REFIK ANADOL
DIGITAL DATA SCULPTURE

PINAKOTHEK DER MODERNE, MUNICH, GERMANY
14 SEPTEMBER – 27 NOVEMBER 2022

To mark its 20th anniversary, the Pinakothek der Moderne invited AI media artist Refik Anadol to develop a digital data sculpture.

This data sculpture, projected onto the north façade of the building, is based on extensive image and sound datasets of the Pinakothek der Moderne provided by its four museums of art, graphics, architecture, and design as well as its cooperation partners. Refik Anadol and his team supplement these sources with further publicly available data from digital archives in the context of the Pinakothek der Moderne.

At the very beginning of his career, Refik Anadol made a trip to Munich to photograph motifs in the city. As he has said, his focus was on the Pinakothek der Moderne, of which he took numerous photographs. These photographs, of course, have since become part of the pool of data for his new works as well. Seen in this light, things have come full circle.

The data has been processed using artificial intelligence in such a way that its original appearance is now unrecognizable, with its parts having mutated to form new links.

With the help of data-based, machine learning algorithms, the flat projection continuously generates new, seemingly three-dimensional spaces. Different arrangements with ever-changing colour constellations and patterns are constantly created from the data to a random rhythm. Abstract images develop from moving lines, surfaces, waves, or vortices that, through their dynamics, seem to dissolve the wall, causing a suction effect. Refik Anadol wants to set visitors in a state of immersion, transcending traditional boundaries of observation and expanding perception. The dichotomy between surface and space, reality and fiction, and physis and virtuality is dissolved.

A joint project of the four museums in the Pinakothek der Moderne:
Sammlung Moderne Kunst, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München, Architekturmuseum der TUM, Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum

Made possible by PIN. Freunde der Pinakothek der Moderne e.V. and Allianz.
With the kind support of art next level.

© Refik Anadol
© Images Haydar Koyupinar

FEATURED ARTIST

REFIK ANADOL
Refik Anadol (b. 1985 in Istanbul, Turkey) lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA. He received his MFA from UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts.

Refik Anadol is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. His body of work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. In taking the data that flows around us as his primary material, along with the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol paints with a thinking brush, offering us radical visualisations of our digitised memories, expanding the possibilities of architecture, narrative, and th...
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