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Hi, I'm Refik. I'm a media artist.

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I use data as a pigment

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and paint with a thinking brush

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that is assisted[br]by artificial intelligence.

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Using architectural spaces as canvases,

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I collaborate with machines

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to make buildings dream and hallucinate.

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You may be wondering,[br]what does all this mean?

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So let me please take you[br]into my work and my world.

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I witnessed the power of imagination[br]when I was eight years old,

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as a child growing up in Istanbul.

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One day, my mom brought home[br]a videocassette

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of the science-fiction movie[br]"Blade Runner."

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I clearly remember being mesmerized

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by the stunning architectural vision[br]of the future of Los Angeles,

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a place that I had never seen before.

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That vision became[br]a kind of a staple of my daydreams.

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When I arrived in LA in 2012

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for a graduate program[br]in Design Media Arts,

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I rented a car and drove downtown

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to see that wonderful world[br]of the near future.

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I remember a specific line

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that kept playing[br]over and over in my head:

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the scene when the android Rachael

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realizes that her memories[br]are actually not hers,

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and when Deckard tells her[br]they are someone else's memories.

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Since that moment,

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one of my inspirations[br]has been this question.

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What can a machine do[br]with someone else's memories?

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Or, to say that in another way,

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what does it mean to be an AI[br]in the 21st century?

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Any android or AI machine

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is only intelligent[br]as long as we collaborate with it.

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It can construct things

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that human intelligence intends to produce

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but does not have the capacity to do so.

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Think about your activities[br]and social networks, for example.

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They get smarter[br]the more you interact with them.

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If machines can learn or process memories,

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can they also dream?

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Hallucinate?

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Involuntarily remember,

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or make connections[br]between multiple people's dreams?

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Does being an AI in the 21st century[br]simply mean not forgetting anything?

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And, if so,

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isn't it the most revolutionary thing[br]that we have experienced

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in our centuries-long effort[br]to capture history across media?

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In other words,

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how far have we come[br]since Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner"?

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So I established my studio in 2014

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and invited architects,

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computer and data scientists,[br]neuroscientists,

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musicians and even storytellers

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to join me in realizing my dreams.

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Can data become a pigment?

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This was the very first question we asked

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when starting our journey[br]to embed media arts into architecture,

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to collide virtual and physical worlds.

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So we began to imagine[br]what I would call the poetics of data.

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One of our first projects,[br]"Virtual Depictions,"

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was a public data sculpture piece

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commissioned by the city of San Francisco.

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The work invites the audience

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to be part of a spectacular[br]aesthetic experience

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in a living urban space

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by depicting a [unclear] network[br]of connections of the city itself.

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It also stands as a reminder

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of how invisible data[br]from our everyday lives,

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like the Twitter feeds[br]that are represented here,

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can be made visible

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and transformed into sensory knowledge[br]that can be experienced collectively.

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In fact, data can only become knowledge[br]when it's experienced,

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and what is knowledge and experience[br]can take many forms.

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When exploring such connections

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through the vast potential[br]of machine intelligence,

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we also pondered the connection[br]between human senses

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and the machines' capacity[br]for simulating nature.

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These inquiries began[br]while working on wind-data paintings.

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They took the shape of visualized plans

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based on hidden data sets[br]that we collected from wind sensors.

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We then used generative algorithms

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to transform wind speed,[br]gust and direction

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into an ethereal data pigment.

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The result was a meditative[br]yet speculative experience.

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This kinetic data sculpture,[br]titled "Bosphorus,"

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was a similar attempt to question[br]our capacity to reimagine

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natural occurrences.

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Using high-frequency radar collections[br]of the Marmara Sea,

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we collected sea-surface data

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and projected its dynamic movement[br]with machine intelligence.

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We create a sense of immersion

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in a calm yet constantly changing[br]synthetic sea view.

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Seeing with the brain[br]is often called imagination,

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and, for me, imagining architecture

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goes beyond just glass, metal or concrete,

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instead experimenting with[br]the furthermost possibilities of immersion

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and ways of augmenting[br]our perception in built environments.

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Research in artificial intelligence[br]is growing every day,

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leaving us with the feeling[br]of being plugged into a system

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that is bigger and more knowledgeable

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than ourselves.

