Refik Anadol “Creating A.I. Art with a Thinking Brush” | PhotoVogue Festival 2023: What Makes us Human? Image in the Age of A.I.

Good evening.

Maybe here.

So I m so glad to be here

in Milan for many reasons.

We had some exciting works have been done

in the city before,

but I never thought that I have so many dear friends

who somehow see our works

and share their beautiful messages,

so thank you very much for PhotoVogue for inviting

and most importantly for artists who have been

working with this field,

I hope that I can share our humble journey as a studio,

how to use AI

and how we can embed

positive impact of creativity

in the age of machine intelligence.

And tonight I wanna show you

I guess our journey with technology

and I wanna be, try to be showing some key points

that I think made impact and how we handled problems,

how we found solutions,

and how I think the future is absolutely bright.

But I think it needs more thinking

and collaborative imagination.

So I ll try to share my humble insights

about the field and

possibilities.

So I m originally from Istanbul, Turkey, where I born.

And I think one of the reason today

what I will be showing you,

not only just the city represents West and East,

our best contemporary left, right, past, future,

but the idea of connecting continents

in my childish dreams,

it s always like the idea of connecting

physical and virtual.

I think the Bosphorus is a really inspiring place

where centuries-old experiences coming together.

But what was much fun, I guess

as a nerd, like any people who loves computers,

I was eight years old when my mother completely randomly

as a birthday gift brought home a computer.

And it was just really this inspiring moment

that I believe what I m showing you today is

really starts from those days.

And working with computers right now, very default network.

But as a child, like eight years old,

the first time getting a computer and programming it

or playing games, a lot of games,

it was really this exciting moment.

And I think the other inspiring moment

that I m showing this all the time is

VHS cassette of Blade Runner.

And I think many sci-fi lovers

maybe read Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and so on,

but the movie actually is very dystopian, right?

I mean, it just brings some dark possibilities.

But as a child, when you watch a movie

you don t feel the dystopia.

As a child we all see bright positivity,

optimism and hope in life.

And I believe the reason I am very optimist

about science fiction,

optimist about technology,

is coming from these days.

And I didn t know English.

My cousin translate the movie.

I hope he did a good job.

But what I understand from the movie was so much positivity

about the future of architecture.

So in my early works,

I transformed many buildings into canvases.

I truly believe that photography for me started 2005

as an undergrad.

So I was very fortunate to study

at Istanbul Bilgi University,

and I had been very fortunate to work with Martin Parr.

I was his like little assistant

when he was doing an exhibition in this building.

So I had this deep respect to photography

because of my very early days of like learning

large format photography, medium format photography,

35 millimeter,

like I ve been like spending significant time

in the like dark room learning like Ansel Adams,

like, you know, Zone Systems.

So I spent so much time in the core,

deep understanding of photography.

So I didn t jump into digital world.

I first respectfully understand

how really photography is a form of memory

that is not only just digital pixels and voxels

or just, you know, digital tools,

but the idea of capturing light

as a data source was really inspiring.

So my respect of photography starts

really in undergrad years

and I m really grateful that I was able to work

with a photography very dearly

before I jumped into digital realm.

And then this idea of projection mapping was

also started for me to use a software called the vvvv.

It s open source,

kind of a free software you can download

for PC or Windows have it.

It s a, it s just a great tool that you can do

a lot of things.

And I think to me,

2008 when I coined the term data painting,

and since then I m really imagining

the idea of the buildings can become a canvas.

But I think what went much more deeper

as the undergrad years and or you know,

the first MFA years,

I truly believe that the data is

an incredible material that has been just started to evolve.

And right now it means more

but I mean 10 years, 12 years ago

when I was speculating the idea of data is

really super important to understand life.

And when I say poetics of data,

so first of all people believe that data is just numbers

between machines or systems or you know, whatever.

But to me data is not just numbers,

it s actually a form of memory.

And this memory I think can take any shape,

any color, any texture.

So if you think about data like this,

the possibilities are incredible.

But of course we cannot forget who we are.

So as humanity we constantly evolve ourselves

into these new machines connected to each other.

