Behind The Tech with Kevin Scott - Refik Anadol, Director / Media Artist at Refik Anadol Studio, Visiting Researcher & Lecturer at UCLA's Design Media Arts Department.

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Refik Anadol, an internationally renowned media artist and director, joins Behind the Tech to discuss his journey from a childhood fascination with computers in Istanbul to becoming a pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. In this episode, Refik shares his early inspirations—including his first encounter with a Commodore computer and the impact of science fiction on his imagination—and discusses how his work explores the intersection of art and technology.  Kevin and Refik delve into the challenges and possibilities that ubiquitous computing has imposed on humanity, and how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing in the digital age. They explore Refik's innovative projects, such as data-driven machine learning algorithms that create abstract, colorful environments and his immersive audio/visual installations that transform entire buildings. They also discuss the significance of AI in art, the concept of 'data painting,' and the future of digital art in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.  Learn more and support these organizations in North Carolina:  John Britt Pottery  akira satake ceramics | GoFundMe  Mudtools  East Fork    Refik Anadol Studio | Refik Anadol Living Art  Kevin Scott    Behind the Tech with Kevin Scott    Discover and listen to other Microsoft podcasts.    

Digital artists like myself, the movement that's enjoying computation, games, and creativity with AI and so forth, we were the blind spot for the museums and galleries, super honestly. And it's quantifiable for many reasons, because it's a new movement, it's a new reaction to the field, the art world has a concrete base, like centuries old techniques and tools. And it's this revolution. It's this renaissance happening right now. We are all living in. Hello, welcome to Behind the Tech. I'm your host, Kevin Scott. My co-host, Christina Warren, is out doing some really cool things at GitHub. So it's just me today. Before I introduce our guests, anyone who has

been watching the world even a bit over the past month is aware of the horrifying destruction wreaked by Hurricane Helene in the U.S. Southeast. One of the most devastated areas was in northern and western North Carolina, in particular the Asheville region. As I've been delving more and more into the art and craft of ceramics in my personal life, I've learned that one of the strongest concentrations of ceramic craft and artisans in the country is right there in Asheville. There are a bunch of folks in that community who really could use your help to start pulling their lives and livelihoods back together after such a terrible loss. Namely, those at East Fork and Mud Tools, as well as individual artists like Akira Satake and John Britt. We'll share their information in the show notes, and anyone who is inclined to support would be playing a huge part in helping them get back on their feet.

And we're still accepting questions for our upcoming Ask Me Anything episode. If you have questions for me, please send us an email at behindthetech at microsoft.com. So on the podcast today is Rafiq Anadol. If you have questions for me, please send us an email at behindthetech at microsoft.com. So on the podcast today is Rafiq Anadol. I met Rafiq at an event that both of us had the pleasure of attending earlier this year. And one of the things that we were discussing at that event was the nature of art. Rafiq is an incredible artist and is using AI in really adventurous and creative ways. I've been a big fan of his work for a long while and what he is doing and what he's done over the past few years as these new AI tools have created new possibilities for art and artists has been just extraordinary.

So I'm really delighted that we've got him on the show today, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So let's dive right in. Rafiq Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He's the director of Rafiq Anadol's studio in Los Angeles and a lecturer in UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol's projects consist of data-driven machine learning algorithms that create abstract, colorful environments. His work addresses the

challenges and possibilities that ubiquitous computing has imposed on humanity, exploring how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing in the digital age. Anadol's immersive and audiovisual installations and live audiovisual performances have been exhibited worldwide, transforming entire buildings and creating dynamic perception of space. His work has been featured in venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul. Anadol holds a BA in photography and video and an MFA in visual communication design from Istanbul Bilgi University, as well as a second MFA from the Design Media Arts Program at UCLA. I will say personally, I adore your work.

It is a real pleasure to have you here with us today. I think we're going to have a really important conversation because the intersection of art and artificial intelligence is a hot topic of debate right now. So, but maybe we can just sort of start by talking about how it is you got interested in both art and technology and like where for you did those two things first intersect? Absolutely.

