In the Mind's Eye | Refik Anadol

good evening I'm really very excited to be here tonight and I'll do my best to be less excited because I was checking my heart rate it was Aaron's truly saying from the data it was around hundred twenty-two so I'll be very calm to respect this this beautiful place and a very very thank you to NTV and testerone for everyone that supported to be here tonight with you tonight I would love to share the journey in three chapters very early works that are I think helped me to be here today with you and founding studio and then the last first mission intelligence I was born in Istanbul Turkey where was very interesting a place to be first of all west and east left and right black and white many years of layers of culture were like added to each other it was a very interesting feeling because based on my mother's awesome memories I was always like sometimes like bored with like a design culture that is sometimes like written limited by the boundaries of the likely years of his experience I think that's one of the reason most likely I was fucked by the architectural photography I found truly excited that through the through the through the eye of the lens this is the moment I was somehow trying to like go to this level of like new time and space try to like have a sanctuary that is very different than I think this so like tried to find those like nuances and something very exciting happened back in like 2009 as an undergrad student for my scholarship I have to babysit at 300 artworks in a museum it was a very interesting challenge because if you think about like one of the early examples of media arts making from like 70s 80s Peter was Jeffrey shoves and many other legendary minds who have invented some ideas with the technology and art I was very likely lucky to like we really work with those minds and around those days there's a very like an interesting moment happened because I was just following in Europe and like many events and exhibitions I met this wonderful group of people it also like where'd like the Rose graph was also like there as a participant there was a wonderful event was talking about the idea of a media architecture the idea was embedding media hearts into architecture so in Istanbul I was baby stink 300 beautiful artworks they are called media arts and in Berlin I saw this wonderful idea of media architecture and then suddenly like this this idea of like is emitting media arts into architecture some truly incredible inspiring journey and during those studies I was very also fortunate to meet with leymah Norwich and he has a wonderful court and his land regret it was a very like aha moment in the library he was saying in other words architects along with artists can take the next logical step to consider the invisible space of entering data flows as substance rather than just as avoid something that needs a structure politics and poetics it was a beautiful write-up that was truly opening the mind as a student and since then I guess I found that one of the most divine material that we have I think in our hands and in our life that as we all know that if there is no Sun I'm probably we are not here and I found that I that that moment of what will happen on the left side we are seeing a contemplate Art Museum on the right side we are seeing a 200 years old like two turbine and I thought that maybe this may be the first canvas to augment by using the data of the architect and using a one channel projection and a custom sort custom spot where they will not by using vvvv it wasn't very like an exciting first steps and I was able to like transform a building by literally simply understanding how light an architecture can emerge in real time so I wasn't excited about just nonlinear storytelling I was also excited about how a machine may be help us to narrate a space so this was Sana's collaboration it was also another exciting one on the upper row you are seeing there beautiful drawings of the building on the lower side my interpretation of like transforming their existing space and their ideas that couldn't become happen due to the nature of physical quality of life and then in the same like one year later in 2011 there was a wonderful moment that from the Istanbul Biennial craters they were asking for another challenging project craters are always challenging artists in a way that I think make us really excited and hopefully push our boundaries and here there was a question of what will happen the city is one of the most excited Street 1.4 kilometer almost sometimes in the week answer is almost 2 million after 3 million people in some days were occupied and I thought what would happen if we have a chance to get the data of the son of the protests all religious inputs people's cheer anything that just Street basically captures it was my very first data sculpture using sound as an input in collaboration with ALP a dramebaaz and architect friends we were able to capture a three-dimensional data sculpture on the facade of a cultural building what was fascinating in here there's a camera on the upper right outside the building and it was trying to capture that they've everyday life patterns of the streets such as a tram comes and an interaction starts with the peace I was almost like Innsbruck inspired by the idea of a dialogue instead of just a one piece of action it was a very interesting moment that seeing people's reaction for such a like an unexpected journey and in kind of an alphabetic name kind of a language between data which is the input of the machine and and their self is scissors off to like the sea trip and also seeing light as a material it is transforming itself this project you are seeing is done only in three weeks so in three weeks programming commissioning building learning algorithmic design and everything so that previous was something stressful I would like to say again and the the other part was really getting me much more excited about these limitations about like this medium but I was also very excited about the potentials of how we are connected to each other and I was much more diving into this idea of how it started like how we become much more connected and we are pretty sure that satellites right now are one of the reasons that are like connected to each other every single day and I was also getting much more excited about science fiction itself and heavy like try to imagine what will happen in the near future and how this kind of like technology is allowing us to become something else and if you look at from much more like the patterns of like who we are and how we are becoming something else is something else interesting I want to read a very important text from the book called what technology