We are using these systems,

hardware, softwares every day.

And of course it is changing our perception of reality.

By the way, I ve been like looking

Pere Borrell del Caso s like,

and many artists works so long times

when it s about like the real reality and beyond.

So I believe that creating imagination

that has a potential of reinforcing our understanding

of cultural gentrification in the age of like digitalization

is literally created this like a unique space.

And I do believe this is super inspiring,

but also questioning who we are

and how we are changing

and how our like culture, our families,

our belief systems,

are every single day transforming.

And I m pretty sure all of you is like this.

So we sometimes forget who is controlling what.

And I m pretty confident all of you and including me

in the infinite like, you know, scrolling

of the social media and beyond.

But I think what is really inspiring to me is

this sense of displacement.

So we all become these in-between spaces

of physical and virtual.

And I do believe that there s an incredible value

of understanding what s going on

before we switch our dimensions.

So simply, I think these are so heavy topics,

there s no way a one human can handle these questions.

And I put one more question on top of this

and said, what does it really mean

to be a human in 21st century?

I do believe any artist right now, creator,

progressing in the age of AI is

one of the fundamental questions.

So this question cannot be done myself.

So right now, these are studio,

so we are 20 people,

can speak 15 language

and represent 10 countries.

And last nine years we transformed many buildings,

many surfaces and try to create

this a new type of, I guess, art form

that can be a part of the building, a wall,

a space, a library.

But if you can look at this video,

you will find that it s not about just in a gallery

or a museum where the art is art,

but in places where maybe art is not expected.

When I believe,

I believe in public art so much,

I believe in free, open source research,

I believe in

it s much more inspiring to put art in the streets,

in the like places where the function is

not maybe designed for art.

So you will see this pattern so much in this video

that we created works for public spaces,

transformed cultural beacons,

put like artwork in a airport,

which five people missed their flights.

And the good news is yeah, they got paid again

but we can put these works in hospitals, in schools,

where I believe it s much inspiring than going

to a museum or a gallery,

which we have a bias to understand.

So this learn, this teach us so much that

art is completely inspiring when it s beyond it is borders.

So we also focus art, science and technology

and we try to focus AI, neuroscience and architecture,

but simply what you can see here,

humans, machines and environments.

I do believe the emotional capture of near future has

to be about human emotions.

Otherwise, a boring, cold algorithms

and lonely AI in the cloud

I don t believe has any value for humanity.

I do believe human-machine collaborations.

So I m very grateful for my team.

Last nine years we have been pushing these boundaries

and we have 20 artworks permanent around the world.

And then we learn so much transforming light

as a material.

And I do believe architecture is so inspiring

if we go beyond concrete, steel and glass.

And I do believe light is the best material in the world

that can travel and it has a, you know,

spiritual context, scientific context,

it s a particle, it s a wavelength,

it can say so much.

So that was like a last nine years of research.

We can open the sound by the way,

while I m talking, little bit.

[ethereal music plays]

So what today I wanna show you is

a research that truly help us

to do some inspiring projects,

which I m calling it Machine Hallucinations.

So this research started seven years ago, 2016, February,

almost eight years.

I was the first artist-in-residence at Google,

which is a very interesting year, by the way.

2016, this image you see on the right was

probably the first generative AI piece

that Google engineers put in a blog post.

And we have been seeing a backpropagation algorithm,

which is kind of an AI trained

on millions of photos of animals

and it was hallucinating.

And the person Mike Tyka and his team was

behind this algorithm

and I became the first artist-in-residence at Google

2016, February.

It was a fantastic start.

I mean, imagine that an artist dreaming to use AI

and finally there s this opportunity to learn

from the best engineers in the world.

So to me what was really inspiring is

really understand the idea of a learning, machine learning,

but not necessarily just like in the context of architecture

but in the context of a library.

So this book, this story, it Borges I think

one of the most inspiring one,

I hope you can read and learn.

And I believe that one day I hope every single data

in the world can be in one location.

In this archive there are lots of photographic information,

1.7 million documents

and there is 49 columns of metadata.