Kevin, first of all, again, thank you so much for this wonderful moment. We had incredible conversations before, and I'm so again, honored to share the journey with you and everyone. So it is like truly, I will say a very childish start. I was eight years old in Istanbul and my mom, one day completely randomly without, I guess, guessing she brought home a Commodore, a very first computer. And it was a fascinating eight years old moment, right? Like the first time seeing a computer, there was like a small like booklet from it that like shows how to like very much

basically basic like programming. And then I think the part I'm still super in love with, of course, games. I love games so much. And that was a beautiful start. As a child, I think we always respond back to reality as positive as possible, as hopeful as possible. And I watched my first dystopian science fiction movie, Blade Runner, same age. And I think there was this moment, okay, the machines can like

become a friend, like a game companion or imagination part. And then we can see the feature of architecture in Blade Runner, such as the media architecture, flying car, an Android tells the other Android that these are not your memories. This is someone else's. I mean, as a child, I still cannot forget this epiphany. And I didn't stop with computers. I would say the life and imagination.

So grateful that in my undergrad year, year 2008 in Istanbul, I was a very beautiful moment with a mentor of mine, Peter Weibel, which we lost this year. He was the founder of the world's first art science and technology museum called ZKM. And in his class, it's the first time I was able to use a software called Pure Data, which is like a very early open source visual programming language that I will say that I very much get so inspired at visualizing the sensors, which is making invisible visible moments. I've seen like literally ultrasound sensors and be able to take like a light point and line geometry of the sensor. And I think in that class, I coined the term data painting. The idea of data can become a material if you think that is a form of memory

and that memory can take any shape and form. So since then, now 16 years, I was able to work with the heartbeat data, skin conductance, brain signals, weather data, pretty much anything we can quantify, I believe, can be a form of art. And that journey is still keep going.

Now, as a studio in Los Angeles, California, we are 20 people, can speak 15 languages in 10 countries. And I'm also grateful that I received the Microsoft Research Award 2013. I was at the UCLA. And that was a moment that I remember truly connect with the academia as an artist to think about art, science, technology together can create work. Yeah. So I want to like talk a little bit more about your journey as an artist, because I mean, it's really interesting. I think you and I had approximately the same exposure to computers. I think I'm older than you, but it's very similar experience.

I got one of these consumer computers when I was a teenager and I was just fascinated by the device, but also really intrigued by how you could use this technology to make games. Like I was really into Dungeons and Dragons. I was into video games. Like I was, you know, and I also, you know, at the time, I didn't know I was going to become a computer scientist.

The thing that I really wanted to do when I was 12 years old is I wanted to be a comic book illustrator. But for reasons I don't even quite understand, like as I got older and older, I gravitated more towards not just technology, but kind of the utilitarian aspects of the technology. So like, I just really loved using computers to make tools for other people to use. So how do you think it is that you like chose the vector that you're on? Or did the vector choose you? Or like, I mean, like these questions always are fascinating to me.

That's a great question. I think very similar, I think, feeling. I felt that as a person, I really truly enjoyed this idea of discovery and innovations. But more in the creative side of, for example, I still remember finding an exciting hack of a machine is as inspiring as, hey, I can do that. This sharing moment was never, never was a question. But what I felt so inspiring is when I start to combine multiple elements such as, you know, computation, architecture, or like most importantly, I will say as soon as I start to see the buildings as canvas, for example, like, because I think that architecture is an incredible form of surfaces. I believe that any form of architecture can become a canvas, the building facades, the floor, the ceiling, the window, the door.

Because as soon as we liberate this idea of a material, which means what happens if you take the light and data together and imagine this new non-Newtonian material, maybe that can disappear if you don't want it. But we can program it through algorithms and data that can take any shape and form. As soon as that creates that epiphanic moment, I couldn't stop imagining. want it, but we can program it through algorithms and data that can take any shape and form. As soon as like that, create that epiphany moment, I couldn't stop imagining. And I feel like the future of architecture is so inspiring because they can reflect as humanity. Of course, there's lots of function to protect us from the mother nature, but also they can have a function of like other imaginations. And since that moment, like it's so fun.

