
Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol (born 1985) is a Turkish-American media artist and designer. His projects consist of data-driven machine learning algorithms that create abstract, dream-alike environments. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
Early life and education.
Anadol was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in photography and video as well as a Master of Fine Arts degree from Bilgi University. After his studies in Turkey, he moved to the United States to attend the media arts program at the University of California in Los Angeles where he received a second Master of Fine Arts degree.
Work.
Anadol started his career creating permanent public art commissions such as the 'Virtual Depictions' project in San Francisco and the 'Wind of Boston' data painting in South Boston which immediately gained traction and attention in the art world due to his novel and innovative approach using digital data. 
Other permanent public art installations are 'Interconnected', a 2,147 square feet of animated art screen at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, 'Virtual Applique' at the Beverly Center in Los Angeles, or 'Data Chrystal' a large-scale, 3-D printed, A.I. data sculpture installed at the Portland Building in Portland, Oregon.
Further commissions include temporary installations such as the 'Infinity Room' project at the Zorlu Performing Arts Center during the 2015 Istanbul Biennial where he created an immersive environment transforming all surfaces of the room into an abstract infinite moving space. The 'Infinity Room' project was sub sequentially exhibited at the SXSW in Austin, Texas.
In 2018, Anadol was commissioned to project onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall, as part of their anniversary celebration, with a 12 minute data sculpture animation named 'WDCH Dreams'. The animation featured an array of digitally abstracted photographs, audio and video recordings found inside concert halls archive.
In 2019, he designed 'Machine Hallucination' an immersive audiovisual installation, on view at Artechouse, a digital art space in New York's Chelsea Market. The project processed datasets of publicly available images of New York City including over 300 million photos, and 113 million other raw data points. In the same year, Anadol created 'Seoul Haemong', a 16 minute projection onto the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) building in Seoul, South Korea by architect Zaha Hadid, celebrating the Korean year-end holiday season.
In 2020, his work was part of the Melbourne's NGV Triennial in Australia. His project "Quantum Memories" consisted of a screen measuring 35ft by 35ft.
In 2021, Anadol was commissioned by the Pilevneli Gallery in Istanbul to create "Machine Memoirs: Space".
As of 2021, Anadol is on the faculty at the Media Arts School at UCLA.
Awards.
Anadol has received several awards and recognition for this work including the Microsoft Research's Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Award, SEGD Global Design Awards and Google's Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award. In 2021 he was selected to participate in the Architecture Biennial in Venice, Italy.