ones from Kevin Kelly he says scientists had come to a startling realization however you define life its essence does not reside in materials forms like DNA to shear flesh but in the intangible organization of the energy and information contained in those material forms and this technology was unveiled from it is short of atoms we could see that at his core is about ideas and information both life and technology seems to be based on immaterial flows of information it was a beautiful I think inside that what exactly happening to us to so I'm pretty sure that also I think one of like another exciting that thought that I found exactly what the boy and he was saying every civilization will use the maximum level of technology available to make art and it is artists respond responsibly of the artist is to ask questions about what the technology means and how it reflects our culture and if we look at today like I think pretty up many of us is in this in this mindset is which is I think sense of displacement the feeling of like we are there or not like I'm very openly and my person was saying I have the same interesting state of thinking and this disick actually like find me like very much more looking at the patterns of humans machines and environments and as we all know like this John Meadows was a beautiful code about design is a solution to a problem art is a question to a problem and from this mindset this lady is from 2016 the most shared problem or maybe not but I thought that she was she should be my audience and respectfully in many other artists who have been like the beautiful works of the cultural and political and made of the deep topics but I thought that she may need something maybe much international and also we are all aware of that like and from the museum's for him to have Vienna gallery's Museum of the use the question is is it possible to find ways to make people themselves more engaged with and ultimately responsible for a space that they inhabit so simply from those like very critical context maybe I found that colliding physical and virtual world perhaps allow us to create kniv experiences I was eight years old when I watched the Blade Runner the movie that truly changed my life I was super excited and I wasn't doing English at all but my mom was saying like just just watch it it's just just culture and then it was very interesting and it was exciting she was very right because a flying car next year media facade it was just in 2019 Los Angeles what's truly very exciting nice and the same summer I also got my first computer Commodore 128 it was a like a truly like a blade under here and just playing games I think that's one of the reason that I found myself in Los Angeles hooked up subliminally let's see that right now like that I mean there is no way that any like flying cars or something else but I also like fund is a beautiful journey and a reason to leave my parents friends loved ones to make something purposeful and impactful for my life so I thought that instead of going to a gallery or museum path what will happen if I stay outside and just work for the public space and do things that doesn't have an entrance it doesn't have a like a door or a wall or a ceiling or a floor I think that everyone can engage with that and I was very office with architecture from the photography backgrounds and I was very like much looking all these like beautiful research from the Beautiful Mind I said like the copies where and here's this very exciting code and he was saying architectures is judged by eyes did see by the head that turns and legs that walk architecture is not a synchronic phenomenon but a psyche still one made up of pictures I think themself wanted to utter following each other in time and space like music and suddenly I was in Los Angeles waiting to be like starting my journey and I found this beautiful building as you may know Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall the home of LA Philharmonic last 15 years I know I thought that what will happen this building has kind of like a consciousness that can hear itself because at night it's so sad it's so alone sometimes there's like no light but in the daytime is Trista Klee beautiful cultural beacon and of course I'm a fellow film when I say this like hey like can I do that first question Frank Gehry will just reveal Frank Gehry directly and I emailed LA Philharmonic and my thesis come to say it so Frankie will never reply your email and they still never have a time for you as a student you don't even like have a permit to work like how on earth you can cover this building so simply I was just like stuck in this reality of being foreign and many others but one year later I was on the stage next to Bill Gates and many other people from Microsoft research every year tan ivy school come together to present their ideas mostly pitching design ideas very cliche eight minutes long elevator thing but my my mentor Kristin bowler said just go by yourself don't bring a keynote be whatever you whatever you want to do just just you're an artist don't worry about those things I was didn't I didn't wear anything I was on my short by the way I didn't understand how important and then it was very interesting because it was the first time and project art project got an award a very large amount of financial support and the next day when I go to LA I got mail from Frank Gehry's office so so that's how thank you there was a very beautiful day because I was just so different and I going school different so I got questions with this project and the beautiful thing happens I was able to graduate and have a chance of work and the first project that I got was LA Philharmonic said all right we have a challenge for you what will happen in just couple of months you just take over the interior space of the Disney Hall Frank Gehry is giving you the 3d file of the interior to does a beautiful support came from essa Peka sona the finished conductor and the laureate conductor of La Fleur Munich he said let's put together a piece in 25 minutes using vertices a Medic piece using hundred ten musicians and the empty walls of the Disney Hall so what I thought in three weeks just very quickly understand the 3d model of the building and transform into a three-dimensional surface so the project you are seeing is a real-time augmentation of the walls of Disney Hall by knitting a channel real-time music and the conductor's body motions is truly aligned to the to the surface of the building and it was a 25 minutes long 3000 people watching and it's one of the first example of using real-time graphics and data input and for LA Phil it was a beautiful risk to take because using such a like a conventional medium such as