 3D modeling. Finally, in my last year, I was super obsessed with the idea of data and started programming my own ideas in 2008.

Did you have a mentor at this time in your life?

Peter Weibel (1944–2023) was one of the early media art pioneers that inspired me so much. Unfortunately, we lost him. He was the CEO of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, the first museum in the world dedicated to science, technology and media arts. He was one of our mentors in my first MFA in Istanbul. That’s how I learned about media art, and that’s why I started using data as a pigment in 2008. That was the magical year, when all the stars aligned: I was graduating, starting an MFA, then I met with Peter Weibel.

I was finishing one journey and starting anew with an idea — about data becoming a pigment. I’m still chasing this dream.

When I did my first data sculpture in Istanbul in 2011, I just felt that if I’m doing all this by myself, what will happen if I have a team? What will happen if I have a truly deep discourse around this topic of the future of the arts? And I knew Silicon Valley is where the future is invented. But I also know that L.A. is a magical space, where the Light and Space movement was started by artists like James Turrell and Dan Flavin.

It was probably the very first time artists and technology companies were coming together. This is the late 1960s. Well, I thought that I had to go back to the pioneers who had been thinking about this. I knew that UCLA had an incredible art and technology program, so that’s how I landed in Los Angeles. I got my second MFA from UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts.

And now you teach at UCLA.

For the last nine years, yes. Teaching is super important in my life; I grew up with teachers. To me, learning to learn is fundamental. It’s a mindset. It doesn’t matter which school I’m in; I just need to learn. I think it’s one of the most powerful skill sets for a human that can bring value to life. So that’s what I’m doing in my teaching. I’m not necessarily “passing the torch,” but I’m trying to bring value to their work and to trust their journey.

As a student, you won an important award. What was it?

In the spring of 2013, I got invited to Seattle, to a Microsoft Research event. Every year, Microsoft Research invites 10 Ivy League schools and their 10 best student projects to share their dreams on the stage. Most of these are eight-minute elevator pitches: Here’s the software that will change the world! It’s a bit cheesy — but hopefully, some smart vision may come from that.

I was the only artist on the stage that year. And I won an award with the idea of projection mapping using AI and data.

So that was the first time I got major funding for my research. I came back to L.A., and that money funded research for the studio. We got our first computers with that money; and most importantly, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Frank Gehry said: All right, your idea is not just an idea. Your proposal has value.

My first dream was to open a studio. But my second dream was to one day take Frank Gehry’s Disney concert hall! (He laughs.) At that time, my dream of projection mapping on the Walt Disney Concert Hall (WDCH) was really an obsession, in a good way. I was really dying to give that building a life.

In a way, Frank Gehry put your studio on the map.

Yes. In 2014, we transformed the interior space of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (the façade project came later). It was our first project in Los Angeles, and it got significant attention. We quickly got another project in San Francisco, which is still up and running in the Salesforce building. I think it’s the first permanent AI data sculpture in the world. It was a magical year.

AI has changed a lot since then. How do you feel about it now?

For me, the real AI journey started in 2016, when I was the first artist in residence at Google. Since then, I’ve had the same feeling. Think about an artist, every morning: You go to the studio with the same brush, same canvas, same tools. To me, every morning, I wake up and it’s new; it’s the feeling of freshness. Every day is a new day. So I’m really grateful for the residency because it allowed me and my team to learn from the best in the field. And then it allowed us to dive even deeper into computation, hardware, software.

One year later, Nvidia enters the picture.

Yes, I met with the CEO Jensen Huang in 2017, and he is also a supporter of art and creativity with AI. Our paths crossed naturally: I’m a gamer. I love computation. I love computer graphics. But after meeting with Huang, Nvidia started to support us. This was a huge takeoff. I’m so grateful for Microsoft Research as a student, and to Google for my first residency. But Nvidia was our first major tech partner.

How do you work with Nvidia?

Nvidia does some of the most successful research using generative adversarial networks (GAN), [in which two neural networks compete with each other]. It’s a complex approach to machine learning, which I think is important for an artist.

We co-develop the algorithm, and we write new software on top of it. They’re always with us when we have major breakthroughs.

That’s what makes this research profound, which I’m calling machine hallucinations. If a machine can learn, can it dream? That was my fundamental question in the residency at Google. Because one day, I hope all data, all information will be a part of a library that every human can freely access. It’s an ultimate dream: making art for everyone in the world.

It’s the idea of finding the language of humanity. I’m holding these dreams in my heart, and that’s shaped my relationship with AI. Of course, last year was very important because AI finally became more accessible. Finally, people are aware.

I mean, in human history, we’ve never had this discovery before. We had the printing press. We had photography, we had cinema, we had the industrial revolution — but these machines are not intelligent. They need human intervention. Now we have something like a mirror of our intelligence. It’s a new renaissance. And I’m very grateful that I witnessed the birth of it.

Hallucinations, illusions, dreams are prevalent in your work. We’re stepping outside reality. A computer program is said to “hallucinate” when it generates falsehoods. Do you feel that a departure from reality gives us a better understanding of what’s real?