And then the computation in general, I mean, I'm a digital artist. That means that I don't have a connection so much with the physical world, even though I cannot draw properly or write, but I know how to compute geometrically, you know, the voxels, the pixels, and like really living in digital space

became this so inspiring. And then on top of that, I really inspired from the science so much. Huge respect, you know, to the research going on top of that, I really inspired from the science so much. Huge respect to the research going on in computer science, in other sciences. Super in love with and respectfully looking how incredible people are pushing forward technology and just try to capture that positivity

and just blend it with this imaginary materials is I think where I get so excited and then learn programming and then on top of it, come through graphics. And I couldn't stop thinking about neuroscience because I believe that buildings can dream and hallucinate one day if you do it right. So all this is connected together naturally, I will say. Yeah. So the two things that I really want to chat about later is, yeah, I think you and I were at an event together earlier this year where we in a group were being asked to ponder the question, like, what is art? And I definitely want to talk about that later.

And I also want to talk about your work in particular. But before we do that, like how, how did you decide that this is what you wanted to do for your career? Like, did you have encouragement from your parents? Like, did you have some concept that I'm going to be able to do this and make money, you know, so I can pay my rent, you know. I'm an amazing question because for generally, I have two, again, I think breaking points. First of all, truly grateful for the family because I have 14 teachers in my family. So I grew up with like a learning to learn as the fundamental layer of like fabric of life so i don't remember saying i don't know something because it was it felt always not right before researching learning uh like what is my

capacity of understanding of that specific topic and then on top of it it just became this i mean yeah people say you know nerding about the topic but it's actually learning about a topic and then when you learn about it it becomes you know an extension of life and, and, and so our cognitive capacity of life. So I never quit that moment of like, um, learning. And then I'm so grateful that in the journey, um, as soon as I know that, I think I feel myself art, science, technology in that, in that, um, point of interest, uh, nobody stopped in the family. Like they just trusted that this can be the right thing. So very grateful.

But the financial part was really challenging because generally speaking, art world is a relatively challenging environment for artists to create a value with their work. And for many reasons, there's like a gallery world, there's a museum world, and there's a collector world. That's like where the financial value comes to the art making. So I am an artist without a gallery representation, meaning independent,

which makes it much harder because it means that I have to navigate through whole like in my own social media, like myself and studio, which was a much more entrepreneurial challenge on top of the journey. But I find it so inspiring because over the last 10 years as a studio, we honestly openly like shared everything online that what happened happened, wherever we go and that like naturally grow. But I'm so grateful that again, I come back to the Microsoft Research Award as a student, 2013, I knew that I want to open a studio. I know that I'm not an alone person. I should be a team of people exploring the concept, context.

I know that as a human myself, I have a capacity of like cognitive limits, but if I become a team, maybe we can invent new ways of imagination, computation, AI research, neuroscience, and so forth. That was like always this lab atelier dream. And it started very hard in the beginning, but people who have been understanding the movement, pioneers of technology, or the people who have been creating important products and services

about technology, they completely got it. They directly understand that a new art form, a new speculation about an idea, a dream, a sculpture, a painting completely fit very well. And so I'm so grateful to Los Angeles, UCLA, and all our supporters across the journey that grow very naturally and very challenging, but very grateful that turn into a value. Yeah, and I know a lot of artists, stage one, it seems like,

is like you just sort of have to figure out, you know, any sort of economics. Like, how can I get paid at all to figure out, you know, any sort of economics, like, how can I get paid at all to like, you know, do this creative thing? And then, you know, once you once you figured that out, like, I know a bunch of artists who the next question is, like, how do I make sure that I've got the real creative freedom that I want? So, you know, like, basically, you know, being sponsored to just do whatever versus like,

you know, doing things like taking commissions where you have like a very rigid set of constraints that you're operating in. And you seem to have navigated that super well. But like, how tricky has that been? It is very very so first of all i will be super honest that digital artists like myself the moment that's enjoying computation games and creativity with ai and so forth we were the blind spot for the museums and galleries super honestly and it's it's it's quantifiable for many reasons because it's a a new movement, it's a new reaction

to the light field. The art world has a concrete base, like centuries old techniques and tools. And it's this revolution, it's this renaissance happening right now. We are all living in. But as an artist, I was so naturally saying this all the time that I witnessed the birth of internet, web one, web two, web three, AI, quantum. I mean, that's naturally that that's what I reflect back as a form of imagination. So I think there was this rejection for a while, I would say, or blind spot. But then as soon as the more we created works that bring people together, like our project in Walt Disney Concert Batlló project in Gaudí's building in Barcelona, 65,000 people.