classical music and colliding with media arts and technology was a pretty strong wrist attack and for me I was shaking because the thing you are watching is one of the most cutting-edge computational challenge that we had been like discovering and the only one computer that you are running all these things like your backup if it's my first project right after the graduation all my like this is still looking like that so the beautiful thing happen is of course the building was not designed for projection because Gary or maybe team didn't like at least think about for near future about embedding projection so the projectors that you are watching here is in a room like this so we are in a room and with those machines try to like project onto the surface of the walls and trying to augment the entire surface and this was interesting because next day we got a beautiful reviews and most importantly it was a I think was my birthday night I was able to meet Frank Gehry SF focus on an and was this that moment like you when you like ever dream of like combining and colliding in traditional thinking was a beautiful moment but the feeling is little bit better than this it's like this because it's it truly truly helped to open our studio that I would love to talk about the other second chapter of the presentation so so it opened almost 2015 amp early and last three years and four years is really exciting tonight I want to show you several projects that truly helped us to allow us to grow into this direction these are the wonderful minds and souls that we are working together last four years and take to them so the one-man show at all there are so many beautiful minds that are supporting this journey but specifically takes to all of them that we have been like with AI engineers architects designers coders and graphic designers we are just a bunch of like people trying to solve the near future and the question of what does it mean to be a human in 20 century the interesting slide I want to show you here is a cliche start up slide that shows the the companies that we are working no it's not like that so this slide is very interestingly showing that we all somehow use knowledge or technology or algorithm or a data or hardware or software somehow with those people it's pretty interesting to see the same pattern and if we know that the big I think the 2011 project that I was able to like use data I was getting much more serious about this question of what does the information and specific data means and we all know that every day we create an enormous amount of data so far 2.5 petabytes of data daily which is the 93% of the data in the world today has been created in the just last two years alone so basically our humanly experience of information knowledge and wisdom process is not truly applied all the time to the like field of data we I mean if you're excited about that I just ever looked for this what happens in Internet in just one minute is ridiculously insane so those numbers are what's going on in just one single minute and this data is eventually it somewhere stored and somehow this data is every year getting bigger and bigger and bigger so time domain for data is enormously high and we were like discussing about what exactly happening not only in the mind of a machine but the amount of energy that those machines are like ridiculously excelling is something very important to I think very so I was just looking all these like information about like how to just understand the data as a substance and somehow there is not needs to be recovered by just the I think predictable data strikes but something that may be used as a substance as a like a pigment in the art in the context of that and I was super excited about key regards region he said its life only can be understood backwards but it was believed forward I think it's exactly what we are leaving behind us on those machines or our decisions our likes shares and everything we divide we somehow likely be left behind us is exactly I think the same idea of to understand them so the United States there's this wonderful rule and law every state every building and real-estate development has to give one per stitch of the budget of the building to a art and this money goes to the ste and city put together like a regulation team and then they like democratically give you a chance for artists to compete and this was my very first confession 2014 and the idea was in a in a lobby of a building and here there was this chance of using an a built environment as a canvas in a building where Salesforce is now living and the idea was using real-time data from the source of where they are coming from another roots in 2009 Ariston United States has to open-source their data publicly so I thought maybe public data for public art can be a way to understand that so this project was very first challenge of like understanding how to avert be three-dimensional information but also how to go expand and beyond just the screen and conventional screen and we get three dimensional approach and transform into a Olympic data sculpture so the work is running every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. will be running for next 15 years I want to read a very exciting text that I really excited about memo actin a friend who is a wonderful programmer designer artists and many many other like wonderful - going to be to open source culture he said data dramatization as opposed to data visualization presents a dataset with not only legibility or clarity but in such a way as to provoke an empathetic or emotive response in his audience to dramatize data you must first understand it you analyze it play with it try to find relationships try to infer the events that took place and extract stories and meaning and then you drove it all away check it in the bin and wipe your hands clean all this left is your understanding of the processes that gave rise to the data and the events and relationships bitten then you create something new from scratch and I think it's very similar approach that I wasn't any more concerned about like really can be like recovered data like definitely for example this is the real-time theater application every single night we collect almost 400,000 individual tivitz and every night these data turns into these landscapes based on into your location where people are sharing their memories but basically there are these moments of like really creating a kind of a new poetry and kind of a poetic exploration of what is hidden in the mind of those machines and how we can use them as a kinetic substance for this context so this project was one of like the early example of like trying like as a studio understand how STIs are living for