Media artist Refik Anadol's "Memories of Machinery: Space" exhibition has opened at Teknofest Black Sea, being held in Türkiye's northern Samsun province between Aug. 30 and Sept. 4.
The world's largest aviation, space and technology festival, Teknofest, opened its doors to visitors at Samsun Çarşamba Airport on Tuesday. As part of Teknofest Black Sea, numereous shows and technology competitions are being held in the city.
One of the surprises of the event is Anadol's "Memories of Machinery: Space," which was previously opened in Pilevneli Gallery as the most comprehensive solo exhibition by Refik Anadol Studio in Istanbul. The exhibition creates an alternative data universe where information sets are transformed into open-ended aesthetic possibilities through scientific initiatives aiming to explore the depths of the universe and visual speculations using artificial intelligence.
"Machine Memoirs: Space" comprises two sections approaching humanity’s explorations of space from a distinct aesthetic perspective and thematic orientation. In the first section titled "Memoirs," the artist, collaborating with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), exhibits a series of data paintings that utilize over 2 million images captured and recorded by the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble and Magdalena Ridge Observatory (MRO) telescopes and other sensors and satellites. These images are the largest space-related dataset ever used to train a generative adversarial network for an artwork. Anadol underlined that they intentionally presented this data in the raw version in this first part of the exhibition to help visitors understand how he questioned whether machines can dream, if they learn and how his studio carried out work to realize this dream.
In the second section "Dreams," installations of various sizes interpret the same artificial intelligence data in different ways. For example, this data turns into pigments through fluid dynamics on the second floor, while it welcomes us in the form of robotic sculptures on the upper floors.
The exhibition has met visitors with the official sponsorship of Trendyol.