So this archive is so good that you can find an image

or a photographic input,

you can learn who shot it,

which camera, which location,

what is going on in the image,

like all kind of information the researchers can find.

It was so inspiring.

It s open source free library.

And our curator challenged me to think about this data

as information in the form of library.

And we designed Archive Dreaming, an immersive room,

I believe the very first AI installation in the world,

using these 1.7 million documents that you can inside.

And when you enter

you can interact with this AI real time.

So you can touch this multi-touch screen,

interact with it,

or you can use a VR version and you know,

wherever on Earth you are,

you are like,

you are basically flying in the archive

because I think archives are much inspiring

if you don t only just write a keyword.

And the question is what happens if you learn

more than just typing a keyword?

I do believe interacting with AI is much inspiring

when we go beyond just the words

and which is inspiring right now generative AI,

but I believe there is much more thinking

when you fly through in the mind of a machine.

And then of course if a machine can learn,

can it dream was the question,

so what we are seeing here is

this super now ancient-looking on the left side is

an AI algorithm called,

again algorithm, generative adversarial network,

invented by Ian Goodfellow.

And this was the very early AI

dreaming all the documents.

But to me, if AI is a like a tool,

a thinking brush,

I don t believe in the age of machine intelligence

we need to worry about a drying pigment.

I don t believe we have to worry about Newtonian physics

or limitations of life.

To me, I believe if AI can dream or hallucinate

that pigment should not be dry.

It s always in flux, in change,

in transformation like life.

And also for anyone working with AI,

the truly the challenge is latent space.

When machine learning algorithms create

this space called latent space,

it s a 10, 24, who knows, maybe more dimensional space.

But we cannot perceive this space because as humans,

like our perception of scale and space is limited.

But what I learned is last seven years

we have to write new algorithms,

new software to interact with it.

Last seven years, we download

and work more than 4 billion images.

And as far as I know,

it s largest data ever collected by a creative group.

And what, and we train more than 400 AI models

but we focus one thing.

We focus collective memories of humanity.

We never work with personal data,

we never work with private data.

We look at the things that I hope belongs to humanity,

like Renaissance, like nature,

like clouds, like water,

flowers, trees, oceans,

cities like that I hope believes to everyone,

it belongs to everyone.

And it s just this idea of like latent cinema,

latent imagination,

places where I believe we can create

new pigmentation of life.

And also to work with AI is not just right now

you have, we have many tools,

but we don t,

as a studio we believe in like creating custom tools

for every project.

So what you see here is Renaissance era,

every single building ever used

and in this AI model

and I m literally flying with a joystick in 3D space

and letting AI to dream new spaces.

So there s a lot of work to be done

in a custom AI resolution,

custom AI data collection and custom AI tools making.

So as a studio we believe in customization of these tools

rather than using public tools.

And last seven years

as you may see here,

there s this massive, I guess, obsession

about the fluid dynamics

or obsession about aesthetics of water, clouds,

different spaces.

I mean the idea of machine imagination

or machine hallucination is really super open-minded place.

And each data is unique.

Each archive is unique,

the possibilities are incredible.

So while you can look at some of them and feel similarities,

but actually if you deep dive each of them

you will find different moments, colors,

patterns, textures and so on.

And the other part of our research is

really understanding what AI understands

because the fun and imagination starts

how machine perceives the world,

not necessarily give us, you know,

shortcut tools to make things.

So for example, Rumi, Persian poet,

and his 19-language Masnavi, his poems,

and we are looking how AI reads the poem

and reconstruct these data universes.

Or Mozart, like his entire music listened by AI.

So what we are seeing is

a seven or six dimensional AI data sculpture

based on the similarities,

the color RGB

and the location XYZ is ordered by the machine perception.

So to me it s a new ways of creating

a sculpture by using AI

to look, to listen, to learn, to read.

And of course as Carl Sagan mentioned,

Imagination will often carry us to the worlds

that never were,

but without it we go nowhere.

So it was just at the beginning.

So now how we can go beyond this?

How we can go like beyond scientific contextualization?

So I wanna show you a couple of examples

how we use AI algorithms and make performances.

