Two marriages of more than 60 years comment on a sofa of a Guggenheim Bilbao room the images that are projected on the walls of 16 meters high. “Look at a dolphin.” “The waves breaking on the shore.” “There are also fish.” “And that is a dinosaur because on TV they said that this goes from the origin of the earth.” A few minutes later they get up: “UF, what dizziness, you don’t know if the floor moves, people, screen.” These couples remember those summers of childhood, when lying in the grass the children play to identify forms from the clouds. All answers can be correct because it is difficult to correct the imagination. Here, what visitors see is the result of artificial intelligence (AI), dreaming in real time after the artist Refik Anadol and his team have fed it with more than 35 million images.
Living Architecture: Gehry (Until October 19) It is the first exhibition of the initiative On-site, With which the museum wants to show, according to the commissioner, Lekha Hileman Waitoller, practices that transcend what most of the public identifies with contemporary art. Anadol, a pioneer in the art generated with AI, has crossed these limits transforming the walls of a room into large screens on which 48 monitors, hung on a specific structure anchored to the roof that, for the first time in the history of this space, has been painted black to absorb the light, project how the future of architecture will be through the legacy of Frank Gehry, the creator of the Guggenheim building.
To get an idea of Anadol’s artistic piece you have to spend at least 16 minutes in the room. At this time, the most avid eyes and minds that have studied the subject will be realized that the AI mediated by the human hand is telling them a story in six chapters on how the architectural forms can become in a not -so -distant time. The collected images, urban planes, the structures of the Guggenheim, real architectural models and those that invent the AI appear.
“I contacted Frank Gehry, my hero, because I knew that the museum was one of his masterpieces. Through its foundation we obtained permission to use a part of its file (not everything digitized), which we combine with other images, ”explained the Turkish-American artist a few days before the inauguration, which was on March 7. The soundtrack has also composed with the musician Kerim Karaoglu from sound tests on the titanium of the building and the acoustics of some rooms. That is, Gehry is not only in the images, but here his work also sounds.
“With this material we train an AI model with ethical data and sustainable energy so that I could dream of these new worlds. Therefore, this process is constantly changing. We have invented a new art form, ”says Anadol categorically. With these statements, in addition, he tries to solve the entire debate – very critical – that there are about the use of AI in all artistic disciplines. On more than one occasion, the creator will repeat that he has all permits for the use of the images of the museum’s own architect and the image files that, they explain, are freely accessible. The commissioner will affect the same idea.
At the entrance to the room there is a poster in which it is detailed that this installation is carried out in collaboration with Euskaltel, 1OF1 (company dedicated to digital collecting) and Google Cloud, one of the clouds to store data that can be considered more sustainable, since it uses renewable energies. In Spain the 149 megawatts of electricity of solar origin from a photovoltaic park located in Toro (Zamora) are used. Although the Anadol sample is connected to a cloud in Holland. In addition, it has brought to Bilbao part of the machines, the computers hidden in a closet in the same exhibition room. “This sample consumes the same as loading the mobile four times,” says the curator.
Anadol (Istanbul, 40 years) has been obsessed with computers and science fiction from the age of eight. He studied art and multimedia design at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA): “I already connected deeply with the idea of painting or sculpting with data. I was interested in incorporating these techniques into the architectural design and turning buildings into living canvases. ” In 2016 he began working with AI as a “first artist resident in Google”, in his words. And since then he has worked with more than 400,000 million images, with more than 100 years of recordings, and with millions of articles and books. The artist qualifies him as a way to “explore the collective memory of humanity.”
In this way, it has been linked to other large technology companies, it has been the first to create a piece with AI (Unsupervised2023) that has been incorporated into the Catalog of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), has participated in the Venice Biennale, the Pompidou-Metz Center (France) and in the Batlló House (Barcelona). By the end of 2025, its own museum will open in Los Angeles, which will be called Dataland.
Pioneer or exploiter
Those who appreciate their work add to their name surnames as a pioneer, but also drag a few detractors who consider that it is at the service of technological giants and also makes improper use of the images when violating, they ensure their critics, copyright. The latter have been the more than 6,000 artists who sent a letter to Christie’s to demand the cancellation of Increased intelligencea large bid of works of art generated by the in which Anadol was the protagonist. “They exploit human artists, use their work without permission or payment to build products that then compete with those artists,” read the document.
Anadol does not refuse the debate. After more than half an hour of conversation, it becomes clear that he has become the best resource to try to do pedagogy about his work and what he considers the progress, advantages or benefits of working with AI. “The possibilities come with responsibilities,” versions the phrase that has been used for centuries in politics and in recent decades it has been heard in the mouth of the superheroes: “A great power entails a great responsibility.” The artist says that he always works at 50% with technology, that is, half -creation are distributed and when he perceives that the machine can advance more than his hand and that of his team, for and puts limits.
“My work method has always been to collect my own data and train my own models. Each artist who uses this technology should be responsible in the same way. That is the only way to do groundbreaking and ethical things. We collaborate with museums that have open databases and share their information freely, ”he continues. “I was invited by President Macron (Emmanuel) to an AI summit, I was in the World Economic Forum, at the United Nations. AI is no longer just a conversation or an idea, it is happening and exhibitions like this Bilbao are a testimony of good use of this technology. ”
Artificial intelligence allows you to generate the basic layers of color, shape and movement and with your team it is directed in search of the architecture of the future that is its obsession. It predicts that in a few years this moment in history will be compared to the Renaissance for the creative possibilities that the Creators granted the AI. At the moment, he has achieved that whoever enters the Guggenheim observes how machines dream in real time. The experience of each visitor is unique because computers do not imagine the same again. The images appear with a number in case someone has doubts that they are living a unique and unrepeatable moment.
Luis Fabor (EFE)