The world-famous media artist opened ISE 2022 with the opening keynote on Tuesday 10 May entitled “Exploring the heritage of tomorrow” and dedicated to the new frontiers of artificial intelligence in multimedia artistic productions.
“I use data as if it’s colours and paint with a thinking brush, with the help of artificial intelligence”. This is how Refik Anadol defines his pioneering research in multimedia art. An intersection between architecture, science, digitalisation and audio / video technologies that becomes the emblem of this ISE. Its mission, to face the challenges and possibilities launched by computing. What does it mean to be men in the age of AI? Can machines really learn, have a conscience and feelings, maybe even dream?
In 2008, as a university student, Refik made his first mapping installation in Turkey, from 2014 onwards, his conceptual evolution towards art and programming languages has converged in the Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles, where three-dimensional sculptures and paintings, specific, digital transformations of world-famous buildings, live AV performances and immersive installations are all born. Works that involve artists, architects, data scientists and researchers with different professional and personal backgrounds: from this mixture of skills, a large portfolio of projects that have already touched 50 cities on six continents. Then finally arriving at ISE, the house of integration, and in Barcelona, the house of architecture that knows how to look beyond. “In the Mind of Gaudí” is in fact the name of the digital work inspired by Casa Batlló and its famous architect, exhibited in the Gaudí Cube, the first room in the world with six sides and walls made of LEDs. On display, the creative opportunities of the combination of digital images, big data and AI and new ways to bring this type of art closer to the general public are clearly visible.
“Welcome to Barcelona, it has been a long journey but we have arrived – concludes Mike Blackman, managing director of ISE, as he, traditionally, opened the fair -. We have involved a crazy personality, who has created equally surprising digital work, and we focus on immersive experiences with many paths inside and outside the Fira. We are talking about projection mapping, digitisation of art, multimedia and even NFT. All this, enabled by the best technology on the market, is once again the protagonist of these long-awaited days by the AV community.”