For example, we can open the sound.

Is there a sound?

[classical music plays]

Yeah.

[classical music continues]

So this is a form created by AI

by listening Schumann s Das Paradies und Peri.

And AI can shape the music in the form of a sculpture

that the musicians can interact with.

And I think a new opera is possible,

or our project in Palazzo Strozzi,

which was using entire Renaissance era sculptures.

And thanks to the Palazzo Strozzi

we were able to put our sculpture in a beautiful lobby.

[dramatic music plays]

And to me what was really inspiring here is

not just a technology,

but the idea of putting an AI sculpture

to the masters such as Donatello

and then have this dialogue between the past and the future.

So I believe when the research done right

and the curators approach the field right,

the potentials of AI creativity

respectfully to history is possible.

So what we are watching here is

a data sculpture

and it has learned the data from the masters,

not mimicking them

but reconstructing new patterns and forms.

And I m really very grateful for this installation.

I mean, last summer we had incredible people in Florence,

the heart of Renaissance.

It was really very, very inspiring.

Initially after this

this inspired many musicians

and we put the same algorithm on the stage.

[emotive classical music plays]

This is real time

using the same data sets,

this time listening Beethoven s Missa solemnis.

[emotive classical music continues]

So the future is really inspiring,

that an AI can be used in different layers.

And as you see the software here,

real time using sound data

and real time inferencing with AI based on the sound,

based on like the movement of the conductor as well.

And the other topic of course is memory.

I do believe that memories are

the most important data sets for humanity.

And given the context of where we are going with technology,

I think memories will be more important than before.

And I do believe that we have to find a way

to preserve our memories.

And for this reason I dedicated one research

the idea of finding the moment of remembering.

Unfortunately my uncle diagnosed by Alzheimer s

six years ago

and I was really obsessed with this idea

how can we find the moment of remembering?

Not what it is,

but the moment of it electrically

and transform it into a data sculpture?

And this project in collaboration with Adam Gazzaley,

a UCSF neuroscientist.

He s an incredible neuroscientist.

He makes games to cure ADHD, depression and anxiety.

Please have a look, incredible neuroscientist.

He s my mentor for seven years.

He teaches us how to use neuroscience,

how to use machine learning algorithms.

But something happened very inspiring.

Last year we were invited by UNICEF,

which in Capri,

and there was this auction every year done by

you know, wealthy people to support UNICEF, children health.

So we decided to contribute this by creating

a data sculpture.

So what you see here is an AI data sculpture,

which is visualizing five children s brain data.

Each chapter is a data from Lausanne hospital.

And each data set, fMRI, DTI and EEG data sets.

[uplifting music plays]

And they were representing the healing of the children mind.

They were very hopeful, very positive data to say

that when there is a cure, you know,

children can be healed.

And we turned this into NFT and made an auction

and in Capri this project sold for 1.7 million euro

and donated to UNICEF for the children health.

So what I wanna say is

even though some technologies have ups and downs,

there is a high chance to create a tangible impact.

Not just talking, but really making an impact.

So this was one of the powerful moment in my life

to see that

we can create an artwork

as the most valuable auction ever done

in the UNICEF history.

The next one was a Ferrari, 400,000 euro.

So if you are interested,

so this was four times more valuable for UNICEF.

So it s really interesting days

that art becoming more valuable than

physical objects in life.

And the other project was Venice Biennale architecture.

So Hashim Sarkis, our curator,

invited us to create a piece for Venice Biennale.

And of course it s one of the most important Biennale

for any architect, any artist.

And it was in the pandemic time,

it was very hard, very, very hard.

But we thought that perhaps we should just focus

something fresh.

So I m inspired by emotions so much

and I was looking for a data set,

how to visualize emotions.

So what you are seeing here is

a data set called the Human Connectome Project.

It s a data set of 6,000 people,

open source data for scientific reasons.

You can see

multiple emotions in these datasets.

For example, inspiration,

joy, hope and happiness

and anger and so on.

So we took these emotions and let AI dream

and be brains.