Or at MoMA, our show received 3 million people, the largest audience in the MoMA history, with a 38 minutes average viewing. And that all I think made these tangible results. And as soon as they become an experience in life, a memory, I think that really binded the context into like from a dream to reality. Yeah.

So let's talk about your work. Maybe we can start with one of your more recent things. So like you have this like really exciting thing called Data Land that you're doing. Like you want to describe that a little bit? Yes. So I mean, this is like a truly the joy project. So first of all, very grateful again, over the years as a studio, we thought that last now almost 10 years coming, we got so excited about like, what else can we do with our knowledge and experience so far?

So, as I mentioned, we are very grateful. We work with MoMA, Guggenheim, Pompidou. I mean, they're amazing museums in the world, but there's only a couple of them, but there's so many artists like myself. So number one was like, how can we be sure that this medium, which is very hard to think about, like, I mean, an AI model as a living artwork, like I don't think even museums knows how to preserve an AI model. I mean, museums are still discussing how to preserve a painting, which is already physically in the world.

So there's like a lot of distance from what is coming right now. So we just want to be an example in the field. And second, I really want to like always imagine like what is the truly and honestly the most complex architectural manifestation of a museum in the age of AI and data and so forth, not necessarily physically,

but in this living system that can see us, feel us, have conversations with like, you know, different levels, can do incredible level of computation in real time. And also, you know, curate these beautiful narratives and with neural networks and doing a great work also for an example for the humanity, such as nature, as I'm a huge lover of nature. I believe that nature is the most important thing we have and the most inspiring thing we have. How can we make an AI research by collecting data by ourselves,

giving back to the community, open source data exchange, work with the pioneers and also educate AI to the public and even collect the AI work. So we found that just a moment, this becomes a museum actually, because it's not only creating art, it is collecting art, sharing learning and education, and also bringing other artists together. So I found that it's a very incredible and maybe ways of imagination. So it's that joy and inspiring place to imagine in Los Angeles, California, opening hopefully next year in a

Frank Gehry building. So excited and so happy to like join many forces together. It's really super cool to think about. Yeah, the community aspect of it. Like, I think it's truly wonderful. But but you know like i just technically i want to double click on preservation like one of the things uh i think when you and i were uh younger there was this idea that because everything was transitioning from analog to digital media that like it was going to be so much easier to preserve everything forever. As soon as the bits were there, it's just trivially easy to preserve them.

But I think we are seeing exactly the opposite. The bits endure, but the bits are only useful when you can reduce them onto a particular set of hardware to render them in some way to play back a piece of music. And your works are really complicated because they're these crazy assemblages of technology. And so I do think the preservation challenge just seems to me like really, really daunting because, yeah, imagine a hundred years from now, like trying to find the hardware to go run the bits on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally agree. And by the way, in our conversations, you mentioned so much

beautiful response to the physical, like the joy that you also enjoy physical craftsmanship. And, and I completely agree with you because by the way yes i'm an additional artist but i love physical world so much so i i i didn't detach from the physical beauty of life and i feel like it's a great time still i think for us to like remind us like how beautiful the physical world yeah and instead of replacing it or like you know um saying just there's another alternative world it's so beautiful to like capture the beauty of the world and i think especially i think in pandemic i asked this question a lot like we could go to nature but could nature come to us and that was when i realized

that actually there's so much we can do um and especially so we are traveling 16 rainforests around the world and working with incredible people living in the forest, such as Yawanawa people in Amazonia. So they are teaching us how to live in the forest, for example. Incredible feeling, like when there is no technology that we know around us, but their technology that how they live for thousands of years in the forest. Like they show us these beautiful species that barely known or ever or maybe maybe never like discovered in the Latin or English world. Like there's so much discovery. And also what I found that as soon as I think the AI models are so inspiring research and

also we learned, so we were able to receive 3.5 million species by asking the museums and institutions who have been preserving them. But the funny thing is they are incredible silos. I mean, they're independently incredible, but they never merged. So what we tried is like what happens if this intellectually physical world representation comes together and then suddenly this AI becomes incredibly perfect about nature. And then suddenly it creates this new encyclopedia context. I mean, it's so funny that something from physical

world to the virtual world but to appreciate physical world is really so inspiring. Yeah. I totally, totally agree. So, it's sort of hard to talk about your work because it is

so sensual in nature that it's really hard to have an abstract conversation in English that does it justice. But I wonder, maybe to give listeners an idea, maybe you could sort of describe what AI has allowed you to do with a piece of art or like with the making of the art that you couldn't do before with paintbrushes or Photoshop or whatever the tool set was before. Yeah, I think it's a great question. So it was 2016 when I was very fortunate to work with, very first time, 1.7 million documents from a library that is mostly cultural documents.

