Refik Anadol

Biography

Refik Anadol is a Turkish media artist and director based in Los Angeles who has become one of the most prominent figures working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, architecture, and public art. He is the founder of Refik Anadol Studio and its associated research lab, RAS LAB, where a team of artists, engineers, and researchers develop new methods for turning vast datasets into immersive, site-specific visual experiences. Anadol also teaches and conducts research at UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts, where he completed his own graduate studies. His practice treats machine learning as a creative collaborator, training AI models on enormous collections of images, weather patterns, archival footage, and other data sources, then using the resulting outputs to generate fluid, constantly shifting digital sculptures and projections that can transform entire building facades or gallery interiors into responsive canvases. Anadol's large-scale, site-specific audiovisual works and performances have been presented at major institutions and public spaces around the world, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hammer Museum, Artechouse New York, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Ars Electronica Festival, among many others. His interdisciplinary approach bridges architecture and media art, exploring how machine intelligence can reshape human perception of time, space, and memory. Anadol's work has earned him numerous honors, including a Google Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency, a German Design Award, and recognition from UCLA and the Architect's Newspaper. Through his continued experimentation with data-driven and generative visual systems, Anadol has helped popularize AI-based art on a global public scale.