These are not real brains,

these are all AI dreaming inner connections in the mind

when we are feeling emotions.

So we took these emotions

and transformed them into a building.

The question was

can we turn our emotions into buildings?

Can we make a hospital in the form of hope?

Can we make a school in the form of inspiration?

Can we make a performing arts center in the form of joy?

[uplifting music continues]

I mean of course Arsenale is an incredible space.

So we were just dreaming these giant sculptures

in the pandemic

but making them so expensive of course.

So we just render them as a dream.

And later we found a way to 3D print this.

So by using ocean waste plastic

and by using a robotic print tool,

we were able to in the studio 3D print a small version.

[uplifting music continues]

So very humble, very cost-effective,

no harm to nature,

but this is the machine.

So we are able to, you know, print

each cell by using a plastic waste from ocean,

like turning our waste into sculptures.

It was really, really very exciting moment for studio.

So we have many projects in Italy,

so I m really grateful to be in Milan again,

like just last four projects were all in Italy

and really, really very excited to be back again.

It was very challenging, by the way.

Three people, we just did all this.

Yeah, in a pandemic,

Venice was very unique

and very hard to work.

So the other topic is

I believe architecture is so inspiring.

If you think about AI, a part of it.

For example, I believe if we embed

the memories of the buildings

into buildings again,

like remembering these building are dialogues, keynotes,

I do believe it s possible.

And I know it sounds weird

but last nine years I m trying to think about this idea.

For example, a former theater in Istanbul

for 120 years showed many, many movies in cinema.

And this is an image of 100 cinema

movies and their scripts.

We let AI to listen,

to learn from the scripts

and we project it back to itself.

So I do believe there s a chance

to let buildings dream, remember and hallucinate.

And the other example was in Los Angeles.

This was my MFA project,

Frank Gehry s cultural beacon,

the home of Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

So the question was

for the 100 years of the Philharmonic,

they were looking for something inspiring,

not the fireworks,

but something about the history of the institution.

So we took 100 years of every single music ever played,

every posters, image,

text,

video,

everything we could find,

and then transformed the canvas into

a type of a skin, I guess.

That what Gehry calls, Frank Gehry calls,

and transformed it into a living architecture.

And this turned into a public art

Maybe we can open the sound, maybe.

[dramatic orchestral music plays]

So what we are watching is

a 15-minute long performance

and AI made music, not real.

42 projectors, each 4K,

like 42 IMAX resolution, I guess.

2018, I mean five years ago,

AI music, AI imagery was really very early days.

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

And now the real Mahler starts.

What we were hearing was not real,

but a AI dreaming seven years of music

and is a Mahler First.

We can open the sound more, if.

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

[dramatic orchestral music continues]

So, I think.

[audience applauds]

Thank you.

Thank you, I think it s really inspiring

that when the institutional memories

and the data and the architecture can connect

has so much future.

We tried this also for New York.

I mean, these are not real images

but we let AI to learn 113 million images

and transform the Chelsea Market boiler room into a canvas.

[soothing music plays]

And I think that the idea of stepping inside the work,

like stepping inside the immersive spaces is

always like a big dream.

And I love painting, sculpture,

but being able to be in the work,

immerse ourselves and perception,

hearing, you know, seeing

and feeling the space has really incredible

moment of inspiration.

So this was a project for five years ago

that transformed this medium

into like a kind of a living architecture, I guess,

that you can step in.

And

so much things to do here,

it s just like a start.

And I did my first immersive room 2010.

I m in 13 years now and I m still like thinking

how we can go push this medium more

and how we can do more.

And for example, with Zaha Hadid Architects,

this was two years ago,

before Midjourney, before Stable Diffusion,

before DALL-E and all that,

so we were the first

I guess studio to have an access from open AI team

to have an access to DALL-E,

like this is a very early DALL-E version.

And we collaborate with Zaha Hadid Architects

and Patrik Schumacher.

So what you see on the top is an AI-dreamed architecture,

and what you see on the bottom is

what architects designed from the 2D image.

As far as I know,

it s the very first 2D to 3D

and machine learning algorithm to physical world connection.

