Serpentine is thrilled to present Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive, an exhibition of new and recent works by internationally renowned artist, technologist, and pioneer in the aesthetics of artificial intelligence arts, Refik Anadol. The exhibition will be on view at Serpentine North from 16th February to 7th April 2024.
Known for his digital works and large-scale public installations that present real-time generative environments, Anadol’s collaborative creative process with AI plays on human perception. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive will present years-long experimentation with visual data of coral reefs and rainforests.
The exhibition will feature Artificial Realities: Coral (2023), an artwork that consists of several chapters culminating in an immersive experience based on the Stable Diffusion model, one of the most advanced technologies of artificial intelligence in image production.
For this artwork, Refik Anadol Studio trained a unique AI model with approximately 5 billion images of corals openly accessible online. Generating abstracted coral images, the AI constructs new visuals and colour combinations based on the dataset. As a multi-channel sound and video experience, Artificial Realities: Coral invites the audience to be immersed in a virtual underwater space.
Anadol’s solo exhibition will also feature the UK premiere of Living Archive: Nature a new commission which will first be presented at the World Economic Forum 2024 in Davos, Switzerland. Reconfigured for Serpentine North, the installation will transform the gallery into the AI model’s interpretation of a rainforest. The installation features the longest 3D generative AI outputs on nature to date, including data of flora, fungi, and fauna from over 16 rainforest locations globally.
Realised through extensive interdisciplinary research, the model utilises the open access information of several venerable institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, and London’s Natural History Museum, among others. As additional data partners, such as universities, museums, foundations, government entities and libraries join the effort, the model will expand over the coming years.
Refik Anadol said: “I am thrilled to bring our Studio’s most ambitious AI Art projects to date to Serpentine this year. A ground-breaking initiative that we call the Large Nature Model, developed by our Studio, stands as the world’s first open-source, generative AI multimodal focused on nature, trained on an extensive and ethically sourced dataset of the natural world. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive will display multisensory artworks derived from this model, featuring visuals, sound, and scent. Collaborating on such a significant project with my long-time mentor, Hans Ulrich Obrist, with whom I’ve shared many stages discussing the future of AI art, is an immense privilege.”
Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, said: “Refik Anadol brings art, science and technology together to create generative, immersive environments that fascinate, educate and enchant audiences. This show kicks off a year of research and projects by the Serpentine Arts Technologies department focused on AI, and we could not be more pleased than to collaborate with him.”
Taking the data that surrounds us as primary material, and using a neural network, a method of AI that is inspired by the human brain, as a collaborator, Anadol creates compelling visualisations of our digitised memories and expands the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts. His work explores the meaning of humanity in the era of artificial intelligence as well as the challenges that ubiquitous computing has brought forth. He investigates the profound ways in which the dominance of technology in our daily lives alters our perception and experience of time and space.
The exhibition will be featured as part of the New Alliances strand of the Serpentine programme which aims to widen audiences through engagement and collaborations. Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive will be presented in collaboration with 1OF1, led by patron and philanthropist Ryan Zurrer, which partners with forward thinking artists and institutions by contextualising and supporting art of the digital age.
Since 2014, Serpentine has developed AI projects with Cécile B. Evans, James Bridle, Jenna Sutela, Ian Cheng, Pierre Huyghe and Hito Steyerl that have prefigured subsequent technological developments in the field. The establishment of Creative AI Lab in collaboration with King’s College London in 2019 offered a space for research into AI systems from artistic and cultural perspectives and interests, generating a solid foundation for thought leadership on this topic as AI gains increasing mainstream attention in 2024 which will also see Serpentine Arts Technologies develop a new AI project with Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst later in the year.
Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive is curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large, with Liz Stumpf, Assistant Curator and produced by Brittany Stewart, Creative Producer and Halime Özdemir, Production Manager.
