Do Alternate Realities Exist? This Artist's Machines Are Ready to Find Out

March 25, 2021

Do AI dream of electric sheep? UCLA Design/Media Arts grad and current visiting researcher Refik Anadol is using new technology and quantum mechanics theory to teach AI to "dream" up new realities.

Refik Anadol (Image Credit: Efsun Erkılıç)

"Authors and filmmakers have long speculated on the existence of alternate realities, but L.A.-based visual artist Refik Anadol is working with an artificial intelligence to see if machines can do the same—via spectacular art installations.

The AI in question is tapping into quantum mechanics. "We in our daily lives are not able to see alternative dimensions, but in quantum mechanics [and] quantum computation, there is still a theory of many worlds. And in [the] subatomic world of quantum mechanics, you can see things in superposition, and we are speculating in this project that, perhaps, if AI can look at this complexity...it can see an alternative reality.

"So simply, we are watching an AI dreaming," Anadol says.

Anadol’s projects have appeared all over the world (Walt Disney Concert Hall, Centre Pompidou, Daejeon Museum of Art), and he served as an artist-in-residence for Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence program. Is this the future of art and architecture, and does Anadol’s AI know something about other worlds that we don’t? We talked to him to find out."— S.C. Stuart, March 25, 2021

 

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the PCMag website.
Read more about Refik Anadol.

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