example in Los Angeles we were able to get the real-time public transportation data like a living rain of the city and then also exciting thing was going on another for example the competition happened from the from the Boston and there I was very excited about the idea of using wind like the morning how he's inspired from the atmosphere what will happen if we're able to get the data from the airport and somehow try to like control a kind of an algorithm that is mostly designed for moving for other reasons of removing some some fluid simulations and things that are normally designed for something else and try to create the invisible patterns of wind data by using the algorithm that you are seeing here it was a very quick exploration it only takes maybe like a four months to understand like what does mean to have a one year of data and chop it into seasons and then kind of recover those information into your painting context and it was really exciting because this is idea of a frame and an algorithm and framing and data was the opposition to like it since 2011 and I was very likely likely to like to improve this idea of like using data and inform these height maps which are very interesting we use in also like games and the movies that are creating those like a mountains and origins and clouds very simple idea that also applied to this and at the end it turned into a two-dimensional but very funny molecular soundtrack is playing it's much more I think positive than the black mirrors thing so what you are seeing is a two vector coming to the city of Boston from the frontier and creating those vectors and they're drawing is like basically creating games spring season wind patterns and this also like applied to other STIs and then I was able to like understand much different problems of wind for example it can come from multiple dimensions and this is an algorithm specifically customized by our studio writing some really heavy code and that what you are seeing is basically a three dimensional wind pattern turning into data painting and I'm just want to read this from the philip k dick a reality is that which doesn't go away when you stop believing it a simulation is that which doesn't stop when the stories go away stories are responsible to our human desire for resolution but a simulation is responsible only to its own laws and initializing conditions a simulation has no moral prejudice or meaning like nature it just is I found it very inspiring and I found that maybe wind is the same equality of thinking and then even right now we are also able to like visualize different like patterns of like information such as LTE signals and pellucid Wi-Fi and many others the idea of what place senses so while all this going on something really exciting happened which is the last part of the presentation is the most cliche image when you write AI at Google and I think 2016 was a very exciting year but 2015 is much more exciting did you remember this image by anyhow so this image is one of the most shared image that is also a I take in 2015 July a Google group of engineer by wrong published a blog post and it was about an algorithm called deep dream an algorithm that by accidentally discovered a neural network normally trained for an image recognition and by somehow that those wonderful minds were experimenting an idea called back propagation basically looking back how the machine learned and those highest rated images versus the leak Google Blog and they have to like talk about it for a very long time it was inspiring foreign point for many artists and engineers and they're also the very first group of team who released their code publicly which was a very important moment and there was also like follow up with last two years and three years an explosion of like algorithms that are constantly constantly changing and last night I have to be in that conference but of course this beautiful moment that I kindly reject and be here but last night something happened at Nvidia's event and it was this over the sound cloud almost one much more what if we would have changed all that wouldn't it be great if everybody could be an honest if we could take our ideas and turn them into compelling images this technology allows us to create a smart paintbrush so that if you wanted to create a new picture you can just draw the shapes of the objects that you want and the neural network can then fill in all the details if we add a water feature the network is able to add reflections not because we told it that but because it learned it or if we change the ground to be covered in snow then it knows that the sky also needs to be a different color I really think this technology is going to be great for architects designers people making virtual worlds to train robots and self-driving cars the input to this model is something we call a segmentation map it's like a coloring book picture that describes here's where a tree is here's where the sky is here's where the ground is and it doesn't have any details and then the neural network is able to fill in all the texture and the shadows and the colors based on things that it's learned it from a large database of real world images I would like to say trigger flexing in that tone the real advance here is that we're able to synthesize images with a lot more diversity and more fidelity than we were able to in the past I really think this technology is going to be great for the dreamers of the world so this happened last night and this is little like a revolution moment if you think about like the computational power that is coming up but what does it mean we have these tools available for everyone and we are very aware of that Eric any technology like Doha finding the fire cooking your food and making a gun is not so different than finding an AI and tweezing for something else so this is what happened in just one year I mean all these problems we had seen ethical issues about the Machine intelligence but it was just more like about like this ramification is something yes we are aware of that but also if you look at like this are you like the same movie I'm coming back again but this flying car is not any more science fiction right like this somewhere we have this project that is literally approved by the city of San Francisco tf-x and then the lilium jet which is literally this summer coming up to fly in the city of San Francisco the flying car idea Cortana has eight language that can like have any motion recognition filters Amazon Alexa has a 46 seconds the world's fastest like with one click available thing that to help you to buy whatever you want and then Siri has a 21 language that can like compute a kind of could I have a dialogue with you and unfortunately