Documentation of Refik Anadol’s ‘Unsupervised’ — Machine Hallucinations — at MoMA

Unsupervised is part of Machine Hallucinations, Refik Anadol Studio’s ongoing project exploring data aesthetics based on collective visual memories. Since the inception of the project in 2016, Anadol has utilized machine intelligence as a collaborator of human consciousness, specifically DCGAN, PGAN, and StyleGAN algorithms trained on vast datasets to unfold unrecognized layers of our external realities. Anadol and his team collect data from digital archives and publicly available resources, and process these datasets with machine-learning classification models. As a masterfully curated multi-channel experience, Machine Hallucinations brings a self-regenerating element of surprise to the audience and offers a new form of sensorial autonomy via cybernetic serendipity.

This video documents 1 min 18 seconds of Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations — MoMA (2022), one of the three works in “Refik Anadol: Unsupervised” at MoMA, which continuously unfolds in real time, it was on view at the museum through April 15, 2023. The AI-based abstract images and shapes that result from the machine’s unsupervised learning of modern art are dictated by the Museum’s collection archive, weighted toward the special exhibition of new artworks at MoMA.

The AI data pigmentation, in turn, captures the movement in the latent space created by autonomous machine hallucinations. Each data connection is driven by an edge-detection algorithm and colorized by the density of its previous and next latent coordinates. In other words, the machine allows the artist to trace its “unconscious decisions,” in a network of intricate and poetic connections.