And what was really inspiring is

how AI can actually create

this new tool making for architects

that they can create now spaces,

sketch on neural networks.

And again, I mean two years ago,

way before the current craziness

about the large language models and generative AI,

for us it was really very, very,

very, very inspiring.

And as you see all these like 2D images,

we transform them to 3D spaces

where you can go, fly,

like, you know, design and ask new questions

how we can create new architecture of the future

with neural networks.

And then the other project I wanna show very quickly is

a project in Barcelona.

So I love,

I mean Zaha Hadid, Gaudi,

Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, Frank Gehry,

they re my heroes.

I believe they are really important for humanity.

So we did this project called

Living Architecture Casa Battló.

So for this project the building is a UNESCO Heritage,

meaning the building has a 3D LiDAR scanning of the facade.

There is 1.2 billion LiDAR scanning of the facade,

which is a millimeter-accurate 3D representation

of the facade.

So what we did is we put a weather station

which can sense the weather patterns such as wind,

rain, humidity,

and transform it into a living artwork.

So what you are seeing here

is a rain in the middle,

the wind patterns on the right

and the humidity on the left.

So the idea is I hope the buildings may have

these living skins on them

that they can sense the weather environment.

But what is more inspiring I think is

truly augmenting the building itself

by projection mapping.

Maybe we can open the sound for the next video please.

So it s a one-minute, quick clip.

To me what is more inspiring is

when the physical and the virtual connects.

So let s watch a very short documentary.

[tense music plays]

[tense music continues]

[tense music continues]

So what was really inspiring was

not only just connecting the physical and virtual

but really bringing people together.

I do believe that the public art has

one of the most powerful message of bringing together.

And I do believe that future VR, AR, XR is

unfortunately not offering us all the time

being togetherness.

And I do believe that the future

may be more challenging to come together,

but I do hope that public art will connect us.

And our other project right now is in Las Vegas.

So this is a building,

it s a really crazy scale building,

520 feet long.

I mean, you can see the cars and the connection.

So this is one of the most inspiring venues in the world

I think right now.

This is the [indistinct] Sphere, the exterior building,

which is a more than 90 million small pixels

that are transforming the facade

into this media architecture.

So what we are watching are Machine Hallucination series,

Hubble telescope

and also winds of Vegas,

transforming the wind patterns of the city.

And inside there s an incredible concert by U2

and a beautiful movie by Darren Aronofsky.

So I really hope that you can have a chance

to see this super unique building,

has a huge potential for future.

And the last topic that I wanna talk about today is

the idea of preserving nature with AI.

I think the more we got smarter with technology as humanity,

there is this weird

perception that people are believing that we are

the most intelligent.

But I do believe nature is the most intelligent thing

what we have.

And I think that s one of the reasons

we need to preserve it.

So last five years I m really so much in love with nature

and trying to make artworks about nature.

One of our work was here in the beautiful

Piazza Duomo and in collaboration with Bulgari.

And of course like these are very important projects

because I don t want a private work.

I kindly asked like, Can it be public,

can it be for free, for open everyone?

And thanks to Bulgari team,

and they were really support the idea

and we got this very hard location from the city

and make an installation.

So the topic was this metamorphosis,

the idea of nature transformation itself.

So what you are seeing here.

[gentle music plays]

An AI dreaming 75 million flowers.

So there is 16,000 type of species

based on Smithsonian Library archive.

So we let AI to learn all type of flowers.

And the music you hear is also from nature.

So it s not a real composition,

but like transforming the bird songs

or the weather data, songs or ocean,

all type of nature sounds becoming a music.

So we could let AI dream images,

we could let AI dream sound,

but the question was can we smell this AI?

So what you see here is

a machine that is taking 14 unique

scents

in collaboration with Firmenich.

There s an AI called [indistinct] trained

on half million scent molecules.

And this AI can watch our AI

and come up with new perfume

and we can take this real-time image, sound and scent

and when you open the door,

you can enter this new universe.

[gentle music plays]

So when you enter the room, you can hear,

see and smell the colors of these flowers.