this those deep mind stories about like how human versus machine and those like sad stories and then at the meantime all like these and incredible scientific minds neuroscience or like any any minute technology people are trying to find them a tail that can't compute so I was super inspired while like this all just last year's news nothing like so back like just 12 months and of course along must dream about like uploading data to someone's mind which just 427 million dollars so while all this going on something very exciting happened a call came from Google's group called artist and mission intelligence founded by blaze occurring our cast and here's a one great vision about that like the image of applied pigments printing press photography and computers we believe Mission Hills is an innovation that will profoundly affect art and I hardly believe what they were like trying to say if you look at how like actually AI art and creative process works based on are made amalgam was beautiful like simple chart basically artists everywhere because we eventually need an input which is data set to tell the story and narrate that whatever that like context and then we need a tweaking point of one day I learned from this data information and this information specific like goes into dolls like decision like a channels and at the end literally after the post creation at the end we have this art experience or creative experience I think is a very important like thing to understand the machines mind is as Jeff Wright for so says the image of the world around us which we carry in our head is just a model nobody in his head imagines all the world come to a country he has only selected concepts and relationship between them and uses doors represents the real system so from those inspirations I had a very great opportunity an invited from a library from Istanbul and the library was funded by a great creator vast of Courtin and he was heavily dreaming about sharing the library open source for everyone from any age and they were treated they have treated models to the files images documents of 1.7 million documents and this book was this story was one of my much exciting stories about the idea of inventing the future of library a place where information is knowledge so from that I was very fortunate to work with the team and create a kind of a library that you go to the door and when you go inside there is no floor there is no ceiling what happens in front of you is entire archive of the images goes through neural networks which are used for ministry villians events but we basically use them to like bit will analyze what that archive means and this feeling of interesting when machine learned this information go to space called latent space which is a latent means latent little data is standing there unless you ask a question and data doesn't like need to be there in three dimension like our world it can be multi-dimensional and the algorithm called t-sne was allowing us to get those multiple dimensions into an understandable just three dimensional data universes with just one line of code you can take entire archive which is 1.2 million documents we thought in a search bar you can see this knowledge in one kind of a three-dimensional form so what you see here is the video of it like witnessing a mission learns in front of you and then gives you a data universe we can increase the sound I mean the big question what happens there is no search bar right and how we can learn when we go to a library we know everything about that like how we can feel about the big picture but everything in that space just just invisible and visible some houseful to you so I found that it's a very interesting speculation once Machine becomes our partner not like those evil stories or like other like critical problems but as a huge capacity to literally become our part to learn faster and see beyond just a search bar logic and I think the big question is like how we know we learned something right like how do we understand we know everything about that specific topic and I think think those connections unlike these invisible patterns or something really fascinating and most importantly not only just a video you can also be done in a search bar by using a simple tablet you can see the entire universe with simple click you can touch every single document and feel it pause it and literally say for you and research in a whole new dimension in the mind of a machine it was a pure art work doesn't require to be a research machine or a project at all but interestingly in just four weeks more than 16,000 researchers used as a like a tool an art project and most importantly if a machine can learn Kenneth hallucinate and those are all imaginary documents completely made-up by the machines algorithm called the dcen and two years ago this algorithm was one of the most exciting invention in the field of AI that when it learns it can create almost real any output so also I think a month ago a group just sold one image like that in half million dollar in in an auction the same cord but before that like what happens of this data universe does it like really need a like a physical space can we touch and feel this world without like those boundaries of the physical space and we invested also and tool in VR that you can literally fly in the mind of a machine and as elected researcher in this library stop anywhere and touch it in document and just read it and save it maybe feel the thing that you learn from that knowledge so what he is doing right now is literally flying and pointing out the information is looking for and he can even switch between different data universes and understand different type of documents graphics images videos or many other things it's the first time 1.8 million document was able to like a stored in a GPU another convention query that having done this to do so there was a really profound project for studio that we learn what doesn't mean to lurk like work with mission intelligence and there was a beautiful transformation of information but I was just like not ready for these truly understanding what does missions means I had this like another childish dream did he watch the new Blade Runner 20:49 there is this amazing character called memory maker and I was so much inspired by not their only specific moment but they beckon I think my childhood I was always trying to like to think about where memories are coming from like can we touch them can we feel them and I think one of the most in this world that probably the most precious thing that we still hold them our memories and emotions are very precious to look for so last year there was a wonderful moment with the collaboration with Adam GaSe Lee