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In 2017, we discovered[br]an open-source library

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of cultural documents in Istanbul

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and began working on "Archive Dreaming,"

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one of the first AI-driven[br]public installations in the world,

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an AI exploring approximately[br]1.7 million documents that span 270 years.

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One of our inspirations[br]during this process

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was a short story[br]called "The Library of Babel"

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by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

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In the story, the author conceives[br]a universe in the form of a vast library

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containing all possible 410-page books[br]of a certain format and character set.

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Through this inspiring image,

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we imagine a way to physically explore[br]the vast archives of knowledge

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in the age of machine intelligence.

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The resulting work, as you can see,

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was a user-driven immersive space.

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"Archive Dreaming" profoundly transformed[br]the experience of a library

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in the age of machine intelligence.

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"Machine Hallucination"[br]is an exploration of time and space

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experienced through New York City's[br]public photographic archives.

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For this one-of-a-kind immersive project,

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we deployed machine-learning algorithms

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to find and process over[br]100 million photographs of the city.

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We designed an innovative narrative system

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to use artificial intelligence[br]to predict or to hallucinate new images,

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allowing the viewer[br]to step into a dreamlike fusion

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of past and future New York.

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As our projects delve deeper

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into remembering[br]and transmitting knowledge,

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we thought more about how memories[br]were not static recollections

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but ever-changing[br]interpretations of past events.

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We pondered how machines

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could simulate unconscious[br]and subconscious events,

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such as dreaming,[br]remembering and hallucinating.

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Thus, we created "Melting Memories"

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to visualize the moment of remembering.

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The inspiration came from a tragic event,

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when I found out that my uncle[br]was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

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At that time, all I could think about

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was to find a way to celebrate[br]how and what we remember

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when we are still able to do so.

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I began to think of memories[br]not as disappearing

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but as melting or changing shape.

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With the help of machine intelligence,

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we worked with the scientists[br]at the Neuroscape Laboratory

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at the University of California,

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who showed us how to understand[br]brain signals as memories are made.

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Although my own uncle was losing[br]the ability to process memories,

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the artwork generated by EEG data

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explored the materiality of remembering

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and stood as a tribute[br]to what my uncle had lost.

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Almost nothing about contemporary LA

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matched my childhood[br]expectation of the city,

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with the exception[br]of one amazing building:

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the Walt Disney Concert Hall,[br]designed by Frank Gehry,

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one of my all-time heroes.

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In 2018, I had a call[br]from the LA Philharmonic

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who was looking for an installation

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to help mark the celebrated symphony's[br]hundred-year anniversary.

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For this, we decided to ask the question,

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"Can a building learn? Can it dream?"

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To answer this question,

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we decided to collect everything recorded[br]in the archives of the LA Phil and WDCH.

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To be precise, 77 terabytes[br]of digitally archived memories.

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By using machine intelligence,

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the entire archive, going back 100 years,

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became projections on the building's skin,

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42 projectors to achieve[br]this futuristic public experience

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in the heart of Los Angeles,

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getting one step closer[br]to the LA of "Blade Runner."

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If ever a building could dream,

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it was in this moment.

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Now, I am inviting you to one last journey[br]into the mind of a machine.

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Right now, we are fully immersed[br]in the data universe

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of every single curated TED Talk[br]from the past 30 years.

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That means this data set includes[br]7,705 talks from the TED stage.

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Those talks have been translated[br]into 7.4 million seconds,

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and each second is represented[br]here in this data universe.

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Every image that you are seeing in here

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represents unique moments[br]from those talks.

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By using machine intelligence,

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we processed a total of 487,000 sentences

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into 330 unique clusters of topics[br]like nature, global emissions,

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extinction, race issues, computation,

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trust, emotions, water and refugees.

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These clusters are then[br]connected to each other

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by an algorithm,

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and 113 million[br]line segments [are generated],

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which reveal new conceptual relationships.

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Wouldn't it be amazing[br]to be able to remember

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all the questions that have ever[br]been asked on the stage?

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Here I am,

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inside the mind[br]of countless great thinkers,

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as well as a machine,[br]interacting with various feelings

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attributed to learning,

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remembering, questioning

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and imagining all at the same time,

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expanding the power of the mind.

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For me, being right here

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is indeed what it means[br]to be an AI in the 21st century.

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It is in our hands, humans,

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to train this mind to learn and remember

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what we can only dream of.

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Thank you.