Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is an internationally renowned media artist and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He is the Director and co-founder of Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles and teaching at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts from which he obtained a Master of Fine Arts. Refik Anadol Studio brings together a globally diverse team of designers, architects, data scientists, and researchers—originating from 10 countries and fluent in 12 languages—who share a deep commitment to inclusion, equity, and cross-cultural collaboration at every stage of artistic production. Anadol is also the co-founder of Dataland, the world’s first Museum of AI Arts. Opening at The Grand LA, Dataland promises unparalleled, multisensory experiences at a scale and quality never before realized with real-time interactions between museum and audience.

Refik Anadol’s work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. Taking the data that surrounds us as primary material, and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol offers us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expands the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts. Anadol’s AI data paintings and sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, public art, decentralized networks, and the creative potential of AI. Entire buildings come to life. Floors, walls, and ceilings disappear into infinity. Breathtaking aesthetics take shape from large swaths of data, and what was once invisible to the human eye becomes visible, offering the audience a new perspective on, and narrative of their environments.

The primary thread that runs throughout Anadol’s groundbreaking visualizations is the unseen world of data. For Unsupervised at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Anadol posed an alternate understanding of modern art by transforming the metadata of MoMA’s vast collection into a work that continuously generates new forms in real-time. For Quantum Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria, 200 million photos of Earth and its landscapes, oceans and atmosphere were used to visualize an alternate reality of nature. Archival photographic data of our universe from the archives of NASA/JPL was the driving force behind Machine Memoirs: Space, Istanbul’s most visited exhibition ever. Machine Hallucination: NYC harnessed 113 million publicly available images of New York City to envision the near future of a storied city. For WDCH Dreams, 100 years of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s digital archives were tapped to inspire the visuals projected onto Frank Gehry’s iconic building. For Melting Memories,

Anadol explored the materiality of remembering by transforming EEG data—capturing neural activity associated with memory recall—into data paintings, augmented data sculptures, and light projections, offering new insights into the representational possibilities emerging from the intersection of advanced technology and contemporary art. At Serpentine Galleries in London, Anadol’s Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive featured works Artificial Realities: Rainforest and Artificial Realities: Coral, that utilized the Large Nature Model (LNM), an AI model developed by Refik Anadol Studio and trained on approximately 135 million images of nature and extensive datasets of flora, fungi, and fauna from over 16 rainforest locations globally. For the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, Anadol’s Living Arena transformed diverse data sources—including live weather and flight information, Clippers’ historic player tracking, and images of California’s national parks—into a multi-channel aesthetic experience presented on a monumental LED screen. At the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Anadol’s Living Architecture: Gehry utilized the Large Architecture Model (LAM), a custom-built AI model trained over several months on a vast archive of open-access imagery, sketches, and blueprints from Frank Gehry’s works. This AI-driven system transformed the architect’s signature forms into vibrant AI Data Sculptures.

Refik Anadol ’s global projects have received a number of awards and prizes including TIME100 AI Impact Award, UCLA’s 2024 Edward A. Dickinson Alumnus of the Year Award, the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art, Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, iF Gold Award, D&AD Pencil Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Award, SEGD Global Design Award, LOOP Design Award and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.

Anadol’s works have been featured at iconic landmarks, museums, galleries and festivals worldwide, such as MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Serpentine Galleries, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Pinakothek der Moderne, EMMA Museum, Art Basel, Haus der elektronischen Künste, Kunsthalle Praha, Arken Museum, Palazzo Strozzi, Casa Batlló, National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of the Future Dubai, Walt Disney Concert Hall, World Economic Forum, Venice Architecture Biennale – La Biennale di Venezia, Hammer Museum, Jeffrey Deitch, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Daejeon Museum of Art, Florence Biennale, OFFF Festival, International Digital Arts Biennial Montreal, Ars Electronica Festival, The Sphere, The Kennedy Center, Intuit Dome, Arc De Triomf, Istanbul Modern, Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul Design Biennial, and ZKM | Center for Art and New Media, among many others.

Refik Anadol Studio has been a pioneering force in the realm of blockchain-based media art, consistently exploring the intersection of advanced technology, data aesthetics, and digital ownership. Since launching its first digital collectible in 2021, the studio has released over a dozen NFT collections that extend its data-driven visual language into the Web3 space. Early landmark projects include Machine

Hallucinations – Space: Metaverse, presented in collaboration with Sotheby’s, which introduced the first immersive NFT in conjunction with a physical exhibition in Hong Kong. In a historic moment, Living Architecture: Casa Batlló—inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s iconic building—became the studio’s first artwork auctioned by Christie’s and the only NFT included in the 21st Century Evening Sale, standing alongside physical works by artists such as Banksy and Jeff Koons. Displayed at Rockefeller Plaza and simultaneously projected onto Casa Batlló’s façade in Barcelona, the project was seen by over 50,000 spectators and set new benchmarks for digital art visibility and cultural impact. Beyond technological innovation, Anadol’s NFT practice has consistently championed social impact. To date, Refik Anadol Studio has raised over $10 million through NFT sales for charitable organizations including St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Alzheimer’s Foundation, and UNICEF. In 2023, the Winds of Yawanawá NFT collection, created in close collaboration with the Yawanawá community of the Amazon, raised $3 million to support Indigenous cultural and environmental preservation and build the first museum in Amazonia. Biome Lumina, Dataland’s founding digital collection created by Refik Anadol Studio, is a series of 1,000 unique living paintings on the blockchain, inviting collectors into a dynamic exchange via a generative AI interface and immersive soundscapes based on live atmospheric and ecological conditions.

A pioneer in his field, and the first to use artificial intelligence in a public artwork, Anadol has partnered with teams at Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, NASA/JPL, Siemens, Epson, MIT, UCLA, Harvard University, Imperial College, Stanford University, and UCSF, to apply the latest, cutting-edge technology, science and research to his work.