from neuroscience department of UCSF as a student we were able to learn how to use complex EEG device designed for pretty complex neuroscience research and the idea was can we look for the pattern of remembering but it was a beautiful search research going on in the studio and we learned that of course there's a potential once we have a big data of other memory recordings of john doe's we thought breaching the privacy of what does it mean try to understand can we somehow measure and felt and record the moment of remembering and based on the memory research we learned that there is three states that you can literally understand the the activation of a memory happening on our minds and 2016 there was a one of the research happened a group of researcher also released a fantastic hold that those EEG signals I mean at the end we are electric signals right I mean when we hear a beautiful music we had this goosebumps and it's not just different than a kind of electric signals and what this algorithm does is if you have a clear idea of what you are looking for it was able to give us outputs and those outputs turn into a three-dimensional reliefs of those specific memories specifically talking about a project that I called melting memories it was a project that happened last year and we will be watching a short clip about the project's installation called Engram which means in neuroscience memory so so what you are watching is a moment of remembering from a hippocampus the lower left lobe of our brain from a top view and specifically a moment of remembering stretch in time to two minutes it was one of the first example of applying of a trompe l'oeil an effect that truly makes a flat screen in three dimensional the capacity of our perception of understanding or materialization of a memory what was really really exciting about the project was while being able to look the pattern of truly what does it mean to be human one of our precious information and one of the most awfully private information and try to duck without breaching the pet of privacy staying on the top and just trying to understand that but we are basically have very similar patterns and similarities once we look at those information so the exhibition was open only for four weeks and we had around like a forty thousand plus people came from a very small place it was a very exciting moment because from any page in the background there was this moment of like try to find meaning in such an algorithm and try to probably like make this name-checks a position between a kind of a new language it raised like space obvious a monolith moment maybe in a like kind of a way that that you're witnessing kind of a piece that is just right like say something about like who we are and the music you are hearing them bike Adam Carolla and he used completed data sonification and complete done by the same data patterns that are like moving the specific moment of image and this journey was very interesting because it was my very first gallery piece in many years because coming from the public space like working with out doors and ceilings and like anything working in a gallery or like a built environment was something very different and I was so lucky that I felt connected but I also solved this problem you remember like a sense of displacement it exactly happens so people were just on the phones they were just like sharing but and right after that you remember the project that I got rejected from the garyun la feel the distant all project right so this last project I want to share very quickly with you to some of this journey so that project I was dreaming about what would happen if a building can dream like if it cannot learn I can't remember and that was that question somehow remembered by Frank Gehry and LA Philharmonic this is was the 800 years anniversary celebration and they invited to come and think about what will happen this idea of synesthetic architecture it says he is a kind of a phenomena that many people through the amount of people are had this issue or a beautiful thing that for me that I'm thinking that colors maybe hurt and sounds may be seen it was it was an interesting phenomena that I highly believe that was a big inspiration for the moment so the this idea to make the building dream the first thing of course I asked La Fleur Monique can we touch your memories so there is hundred years of information or around forty four point five terabytes every single document every single performance done around the hundred years of like their journey is perfectly recorded starting back in 1919 they had around like 77,000 of sound recordings if you want to listen them it will take 17 years and they have just in the building last 15 years they recorded half million images every single memory they recorded from before after performances all like like events happen they have around 90,000 video clips each is minimum 2 hours and they have enormous amount of like a personal written very early data basis of the early performances conductor composer artist and the commissioner and of course Frank Gehry's that files so with this data I was fortunate to create a story by using three chapters the very first chapter was memory what I thought is very humanely moment of like like this idea of instead of making humans more machine like can we make machines more human and then maybe became architecture as a canvas for that and the second part was consciousness where the AI comes in the game and look at those patterns and the third was dream where exactly the building is starts like maybe giving a kind of a consciousness because information to make this project happen we have to use 42 projectors the world's brightest projectors from multiple locations to be able to like truly augmented skin of the building kind of a material that can compute the original 3d model of the Frank Gehry was back in 2002 there was no way to use that model to make something with that basement like almost seventeen years ago the capacity of the SWAT fares so we had to take the model and complete the remote on the building again and create a kind of a new skin on top of it with multiple layers and the algorithms we used this time was much interesting we were able to use one of the most exciting image recognition algorithms to really look at the entire corpus of a level data the first thing we look at is all of their individual handwritten database back in 19 2009 to 1991 now we look at every single artistic performance and kind of a created three-dimensional a kind of a time and space tunnel and iris that you can fly in 2001 inspiration but it was like a three dimensional that you can look from different angles it was kind of cutting a data sculpture by the like