And our curator was very much in love with archives. And of course, as an archivist, they always have challenge for nine years. Six researchers have been trying to sort this data. It's very like a challenging. And as soon as we apply a machine learning algorithm, very early embedding models that the TCN is, I was shocked by the result of seeing

that 1.7 million documents in the form of three-dimensional plottings, this was this moment of like, okay, but this is a new sculpture. But this sculpture is seen through the AI's mind and applied to humans' mind's eye by giving those line and points a reasoning that are suddenly make that millions of documents visible. And the second question was, of course, if the machine can learn, can it dream? I see these questions all the time in the history, right? Artists ask the question, what is beyond reality?

I mean, that question now with AI, I find that so easier to answer by using a memory context. This can be nature, urban, culture, buildings, cities. I'm so obsessed with all these topics, but I mean, they are topics that belongs to humanity, right? For example, nature. We were able to work with 75 million flowers from the Amazonian to like any creatures exist in the nature

and train a model on that. And then suddenly I have a brush that remembers all the colors of the species that can paint with infinite possibilities of these beautiful creatures. So I see that it's not so different than Monet back in time inspired from the atmosphere. But now we have a thinking brush

that can still in the same context, but in different technology. So I see that we have so much similarities. And of course, we can go next level there. And this time, the artwork can be never the same, which can be a living works by using sensors, you know, weather data, heartbeat, brain signals, and we can give a different context of conversation. And then that can also apply on top of it, by the way, I believe, if one day data becomes a pigment, I don't think it is dry. It can be non-Newtonian,

it can be ever changing. So I love fluid dynamics so much. In our work, we have these small molecules that I am programming them to give a movement context. They can be in any fluidity. They can remember the previous frame. They will predict the next colors of the frame. So they become these living small organisms that are driven by the colors of nature or so forth. And plus music that we can also train the model. And then recently we are playing with the scent last four years, like, because I felt that we were missing something in those works. And as soon as we introduced the scent molecules, suddenly there's this new form of art, which

I'm calling it generative reality. It's just kind of a new experience that all the time ever changing and living forms of experiences. So it's fascinating to imagine in this mind space. Yeah. Well, you know, maybe this is a good point to start talking more philosophically about what it is that you're doing.

Like you've already said one thing about art, which is artists are and have historically been searching for things that are outside of reality. Like you're making a thing that's new to human experience. But I guess one of the questions there is why, to what end, you know, and it gets back even to, you know, this thing that we were discussing earlier this year, which is what is art? Because like a lot of people, when a new tool shows up, and it doesn't need to be AI, but AI is the particular tool that we're discussing right now.

They're like, okay, well, I don't know what this means. Like, does this mean it's the end of art? Does it mean that, you know, art is all of a sudden going to become, you know, more vital and different. And it's happened in every generation. Like as soon as someone deviates from, you know, what the standard practice is, what the canon is, like everyone's like, oh my God, like, you know, the standard practice is what the canon is like everyone's like

oh my god like you know this is kind of the end um yeah so so i mean maybe we start with that like in your mind like right why do you do what you do like what is uh what is the purpose incredible um aspects and thank you for the question because I always felt that so first of all I think to me art is humanity's capacity of imagination and I feel that we as humans we push to the edge of imagination and that's what we found there and I think that's the quest is I believe in our DNA in our genes in our like practice of life in centuries and more. And I think this is all evolving with other parts of life itself. And I think we are all artists.

