UCLA presents unique multimedia art installation April 19–24 in campus sculpture garden
Faculty and StaffFriends and SupportersStudentsThe work was created by alumnus Refik Anadol in the spirit of reflection
In partnership with UCLA, renowned artist and alumnus Refik Anadol has created a multisensory experience that commemorates the beauty of nature and seeks to aid in our collective renewal through the power of art. The multimedia installation titled “Moment of Reflection” will be displayed April 19–24 in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden.
Free and open to the public, all are invited to experience a never-before-seen media installation designed especially for UCLA. Viewing hours are from 6-10 a.m. and 4-10 p.m. daily. An opening-night unveiling featuring remarks from Anadol and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block will be held on Tuesday, April 19 at 7 p.m.
Anadol is a media artist, director and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. He earned a master of fine arts from UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts, where he currently serves as a lecturer. His body of work addresses the challenges and possibilities that ubiquitous computing has imposed on humanity. In his art, which often features colorful, animated images in a constant state of dynamic transformation, Anadol explores what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence.
Tens of thousands of Angelenos experienced Anadol’s “WDCH Dreams,” a week-long public art installation created for the 2018-19 Los Angeles Philharmonic’s centennial season, as both a 15-minute multisensory show that was projected onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall exterior accompanied by music, and in a season-long immersive exhibition inside the Ira Gershwin Gallery.
Anadol, and the team of artists, architects, data scientists and researchers who together make up Refik Anadol Studio, created the data sculpture especially for the UCLA campus by feeding machine learning algorithms a dataset of more than 300 million photographs of nature (landscapes, flowers, trees, clouds, water, lakes and the ocean). These massive, publicly available data sets, which Anadol refers to as “memories of humanity,” are the foundation of what the AI learns before it can dream of nature from an alternative perspective, or what the artist calls “the mind of a machine.”
The “Moment of Reflection” event was conceived in partnership with the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
“While there is much to be hopeful for in the months ahead, we also have much to reflect upon now that it has been more than two years since COVID-19 turned our lives upside down,” Block said. “Since we are able to gather in person again, I want to invite members of our community to join us for a special event that can help us process some of the difficulties we’ve endured, as well as build the hope and connection that will help all of us move forward.”