looking at those patterns of them and organization and this was very interesting because this later on was the big question of like what happens if AI goes there performance like what it sees like what it understands or can it understand and it was very interesting because we were able to like take an entire archive and bring it through every single image through like a missionary algorithms to look at the patterns of performances and the events and the amount of information was ridiculously beautiful as an input and then later on we were also able to look at the half million images that every single event taken in the building which was an missionarying algorithm called image net which was designed for Ministry building systems and may they're like Facebook even the main things so we basically take the same algorithm at this time to recover every single memory of this whole institution and create those three dimensional data universes that we will see how to like fly inside the memories of the building and use it on the skin of the building like kind of an this imaginative methodological it can compute and the last thing was of course the sound they had did 17 years of sound recordings Maharashtrians Kiba any imagination of likely I mean many many major like a compositor and conductors have been there to really analyze the music we run through many many measuring algorithms and we specify 256 individual attributes to look at the entire corpus with Parag metal and each of them is representing 10 seconds of information that you can fly in the mind of a machine and pause and hear all the C keys you can hear all like models in one time in non linearly it was a really exciting moment of like a kind of a machine that was ready for as an instrument to make a sound track for near future for the building that is recorded from and this really like a very complex algorithm I don't want to dive into too much but if you're interested able to answer but this is basically like a very beautiful data sculptures that are completely based on the decisions of the institution last hundred years and finally the big question was can a building dream right and that was pretty interesting speculation what I thought is what will happen one night building goes online and download every single image recorded by the same hashtag called CC dreams and to make it happen the algorithm that I showed in the archive dreaming is also the part of that and simply that algorithm was able to allow that allow us to get every single image from the internet and basically collect them in one consciousness and let the building learn its own body and dream potential surfaces and dreams and to finish my talk I have a four minutes long video about this performance that I didn't able to share before we can maybe watch it together for four minutes the last chapter called dreams and then I can say bye bye we can increase the sound for last one thank you so much thank you thank you so much thank you and I'm very aware of the global warming of those very issues that happen in the design week please and the good project is coming in September 2019 climate summit at the United Nations and we are of course visualizing the problems of the world and hopefully make an impact on the minds we didn't understand very well what we have to think so thank you sir wait sir let's take a seat now we had a conversation last night and you've revealed that the whole sort of impetus if you like for the project that you did on Gary's building mr. you read an interview somewhere where Gary said wouldn't it be amazing if the building could express its memories where did you read that and and was that truly the driver to that extraordinary project absolutely one of the most inspiring days that I was trying to learn about the building its context and discourse for the city and there was a moment that he was trying to explain the project of the city councillors and he was also like thinking about using the specific material may allow other people to project onto itself to show the inside of the building outside unfortunately some unexpected comments made him demotivated and they didn't like April the idea of augmenting the building back in 2002 right so it was kind of like an unfinished dream process yeah because Frank Gehry himself is a renowned innovator in the world of architecture but of course your work is a projection but you work with many companies that are charting the innovation to deliver an intelligent sentient skin yeah where we could have buildings like that in the future I think is the beautiful question about I think the speculation hopefully the project deserve this caliber is hopefully allowing minds who have ready to go for the to find that metallic and compute energy friendly and has like capacity of like maybe learning and maybe remembering and things like that I think may improve our quality of life and I've I just I mean the tools that we use here are all from like today like a couple of months ago nothing is here invented from scratch they're already here in terms of like innovation and I believe that light is just one of the my tail that speculate as much I guess purposefully but again carrying with the nature and we thought like like a really having that larger problems of like times quite another like commute places where information is just bunch of logos and but what blows my mind rific is we often talk about a pointer which machines will become sentient so they sort of transcend human augmented kind of you know reality but how extraordinary to think that architecture and our urban environment can become sentient that's that's something I've never really thought about before that I think one of the most I am Optimus part of machine intelligence let's of course aware what may happen and the sentient like the idea of if machine can like decide to decide and if decides to have a culture and later have as art like movies say yes because if we talk about the steps to AI and we were doing this last night you said something to me you distilled it beautifully you said a machine can learn but it can't make decisions yeah right now it doesn't have a reason it needs to be given a reason exactly so in the steps to AI sentient sort of autonomous intelligence is at that point when the machine has a reason I think it's a beautiful question like they also last I discussing about one of the being human philosophical is saying like if you have a consciousness and we have a desire to reproduction right and I can build a computer in half an hour and the machine can reproduce a computer I believe pretty quick and the consciousness is one of the questions as you asked like does machine need to to decide and decisions and of course