We are all basically artists. And what we do with our artistic capacity is really just unique and for everyone. And I also feel that to, art is something when the idea touches both mind and soul at the same time. And I really found that very challenging actually, because the mind is something we operate in an another reality. We have soul concepts, spirituality and emotions, and as humans, we have so complex like fabric of life. So I feel like art is always interwining these universes in different and unexpected, most likely, places. And I really got so inspired by the idea of technology for humanity always and always make that a mirror effect. But in this case, AI is the mirror itself. It truly can become an exactly, in my mind at least, the most nearest material I can imagine is a mirror.

It really reflects us, our thoughts, our feelings, if you want and if you program it. And it's the first time we have a technology that has a cognitive capacity, has a reasoning capacity. It's a fascinating time to be alive, to really imagine with this technology. But I also feel that in my mind, my purpose of like, as I mentioned as a child, I never stopped bringing inspiration, joy, and hope to life. So that's always like these layers of imagination

and values and belief. So I use this technology to make those forms of art. And I believe that was also triggered this beautiful community around the idea and also i felt that sometimes it's really easy to go like the dark mode in our like a civilization but i also felt that much harder is what else can we do with that but like what else can we like create and what else can we imagine so i find myself in that in that purpose a lot with these beautiful moments. Yeah, I think I've been thinking about this a lot because people are so energized right now about the intersection of AI and art. I've been thinking a lot about what a definition of art is.

And I think the only conclusion that I've been able to reach after reading a whole bunch about art history and talking to a bunch of artists is there really isn't one definition for art. Some people have defined it, like you already alluded to this, it's like art is what can be collected. So like if you can't like put something in a gallery or a museum, like, you know, not art. I think that's a bad definition of art, by the way. You know, but it strikes me that there's some like really interesting things about art, which is, you know, for me at least, art seems to be a thing that you are trying to express that there just isn't another good way to express. And it's in you and you've got to get it out and you must get it out.

And it has value and meaning and worth whether or not anyone else sees it or gets to experience it. But it can be enriched when other people experience it. And like they sort of because I think we all sort of seek out art, like we seek out this novelty and like, we look at what other people are expressing to us through their art and try to understand, you know, what is it that they're trying to express? Like, what did they mean? Like, what does this mean to me? And so like, it just feels like this unbelievably human thing. Like if you sort of take these things out like it just feels like this unbelievably human thing like if you sort of take these things out of it that like you have a human being who has something in them they need to express and you have another human being who has something in them that like you know needs

to connect uh yeah then like i don't know like is it art like you know so in in a sense you know like an ai like making an image that, you know, it shares with another AI, like, yeah, maybe that's art, but I don't know that I care. Yeah, exactly. Totally agree with you. Totally agree. And this moment that you mentioned, the care moment,

I feel like it's exactly where it's so inspiring because as you mentioned, I think at the end of the day, I always believe it's all about being human. I mean, I think that's, I hope, the common fabric of humanity and our conscious model. And I feel like even, yes, you mentioned like maybe multiple AIs can be in conversation. Sure, multiple AIs can do things together,

but like, do we have a meaning and purpose there? Is it like any form of imagination versus there's always this human intellect and quest, right? Nature of quest. And I feel like that's where the super inspiring and infinite possibilities comes in the game. So I think the good news, I will say,

for the feeling of art making, I agree with you. It's this like urgency to create also any output. I mean, a beautiful food, to beautiful music, to poetry, to any craftsmanship. I don't think there's any limit at all in our, I guess, capacity. But that's just enablers in this case. That what we couldn't play with the reasoning before that we, I mean, we never have a tool that doesn't forget before. Like, you know, we have all these like amazing breakthroughs back to back for, uh, human

intellect, right. And, and, and imagination. So I think, I think it's very inspiring to be alive, to push those new frontiers every single moment. Yeah. So what are you excited about in the next handful of years? What do you hope AI will allow you to do and what do you hope it will allow other people to do artistically?

I think I'm really so inspired by this AI atelier concept. So even though respect to the amazing research with like, you know, incredible resources, incredible minds. But I also like so much about this more atelier mindset where things are relatively humble, relatively small scale, maybe. these discovery and innovations that were, you know, like, for example, we are right now working with incredible data sets about some heroes like Frank Gehry, for example, for Guggenheim Museum. So we are experimenting like much smaller domain imaginations, maybe, but there's so much beauty in that more smaller scale data sets, but try to find what else can we reimagine in this space. And definitely, multimodality is so inspiring. Sound, image, video, text, but also scent.

