Refik Anadol’s Stunning AI Art Works Shown at Serpentine

Serpentine presents new and recent works of Refik Anadol, an internationally renowned artist, and pioneer in artificial intelligence arts in an exhibition titled Echoes of Earth: Living Archive which is on view till April 7, 2024. The exhibition includes the UK premier of the first installation of Living Archive in a growing body of The Large Nature Model, the world’s first open-source generative Al model dedicated to nature, trained on an extensive and ethically sourced dataset of the natural world.

Turkish-born Anadol is known for his digital works and large-scale public installations that present real-time generative environments. Anadol’s collaborative creative process with Al plays on human perception. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive is his years-long experimentation with visual data of underwater landscapes and rainforests.

He started Anadol Studio in Los Angeles, USA, in 2014 and its research practice centres around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives. Anadol also teaches at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts from which he obtained his Master of Fine Arts.

By proposing the possibility of “post-digital architecture,” Anadol invites his audience to imagine alternative realities by redefining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural elements. He tackles this by moving beyond the integration of media into built forms and translating the logic of a new media technology into art and design.

The Serpentine exhibition features Artificial Realities: Coral (2023), an immersive installation enveloping viewers in an Al’s imagination of underwater landscapes. For this artwork, Refik Anadol Studio trained a unique Al model with approximately 135 million images of corals openly accessible online. Generating abstracted coral images, the Al constructs new visuals and colour combinations based on the dataset.

Anadol’s solo exhibition also features the UK premiere of Living Archive: Large Nature Model a new site-specific installation which was first introduced at the World Economic Forum 2024 in Davos, Switzerland. At Serpentine North, the installation transforms the gallery into the Al model’s interpretation of a rainforest.

It is the first installation in a growing body of work that is created employing The Large Nature Model, the world’s first open-source generative Al model dedicated to nature. For this ongoing research, the artist worked with the data of major institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution and London’s Natural History Museum.

As additional data partners, such as universities, museums, foundations, government entities and libraries join the effort, the model, centred around archival images of fauna, flora and fungi, will expand over the coming years.

Refik Anadol said: “I am thrilled to bring our Studio’s most ambitious Al Art projects to date to Serpentine this year. A ground-breaking initiative that we call the Large Nature Model, developed by our Studio, stands as the world’s first open-source, generative Al multimodal focused on nature, trained on an extensive and ethically sourced dataset of the natural world. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive displays multisensory artworks derived from this model, featuring visuals and sound. Collaborating on such a significant project with my long-time mentor, Hans Ulrich Obrist, with whom I’ve shared many stages discussing the future of Al art, is an immense privilege.”

Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, said: “Refik Anadol brings art, science and technology together to create generative, immersive environments that fascinate, educate and enchant audiences. This show kicks off a year of research and projects by the Serpentine Arts Technologies department focused on Al, and we could not be more pleased than to collaborate with him.”

His work explores the meaning of humanity in the era of artificial intelligence as well as the challenges that ubiquitous computing has brought forth. He investigates the profound ways in which the dominance of technology in our daily lives alters our perception and experience of time and space.

The exhibition is part of the New Alliances strand of the Serpentine programme which aims to widen audiences through engagement and collaborations. Echoes of the Earth:

Living Archive is presented in collaboration with 10F1, led by patron and philanthropist Ryan Zurrer, which partners with forward thinking artists and institutions by contextualising and supporting art of the digital age.

Serpentine has developed Al projects with artists with prefigured subsequent technological developments in the field.

“The establishment of Creative Al Lab in collaboration with King’s College London in 2019 offered a space for research into Al systems from artistic and cultural perspectives and interests, generating a solid foundation for thought leadership on this topic as Al gains increasing mainstream attention in 2024 which will also see Serpentine Arts Technologies develop a new Al project with Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst later in the year,” according to Serpentine directors.