Refik Anadol had Mark Rothko on his mind last week as he unveiled “Living Architecture: Gehry,” an AI-powered reimagining of Frank Gehry’s architectural legacy at the Guggenheim Bilbao.
“I’m hoping that this artwork not only talks about technology but really talks about where we are going,” Anadol shared during the exhibition’s opening press conference. “Rothko said, ‘My work is a place.’ I feel that Gallery 208 [where the work is installed] is a place. It’s a place where we wonder, we question, we really deep dive into the issues of life.”
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Although Rothko never actually said this—the quote Anadol likely meant to reference was, “A painting is not a picture of an experience, but is the experience”—the sentiment was clear: Anadol hopes that this new work will be transformative and unifying. “The museum brings us together in a physical world,” Anadol said. “Instead of being alone and disconnected, we are together.”
For the past decade, the Turkish-American visual artist has made headlines for his pioneering work in bringing artificial intelligence to the art world. Alongside his team at Refik Anadol Studio, the artist has projection-mapped work onto the façade of such landmark buildings as Casa Batlló in Barcelona and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, using the static structures as a canvas for their technologically advanced art practice. His 2022 installation at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations – MoMA, is a generative artwork that uses a machine-learning model to interpret and transform images of artworks in MoMA’s collection that were then projected onto a 24-foot-tall LED wall. That work, which filled the museum’s lobby for over a year before being acquired, brought nearly three million visitors to the museum and cemented Anadol’s star power. The Guggenheim Bilbao seems to be hoping that “Living Architecture: Gehry” will be a similar smash-hit success.
“Living Architecture: Gehry” marks the beginning of the museum’s “in situ” series, which curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller launched to inspire artists to rethink the museum’s Gallery 208 room.
“It’s a very challenging space to tackle,” she told ARTnews, calling attention to the room’s curved walls and high ceilings. “It can eat things alive, or it can make things shine. Each artist has to find their way to lean into what it can offer.” Inviting Anadol to propose a site-specific work was a natural fit, according to Waitoller. “The architecture is the premise [of the series], so he really took that to heart and did it in the most direct way possible,” she said.
The result is a groundbreaking audiovisual installation made specifically for Bilbao’s famous Gehry-designed museum. With Gehry’s personal blessing — and a data model trained on over 35 million reference images, plans, and structural documents from Gehry buildings around the world — the installation takes viewers through six interconnected chapters that sees the data set morph through complex pattern recognition and hallucinatory abstract visions, ending with the “Dreams,” a kaleidoscopic chapter that sees the AI transform the data in real-time, imagining new architectural forms.
Refik Anadol
Photo Efsun Erkilic
It was a massive undertaking, with 46 projectors and multiple cameras (to map the unique curvature of the walls) hanging above the space on a custom rig that required the museum to reinforce the ceiling. The visuals are rendered in 20K resolution, which Anadol claims is the the largest resolution ever created with AI, and a custom soundscape by Kerim Karaoglu was made from recordings taken from the museum and other Gehry buildings around the world. There is even a custom scent piped in (though this element wasn’t finalized until after the opening).
The result is a multisensory experience that must be seen and felt (and smelled); a unique work that gets to the heart of art and technology’s increasingly intertwined relationship.
“AI and machine intelligence are increasingly shaping every aspect of life, and this evolving reality naturally sparks curiosity—something I expect will draw strong interest to Anadol’s exhibition,” Waitoller said, noting that Anadol has also collaborated with the museum’s education department to help illuminate how the work was developed. “We hope this will enrich the experience, transforming the exhibition from a purely immersive spectacle into an opportunity for learning and reflection.”
The work has also, naturally, prompted concerns about sustainability given that AI models use massive amounts of data, which then requires massive amounts of water to cool the data centers running the models. During the preview, both Anadol and Waitoller attempted to clarify any confusion about the work’s carbon footprint. One early step toward sustainability came from Anadol’s decision to delete the 35 million images used in the data set after training the AI model. “To hold on to that many images would [have a] huge carbon footprint,” Waitoller said. Additionally, the first five chapters are stored locally, with only the final portion of the installation rendered in real-time and powered by renewable energy sourced from Google Cloud server farms in the Netherlands.
Presenting the AI pipelines and data sets “clearly, openly, and honestly” to show exactly how the work is powered was key. Carbon emission stats can be seen throughout the visualization, and Anadol claimed that running the artwork for one year takes the equivalent energy consumption of charging four cell phones over the same time span. To his credit, Anadol has been open about the processing power and energy that his large-scale AI art requires and has worked to lower the emissions. His hope with “Living Architecture” and other projects — like the recently announced “Living Encyclopedia” created with half a billion nature-focused images and powered by sustainable energy — is to change the narrative over “AI art.”
It’s a hope shared by Ryan Zurrer, a Swiss venture capitalist and longtime funder of Anadol’s work, who sat on the panel alongside a representative from the program’s technology partner, the Spanish telecommunications giant Euskaltel.
“There’s a lot of feelings of angst and anxiety with respect to AI,” Zurrer said. “But when Refik’s work is presented in this beautiful manner, at scale, we see people be able to change the relationship with AI and realize that this will bring more beauty, more art, more creativity to our world.”
While patronage has long been a stable in every creative field, many have questioned the copious corporate and private support of Anadol, and whether his work amounts to “tech boosterism.”
“I think it is worth questioning the motives of companies or investors, particularly when they are involved with controversial technologies,” Alice Helliwell, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University London and computational creativity researcher, told ARTnews. “What do they want to draw attention to, versus what do they want to distract from?”
“This being said, despite concerns we may have about AI, it is still an area of great potential, and exploring the creative possibilities of new technologies is, in my opinion, worthy of investment,” Helliwell added. “If Anadol’s work can help show that there is interesting and creative work being done with AI systems in the arts, I think that is a positive.”
With the installation open until October 19, Anadol hopes that visitors will leave inspired to imagine new creative horizons. “We are in this new era where I don’t think we can just say [“Living Architecture”] is a painting or a performance or a video art. We are imagining a new form of reality,” the artist said. “I hope that you can see this beyond the shiny pixels. I hope that you can see this beyond just the technology; that there’s a deep understanding and meaning behind the work.”
It remains to be seen whether the lofty goals will be met (or whether it’ll draw historic crowds like his MoMA installation) but, judging by the warm response he received from patrons at the preview—plus his forthcoming Dataland AI museum project in Los Angeles—it’s clear that Anadol’s ambitious AI works are striking a chord.