As soon as we brought the scent together, there is this memory lane that just never opened before. And it's so fascinating. And the other part I am so inspired recently is really like this at Dataland especially. Like how can we go beyond? I mean, first of all, I respect that now the language becomes a software, which is incredible and it's a new form of imagination. But now I'm experimenting what happens beyond the language. Like what happens, like at MoMA project, we try to prompt the work through the camera of the movement of the people or the loud camera of the movement of the people

or the loudness of the space or the weather data. So now we are experimenting with these fun ways of what else can we truly poetically explore the language of nature that turns into beautiful artworks that are still reflecting different modalities of nature. I will say obsession with finding the language of nature, I will say, through these neural networks and possibilities. And then lastly, I hope to help other arts friends because it's really what I see that it's beautiful

to have these incredible tools, but they are the breakthroughs, right? They are the breakthroughs. That means that artists sometimes want a new breakthrough to make a new breakthrough in art form. So can we help and imagine new collective compute? That's like I'm really inspired about, like how can we achieve this collective unlocking

for more smaller scale imaginations? And do you think the tools are getting democratized fast enough for artists? Because I'm guessing one of the things that you had to overcome is like the tools, at least in the beginning, and maybe this is still true now, I'm guessing it is, like are still technically more complicated than they need to be. Yeah. Which can make them. I mean, first of all, I mean, absolutely. Yes.

I mean, first of all, a massive GitHub user, like a massive, like open source culture person. I learned from open source culture, a huge respect and love for the field. And, and, and a massive, like respect to the current tools that now we can really quickly. I mean, I'm literally'm literally you know half of our team is saying always like okay co-pilot every i mean imagine of the productivity of the friends in the studio that just as programmers that improved last one and a half year remarkable like we feel so empowered and not anymore feeling behind or lack of knowledge. I mean, that feeling is turning into this beautiful creativity is incredible. The joy is incredible.

And that's a huge respect and love for the community for sharing. And that's why we always try to share through our humble experiments. And I'm so happy to say that it's so accessible. I mean, now accessing an AI model is relatively cheaper than a book. I mean, that's fascinating. I mean, that is just a beautiful knowledge base that is there for you for a while. It is accessible very much easily. And that's, I think, fascinating because this makes people, I will say, more equal to have

access to knowledge and experience and reasoning. So I'm so happy to say that that's a beautiful, positive path of, I think, human intellect with AI. Yeah, and I think it is interesting that there is set is if you want to be a painter, you go to the art store, you buy some tubes of paint, you buy some brushes, you buy a canvas, and you can start painting. You probably won't be any good in the beginning, but you can get started relatively easily. And that pattern is so well understood and has been for so long that there just isn't any confusion about how to go get started. And so I think it's just super important

what you're doing to try to share learnings and to contribute back data and tools and all of the building blocks that you need to add AI to your toolkit and your creative repertoire. It's just super, super important. Thank you. And it really makes beautiful conversations and, again, huge respect for complex systems.

But this is all about like more smaller systems and like really demystify them. And by the way, there is something I found so great that, so last eight years, as soon as we have an installation using AI and data, we always put a process wall, which we call it process of video or something or process artwork, where we demystify the name of the algorithm, the people who research for it, where data comes from and so on. As soon as we put this demystification, I guess, artworks

next to the artwork itself, it so remarkably makes this safe and secure space for the public that I think they get much more and much more involved. And this really makes me much more grounded that we should just do it more. And then the more we do it in an atelier and education context, again, as a professor, I can't stop that part of the world.

It really creates a beautiful space. Well, look, I would highly, highly encourage you to do more of that'm just i'm such an engineering dork uh sometimes i actually like the view into the process more than i like even the you know the the thing that comes out of the other end of it and like and i can love the thing that but i'm just fascinated by the process like how on earth did these people make the things that they made? It's just fascinating. Totally. And again, huge respect to your work.

And Kevin, I cannot imagine how things can be very complex systems and engineering and imagination. And now I feel that because of the AI tools that are allowing, you know, people curious minds, like, I mean, in the beginning, I don't know how much it resonates, but I remember opening the like, you know, instead of a radio or the TV is that like, you know, just dismantle the system and try to look at like how it works, right?