As far as I know, this was the very first example

of using three senses together with AI

here in Milano two years ago, this happened.

[gentle music continues]

And I do believe that this will be

a very inspiring future that where we will

hear, see, read,

feel, smell,

and who knows more.

And the other project we are so inspired is landscapes.

[peaceful music plays]

So we are constantly creating AI models

and letting AI to dream beautiful landscapes.

There was a show in Los Angeles focusing

on California landscapes,

national parks, 155 million images.

The AI constantly reconstruct the beauty of nature,

different seasons, sunsets, sunrises,

creates water,

but really love and respect for nature, simply.

[peaceful music continues]

And there is no human in these images.

It s pure nature.

It takes six months to clean data by the way,

and maybe another three months to train the AI model.

So it s not a ready tool

and it s really, really hard work.

And the other project was this year

for the World Economic Forum for the world leaders.

So what you see is 135 million coral images.

So we train a custom AI model from scratch

to let researchers to find corals.

As you know, the climate change

and the nature s transformation,

one of the first thing we lose is corals.

Like, they are just dying rapidly

and the researchers are looking for a solution,

how to put them back into the water

and reconstruct new life ecosystem.

Because AI learn so good

about the physical quality of corals,

right now we are 3D printing them,

putting them back underwater to create

a new ecosystem.

So I do believe that AI has huge potentials

to help scientists to go from what we can imagine.

So it s not just shiny pixels,

but it s really functional research.

And the other good news is

all the world leaders were talking

about war, separation and all,

but it was this moment that, you know,

the press captured it

and suddenly nature was again was a topic to be discussed.

So the last project I wanna show today is

this idea of using blockchain and generative AI together.

So there is this funny joke.

By the way, I m an independent artist.

I don t have a gallery.

I don t have a classical art training,

so I m an outlier, I guess, in that art system.

So three years ago,

two and a half years ago,

curators of MoMa, Paola Antonelli,

an incredible also an Italian curator,

she s a pioneer in the MoMa s like entire journey,

and a wonderful creator, Michelle Kuo,

invited me to work with them closely for a project.

So by the way, before I start

there s this joke

for gallery joke.

If you are a dead artist,

the best option they said Louvre museum.

If you re a living artist, the best option is MoMa.

So I m alive, I am at MoMa,

and this is the first project that MoMa recognized

generative AI.

So what we are seeing here is

138,000 paintings, sculptures,

movies, games,

photographs, the archive of MoMa.

So MoMa open source its archive six years ago.

It was open source on GitHub.

Anyone could download it

cause they believe in the research,

they believe in that artists will push the boundaries

and try things.

Unfortunately nobody used this data,

but I thought that perhaps it s a time

to look at this data and let AI create new form of art.

But we do not wanna create another Van Gogh,

another Monet.

The idea was how we can use machine learning algorithms

and let it dream new works

without mimicking the masters,

how we can find new form, texture

and how we can go beyond what the archive can hold.

So we ve worked very closely with Nvidia friends

for last seven years, by the way.

And we have to create a custom AI architecture

that can also feel the scale of the canvas.

So it is almost a nine meter by nine meter,

which is I m calling it a sublime space

that like in the Renaissance masters, right?

How they fill the space.

We try to fill the wall with a living artwork.

But what was really different is

we also use a camera and a microphone.

So the camera was seeing the movements,

the microphone was hearing the crowd,

and then we use weather data

and let AI create every day, every moment, new artwork.

So it was dynamic,

it was ever-changing and never the same.

To make it happen, we work one year and research,

and as you may see these are all demystification of AI.

I believe that every artist working with AI,

we have a responsibility to show

how and why machines are happening.

And this is one of the way

of like representing neural networks,

lower dimension reductions,

seeing how like, you know, weather patterns are

informing and so on.

As a result on the left side,

what AI can dream,

certain patterns and forms and colors.

And on the right now,

I guess an obsession of fluid dynamics,

data pigmentation.

So I call it 50% human, 50% machine collaboration.

So it s kind of a co-creation.

So, and this is every day different,

every moment is different.

