DesignTalks 2023 - Refik Anadol, media artist, director and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence

Rekif Anadol, media artist, director and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence, will be speaking at DesignTalks in Harpa on 3rd May.

Refik Anadol is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He is also a lecturer in UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. His 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 the arts, architecture, narrative, and the body in motion.

Anadol’s site-specific AI data sculptures, live audiovisual performances, and environmental installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, decentralized networks, collective experience, and the creative potential of machines. Anadol’s work has been exhibited at venues including the Centre Pompidou-Metz, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Ars Electronica Festival, Istanbul Design Biennial, and ZKM | Center for Art and New Media. In 2018, Anadol collaborated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for WDCH Dreams, a live audio-visual performance projected on the façade of Frank Gehry’s iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in celebration of the orchestra’s centennial. Refik Anadol: Unsupervised, the artist’s first solo North American museum presentation, is currently on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

DesignTalks 2023 will take place in Harpa on the 3rd of May and is curated by Hlin Helga Guðlaugsdóttir. 

This year’s theme is What now? and the event will tackle this question, explore and showcase some answers and alternatives, discuss current challenges for designers and architects and, if successful, raise even more questions!

DesignTalks addresses the challenges the world is facing and highlights the importance of design and architecture in societal and global change, with talks about impactful projects and inspiring conversations. Designers, architects and creative thinkers, international and local, provide insight into pressing issues with passion. Nothing is off limits.