Machine Dreams: Space

Machine Dreams is an ongoing data aesthetics project in which Refik Anadol collaborates with Artificial Intelligence to reveal layers of our external worlds. A multi-channel immersive installation, Machine Dreams: Space (2022) is a machine-induced communal dream based on recorded visual impressions of Riyadh. To create the work, Anadol trained a generative network model on publicly-accessible photographs of Riyadh culled from social media platforms and digital image archives. Through machine learning, the city’s data universe is processed in over a thousand latent dimensions. In Machine Dreams: Space, Anadol explores the ways in which memory may be spatially experienced, as well as the ways in which AI can enhance our senses.