So last two years,

this was one of our really deep diving into

chance, control,

understanding how neural networks can be

go beyond a product service,

how we can push the boundaries

of fundamentals of neural network

and reconstruct new realities.

And last one year the show was

only for three months and for nerd friends.

So we have two DGX stations,

they have these 800 GPUs.

So one compute data

and the other is like creating the next scene.

So at the end we have three different artworks

and like an opera I guess,

and once we are watching the one,

the next one is getting ready and vice versa.

So it never repeat itself and it s constantly changed

over one years.

Here s a short clip.

[calm music plays]

So the artwork is a 4K by 4K signal,

two 4Ks and

it s a significant play,

computational, pixel-wise.

[calm music continues]

And also before it closed

we were able to create a research on the brain

and look for the patterns of what happens when we watch it.

The artwork received 3 million people last year

in a one year,

and the average viewing experience was 44 minutes.

This was a really unique moment for art

because the museum was extremely happy to activate a space.

I m so happy that digital art now has a home

or recognition for upcoming generation,

but most importantly, the field is recognized.

So the artwork is in the permanent collection

and it is the most asked artwork

in 200 years of MoMa history.

And I m happy to say that the museum is so happy

and welcomes more artists in this field.

So simply, I want to say

working ethically, open source,

showing the process,

creating a safe and secure space for the audience

truly creates an impact.

Using emotions from heart, not a hidden agenda,

trying to create joy in special

and hope for people is truly bringing us together

and creates a campfire.

So I m here in Milan for literally 10 hours.

I m tonight flying to Amazonia.

I m also right now deep researching in the forest,

in Brazil, Acre.

And my hope is really create a very exceptional AI model

for humanity, a gift to humanity,

open source research

and we are working super closely,

Chief Nixiwaka and his creative force, Putanny.

They are called Yawanawá people.

If you re interested, they are only 1,000 people

living for thousands of years in Acre, Amazonia,

in the rainforest.

We are, we love them, we respect them so much.

Sometimes life is too complex.

Life is too technologically advanced.

But sometimes going back to nature

where there is no hospital,

there is no fear, there is no computer,

there is no internet, there is no phone,

you, we have this deep connection with the nature,

our fundamentals.

So I heavily advise if you would love to explore nature,

one of the most inspiring people you can ever imagine.

Beautiful, they re open, they open their house,

their home, their family, their forest.

And we are working very closely with them.

Of course, unfortunately rainforest protection is

extremely important for humanity.

Rainforests are the lungs of humanity,

but not only lungs, also heart of humanity

because there are people living in them, protecting them.

But unfortunately our society sometimes forgets them.

So me and my life partner, Efsun,

we are traveling all the time,

learning from them what does it mean

to be living in a nature truly?

And we are doing this research from our hearts

and we found that there are lack of funding

and their dream was super simple.

They want a museum,

they want a school

and they want a village.

To make it happen, we learned that all these big fundings

never, ever went to them, never, ever.

We decided to make a project to support their life

and their dreams.

So these are beautiful paintings of young Yawanawá artists.

They never draw in their life.

They don t have a school,

they don t know what is Renaissance is,

they dunno like how to use iPad maybe,

but they did very quickly,

they learn and they start drawing their dreams.

So what we did, we used generative AI

and create a collection

by using our work and their work

and we put a weather station in the forest.

And by using unique weather data from the forest,

we create an collection

and entire proceeds went to them.

We raised $3.2 million for them.

No bank,

no government,

no institution,

open, transparent, on blockchain.

And next year they are building their first museum,

first school,

and the first village.

So the art can be so powerful.

AI can be so powerful.

AI can be ethical, and AI can be functional.

I wanna finish my presentation

with a wisdom words of a Paje,

living in the force for 107 years.

He said, It is new times we are living now.

Time for forgiveness.

Time for love.

Time for spirituality.

It s time for humanity to look back to the origins.

To the Earth.

To our hearts.

To learn, to love and respect one another,

to make alliances, join forces.

This is the moment.

Thank you very much for listening

and happy to get your thoughts.

[audience applauds]

Thank you.

[audience continues to applaud]

Thank you.