That’s one part of it. But I don’t believe using AI to create something real is inspiring. What is inspiring to me is dreams, fantasies, hallucinations — things that are not necessarily the construct of a direct reality. When I first witnessed AI, I thought it just mimicked reality, and that’s boring. But what was really inspiring to me is what happens if a machine can dream, can create new connections and new worlds that don’t exist. That is the world that inspired me.

Now, AI is a space where I can create a “thinking brush,” a brush that I can dip into the mind of a machine and paint with machine consciousness. That’s literally what we program when we create our own AI models; the intention is a thinking brush.

Many artists are worried about IP and copyright protections. How do you feel about AI crawling your content?

I’m generally fine. I mean, ChatGPT knows me pretty well! (He laughs.) Our project at MoMA, “Unsupervised,” received 25 reviews. One was from GPT; it’s one of the best reviews, to be honest. It’s just not a toy. It’s well-established research that OpenAI put together. Same for Google’s Bard. You can write my name and Bard knows me better than many — no offense — lazy art critics. I mean, that’s the reality.

You’re not worried about fair compensation?

I’m not worried because creativity is a human-machine collaboration. It’s a 50/50 exchange. Yes, people can mimic anything they wish. I’m more concerned about human copycats than AI copycats, to be honest. Some people are using our works and styles and contexts and making money! AI is just in research mode. And I’m okay with that. Humans are the problem, not AI.

Is that why you turned to blockchain?

Blockchain did a lot of work around this and supported artists like me who have been wanting independence in their practice, both economic and social. I have been independent since day one; I work with galleries temporarily, but they don’t represent me.

Where do you see things going, in terms of media arts?

I think about MoMA. It’s truly a benchmark, a place with historical context. First of all, MoMA put their data online seven years ago. So let’s give credit to the people who envisioned that one day this may be a thing. And MoMA also started collecting games, under curator Paola Antonelli. She took very brave first steps to put games into the context of art. These are very powerful statements that come from the same institution. It’s not by chance — it’s the ethos of the institution. MoMA’s curators are visionary minds, but it’s also the museum directors and the board members working together. There’s a lot of thinking and close collaboration. To me, that’s really the game-changing context.

MoMA has extended your exhibition three, four times now?

It was originally supposed to run two or three months! It was just a simple, beautiful exhibition. And it became this thing that I think will be discussed for decades. It’s a symbol of the moment. It’s a symbol of generative AI, a symbol of digital art. It represents something beyond me, in my humble view.

Let’s talk about our cover subject, the Yawanawá tribe.

The Yawanawá family, to me, represents one of the most important parts of humanity — which is ancestral wisdom. They have been living in the heart of Amazonia for more than 1,000 years. They preserve their language without any technology, they preserve their culture without any computer and they are protecting our rainforests, the lungs of humanity.

So it’s about my respect for them. Their way of learning and remembering is way beyond any project I’ve ever done. My wife and partner, Efsun Erkılıç, introduced me to Amazonian cultures seven years ago, and I was met with the practice of ancestral wisdom, plant medicines and how they live in peace with the flora and fauna of the rainforest.

We were hosted by them in the Yawanawá sacred village of Aldeia Sagrada. It’s a very unique space in the state of Acre in Brazil. We connected truly and honestly. Chief Nixiwaka is a hero who brought peace to his territory. He’s an inspiring human.

So I thought, it’s my time to help. I asked them: What are your dreams? I took down their dreams and connected them to their natural environment. We worked with young Yawanawá artists, and their hand-painted drawings. They have a special painting technique that incorporates spiritual rituals. During these rituals, they see beautiful patterns that exist in nature; on the trees, the flowers or in animals, which become these beautiful paintings.

To move the artworks, we merged their images with wind and weather data from their village and trained an AI to generate 1,000 unique data paintings.

It’s a colorful homage to living in harmony with the natural world, using new technology. Why did you launch this project as an NFT collection?

Chief Nixiwaka has a dream. He wants to bring Amazonian leaders to his village next year. His dream is to create an infrastructure, a village, a museum, a school. And he needs funding.

Via the NFT sale, we raised more than $2.25 million for them to preserve their culture, preserve their language and protect the rainforest. Protecting rainforests means protecting them against deforestation by private companies.

The rainforest is a fully connected network; we can’t just cut through it and assume it’s the same. It has to remain as raw as possible. To do that, these people need infrastructure. They need to stay there. The reasoning behind the protection comes equally with being able to live safely and successfully.

So now an Indigenous tribe has a smart wallet in the heart of Amazonia! I mean, I’m sorry for any bank or any government. They couldn’t do that. Using blockchain, I was able to help them to do that.

What’s next for you?

Our next project is called “Dataland.” At the moment, we are creating the largest AI model in the world dedicated to rainforests, via open-source software. We’re talking about every single rainforest, from Africa to Australia to Indonesia.

We are literally, physically going to rainforests with a team to record video, audio, photography and lidar, while gathering climate data from across the world. We are communicating with institutions, university libraries and scholars. It is a profound project that we plan to unveil in L.A. next year. For this, we are creating a physical museum space to become one of the most advanced, immersive rooms in the world. [The venue has not yet been disclosed].

Was this inspired by the Yawanawá?

Beyond Yawanawá — we will dedicate the research to humanity.  We will generate several artworks, of course, but it’s a gift for humanity, for curious minds that love nature. I hope it will become an example of how research with AI can be done.