I mean, the similar mindset that's, I mean, now can apply to the incredible systems and so forth. It's really, really, it's just similar mindset, but just in different style of the domain, I guess. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And look, I think it's everywhere. Like I've been doing a bunch of ceramics work for the past, I guess it's been about nine months now.

Fascinating. Yeah, it's been about nine months now. Fascinating. Yeah, it's super fascinating. And it's like one of the oldest crafts, oldest art forms that humanity has because it was like one of these ancient necessities that people needed. You needed cups to drink out of and plates to eat on and pots to cook in. But it really is like the whole process of it is just endlessly fascinating. And still, even though this is the thing that gives me real hope about AI and art. You can even have a thing like ceramics that every culture on earth has been practicing for millennia.

And like you can still have novelty and innovation and creativity and people saying new things through this medium that have not been said before that resonate in ways that have never resonated before. And so if it's true for that, like it definitely will be true for like this new medium. I completely agree. And I had, as we discussed in that amazing event also, I was very fortunate to also, I met with four years ago, young Yavonova artists in the forest that they've been painting with this technique called K'nuh, is their graphical language in the forest that they've been painting with this technique called knu is their

graphical language in the forest that they took the pigments from the nature and then transform certain species into certain colors mostly red and black and there's incredible reds and blues from i have no idea how they created this but but they were like, you know, painting these beautiful things. And we were able to train a model as they requested to join forces. And we were still like, enjoy so much how, as you mentioned, beautiful there for hundreds of years of like practice, still relevant. And also, as you said, like, I really felt the same thing when we, we trained these artworks for their village to raise funding to make their first museum and schools. By the way, this February, hopefully there will be 1,000 spiritual leaders in the forest to celebrate their life in the forest.

So that's where I felt completely like how beautiful the physical context, but gracefully and ethically connect with the virtual world and imagination and turn it into a value back to the communities. It's a fascinating feeling. It's awesome. Super, super cool stuff that you're doing. So maybe one last question before you go. And I ask this of everyone who comes on the show, and it's always a hard question because everybody who comes on the podcast does really fascinating stuff. So outside of the thing that you do in your professional life, what do you do for fun? Oh, great. So I have a huge, huge true joy with my wife, um together we have been traveling across the world so she is our compass like discovering new cultures new places um it's truly a joy of travel to like you know lower the barriers of like borders and so forth like truly like

um travel across the world it's a beautiful um um journey in life that like really opens up to how incredible the world is and also how incredible the humanity is like really understand that diversity and um so that's really joy and on top of that it's kind of a mix with work but i really truly my life truly change when i live in the forest for several weeks in Amazonia. There's this infinite beautiful quest there. And it's really beautiful to see people of a forest that have their own beautiful way of living, to culture, to technology, like really understanding who they are is very special. And I really hope everyone in life can visit and feel the true joy of living

in the forest. It's something I can promise life-changing in the most positive way. So that's a joy of fun. That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking time out of a busy schedule to chat with us today and just so inspired by what it is you're doing and can't wait to see you do more of it.

No, Kevin, thank you so much. There were so many incredible people with you here, and I'm honored to be here. And thank you for the incredible questions and time. Awesome. All right. What a great conversation with Rafiq Anadol. I think you heard him say over and over and over again this word imagination um and yeah i i don't know many people who have a more extraordinary imagination than rafiq does uh so i i i think he has a really boundless curiosity and a kind of creative fearlessness so um know, despite whatever daunting technical obstacles there

might be, like he can see the possibility in these new tools like AI and couple them with a really amazing creative vision to do stuff that I think really does actually speak to a huge number of people. You know, you just sort of given the large audiences that have been through some of his bigger installations and what the critical reception and the popular reception have been to his work. It's just really extraordinary. I think he's so early in his career and so early in really utilizing the full possibility of these tools that he's a pioneer of that, you know, there's going to be years of really extraordinary work coming out of him and his

team in the future. So it was a real joy and privilege to be able to chat with him today. So I think that is all for today. I want to, again, thank Rafiq Anadol so much for joining us. Remember, you can send me your questions to behindthetech at microsoft.com. And please check out

the show notes for a few of those people and organizations in North Carolina who need your help. You can follow Behind the Tech on your favorite podcast platform or check out our full video episodes on YouTube. See you next time.