An A–Z of artists who refuse to choose between art and science. Hover to meet them, click to read.
A · Neural networks and memory
Refik Anadol
Melting Memories · Artificial Realities: Coral · Echoes of the Earth
Anadol turns vast datasets into fluid, architectural projections. Melting Memories uses EEG data from people recalling long-term memories, recorded with the Neuroscape Laboratory at UC San Francisco, and runs it through custom machine-learning algorithms. Artificial Realities: Coral is a data sculpture built from around a billion images of coral. I saw Echoes of the Earth at the Serpentine, which draws on visual archives of nature from around the world, and he has a permanent work at the Museum of the Future in Dubai.
The raw data goes through many transformations, and the final aesthetic can feel formulaic. Still, the work opens real conversations about consciousness, computation and memory, and about where machine processing ends and human creativity begins.
