Art in the age of machine intelligence

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

I use data as a pigment

and paint with a thinking brush

that is assisted
by artificial intelligence.

Using architectural spaces as canvases,

I collaborate with machines

to make buildings dream and hallucinate.

You may be wondering,
what does all this mean?

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

I witnessed the power of imagination

when I was eight years old

as a child growing up in Istanbul.

One day, my mom brought home
a videocassette

of the science fiction movie
"Blade Runner."

I clearly remember being mesmerized

by the stunning architectural vision
of the future of Los Angeles,

a place that I had never seen before.

That vision became a kind of a staple

of my daydreams.

When I arrived in LA in 2012

for a graduate program
in design media arts,

I rented a car and drove downtown

to see that wonderful world
of the near future.

I remember a specific line
that kept playing

over and over in my head:

the scene where the android Rachael

realizes that her memories
are actually not hers,

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

Since that moment,

one of my inspirations

has been this question.

What can a mission do
with someone else's memories?

Or, to say that in another way,

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

Any android or AI mission
is only intelligent

as long as we collaborate with it.

It can construct things
that human intelligence

intends to produce,

but does not have the capacity to do so.

Think about your activities
and social networks.

For example, they get smarter
the more you interact with them.

If machines can learn or process memories,

can they also dream?

Hallucinate?

Involuntarily remember,

or make connections

between multiple people streams?

Does being an AI in the 21st century

simply mean not forgetting anything?