Refik Anadol’s use of AI has made him the artist of the moment

HE is in high demand. Last year Refik Anadol projected luminous images of coral on to a wall at the World Economic Forum in Davos and covered the exterior screen of the Sphere, a new concert venue in Las Vegas, with animated, tumbling blue blocks. In October the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York acquired “Unsupervised—Machine Hallucinations”, in which a machine-learning model generates artworks based on those in the museum’s collection. On February 16th “Echoes of the Earth”, his largest-ever show in Britain, opened at the Serpentine North Gallery in London.

Mr Anadol, a 38-year-old Turk who lives in Los Angeles, is riding widespread public interest in artificial intelligence to become the most visible digital artist of his generation. His work reflects the innovation and anxieties of the current moment. As Mr Anadol sees it, AI is a powerful creative tool. In a world where so much of life happens in a digital realm, he argues, data has become a new “pigment”.