Turning data into art

Digital artist Refik Anadol's artificial intelligence-driven works met Chinese audiences for the first time in Deji Art Museum in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, earlier this month.

Known for his data and AI driven art, Anadol is good at creatively using data as his material to make sculptures, live performances and immersive installations, which encourage viewers to rethink their engagement with the real world and with the creative potential of machines.

Two representative pieces of the digital artist's large-scale works are displayed at Deji Art Museum: one is shown at the museum and the other is projected onto a big LED screen in front of a square of a shopping center where the museum is located.

Melting Memories — Engram-Box demonstrates the movements inside a human brain, which is based on Anadol's experiments with high tech provided by the Neurospace Laboratory at the University of California.

Quantum Memories Probability uses publicly available quantum computing research data and algorithms from Google AI to generate 200 million images of nature and landscapes as visual data that constantly flow around people, creating a dynamic view of multiple worlds within the quantum world.

According to the artist, data is "not just a bunch of numbers but also actually memory". The show titled The Transformative Power of Memories tries to let people rethink the value of their memory and examine the relationship between humans and the real world.

A private art museum, Deji Art Museum holds some shows combining art and technologies.