other consciousness related like chapter that is the whole I think ethical question of AI yep I mean it's the hand of the inventors but the moments the machine or the environment becomes sentient do you think there's a possibility that could turn around it could look at humanity and go I mean that's the existential a but you talk about the machine being a partner because it's so often about humanity versus the machine in your work and what I find so optimistic and so uplifting about it is you talk about the Machine being the partner and the great things that we can do together absolutely I'm under most like that positive side of them inside of story I hope the story ends beautiful and positive but um I think what is really exciting the capacity of a machine enhancing our cognitive system and potential solving problems that we know very well about like nature and our problem of like other things - - like everything that has its problems maybe just if I'd be a super symbol one line of code and we know that this like it's written like the fire example let's say like a one line of code can cure cancer can also make the most evil machine we are the same a cool thinking of that I mean it's just it's it's the nature of I guess in technology that and the whole human humankind sugaring so we can choose either way and I want this other positive side of this talk now we're going to throw your question in a very minute but can I just ask you can you just explain I've had the the great fortune of visiting your studio in LA and you have a whole team can you just bake very briefly about the makeup of your team because they all contribute to the production of your work yes very true so I didn't was the 11 when I learned that in three weeks what I can do I saw my capacity and I just touched the borders of I think my learning curve and many things and then I decided it's a very beautiful African proverb like if you want to go faster do it alone if you're going to go further do it together and I believe the team is together concept of and just envisioning future together so I just feel like if you're a kind of a mission Organic machine literally we are like respectfully we can be anyone for any reason like totally horizontal thinking without any like biased I mean titles so do you have rocket scientists working so Caltech down the road the home of rocket scientist what not a GP are wearing a project and we have a wonderful new engineer joined us and then we have our engineers data scientists architects designers and like coder and and try to be equally by men and women and try to be very cool in the like very international like I mean nine language in twelve people so just try to be like a human in the steak okay so we she'll be through it as a question up the back we got a microphone there great hi thanks for the presentation I think this give us a very great social message and this well visual insight about artificial intelligence but I wanted to ask you what do you think that these media architecture revolution will change or modify the way we leave our buildings in our city I highly believe yes I think like those festivals and performance and like over like last went like not too decade there's a beautiful speculation done by many architects and engineers and inventors of some like light light products and many things so it was there but I think the concept or the context of like truly connecting with us was somehow limited and or it was always of course beautiful is some interactive stories were there but I think mission intelligence will allow us to create a new dialogue that we can talk about a building can learn and building can remember and I think that something like really wasn't available since like a two years so I think that's kind of hopefully an innovation that will allow us to be beyond built environments and biased physical quality of life do we have another question down the front and Thank You Rafiq in all those magnificent pieces of art that you showed us the end consumer is a human being with auditory and visual senses with a very limited ability to take the vast amount maybe you know a gazillion of the amount of information so I'm thinking to be a true art critic of that you need to be a machine you know you see not just be an art critic in order to truly appreciate what you've shown us that's a beautiful question we were having this and a discussion because one of the video that I was sharing recently on social network is like a network is like a laboratory to like engage with with people and understand what the how they feel what they feel and what we do get so viral and it was about a mission hallucination so the idea machine dreams other spaces and the comments were really interesting because the hallucination keyword probably triggered people's experience with some college natives so the critic that I am seeing from the audience is like most about oh it's like this or it's like that then we were like thinking wait three weeks ago open a eye and an open source initiative about AI research shared an incredible model David is an LS theorem is a technique an algorithm that can create realistic text outputs if you have a corpus of information let's say all the world's science fiction novels can narrate a kind of an science fiction novel and we were thinking the similar thing what will happen if you download every single art critic information into the mind of a machine why and all the critics that are not decent said yet but may say it's time for one more question do we have one no we don't have one look on what no we do oh we do down the front UN plays okay graphic and everything that exists on the planet today is natural the space junk the nuclear power stations the rainforests the grasslands do you see machines as part of our nature we seem to be feel separate from them but but you don't I think so I mean I think we are also a yes there's a space junk that's which one of the most significant problem that will be a unique issue but I think that will be also data chunks like that we are living behind us like our decisions I mean I was just having that when it went mini funny the dialogue about what will happen if you look at all the break ups in Facebook what will happen all the like marriages becomes like those are our leftovers are like literally junk that we've lived left behind and what does it mean to like look at those information that we but on that night we're gonna wrap up the Q&A so please join me once again in thanking refa Canada thank you thank you

Channel: NGV Melbourne

Views: 23,951

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Id: TdI1zER_K18

Length: 61min 49sec (3709 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2019