I used to love non-places. As a freelance writer I would try to find a space with no trace of character, history or warmth. I wrote stories and books in airports and waiting halls, in coffee chains frequented by tourists who would be leaving the country in a few hours' time. The less style the space had, the more creative I felt.In shopping malls I took pleasure in the anonymity imposed on customers by the architecture of the space: it seemed like there was no chance to form a friendship or have a sense of solidarity there and that felt good. Only the present time existed in non-places and that was ideal for self-reflection.A new exhibition at Istanbul's Akbank Sanat gallery attempts to replicate these spaces.The show's curators Ceren Arkman and Irmak Arkman had taken their cue from the French anthropologist Marc Auge. In his 1992 book, "Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity," Auge offered a critical look at "spaces of circulation, consumption and communication" that has no history, relations, or identity. In such places "people are always, and never, at home," Auge wrote. The challenge for the curators here seems to be that of recreating this stale, cold, transitory world.In the exhibition catalogue they describe non-places as "transitory places of supermodernity where people remain suspended in anonymous solitude, like airports, shopping malls, highways, chain hotels and supermarkets." The title of the exhibition, "Nonspaces," meanwhile, "refers simultaneously to the artworks that make it up and the art space that houses it.""Collide", a video installation by Onformative, is the centerpiece of the ground floor. Commissioned by Dolby Laboratories, it mixes motion, sounds and abstract visuals. You can spend an awful lot of time standing in front of it, provided you are in the mood for contemplation.Onformative describes how, by mixing, reversing and eliminating restrictions of time and space, they want to discover "a new vision of the human body and mind."Their work is a multisensory experience exploring "the subjects from an emotional perspective, examining the feeling of being immersed in the creative process and attentive to the present moment as the senses combine and become one."Felix Luque and Inigo Bilbao's "Memory Lane" is a much darker work that explores the childhood memories of the artists and has a more introspective air. The video installation shows cold images of woodland and strands which have been transformed into sculptures through 3D scanning and rendering. These are virtual replicas of actual memories, a mixture of sci-fi and realistic sensibilities."The images shaping Felix Luque and Inigo Bilbao's project 'Memory Lane' depict places where the authors themselves played as kids: hidden corners of a beach unveiled by the low tide, narrow clearings in a grove, entrances to caves," Jon Bilbao wrote in a catalogue piece about the work. "Memory Lane does not make use of old images but of present ones. Still, the way they have been taken and digitally processed gives path to alterations comparable to the ones an old picture and memories are subjected to. And so we end up looking at sharply defined elements under a blazing light - actually, the result of an abundance of data - while others are just partially revealed: light, transparent, merged with their surroundings, reduced to a faint map of dots, marginal."Ryoichi Kurokawa's "Rheo: 5 Horizons," a pentaptych installation exhibited on the second floor of the gallery, is another highlight. Here the Japanese artist uses five flat panel displays and speakers. On displays we see vertical images; they pair with each mono channel sound: "They are juxtaposed in line like a five-member ensemble and they behave as five independent audiovisual apparatuses... By being synthesized with the movement of the image, the spatial cognition of the sound can be enhanced. That is, the behavior of imagery indicates the sound source position, sonic direction and drive."Ceren Arkman and Irmak Arkman say they have focused on works that "aim to alter our conception of space or create hyper-real spaces for our appreciation; they let us conceive and experience space in a non-physical, non-social, non-traditional way: as a non-space."Since art has been obsessed with the representation of the world, it is crucial to focus on the representations offered by new media that "are much more befitting our super modern existence, underlining the novel ways that we relate to our world."Their double focus on new media and the potentials of the art space has resulted in a versatile exhibition."Even though the experience of space changes, the visitors of the 'Nonspaces' exhibition will realize that the space itself remains somewhere between novel and familiar," the curators say.This comforting limbo, they hope, will let us "be somewhere else alone with ourselves."