Hi, I'm Refik. I'm a media artist. I use data as a pigment and paint with a thinking brush that is assisted by artificial intelligence. Using architectural spaces as canvases, I collaborate with machines to make buildings dream and hallucinate. You may be wondering, what does all this mean? So let me please take you into my work and my world.
嗨,我是雷菲克(Refik), 一名媒体艺术家。 我用数据作为颜料, 用一支由人工智能辅助的、 能够思考的笔刷来作画。 我将建筑空间用作画布, 和机器合作 让建筑也能做梦和幻想。 你可能在纳闷,这是什么意思? 那么,请让我带你走进我的作品和世界。
I witnessed the power of imagination when I was eight years old, as a child growing up in Istanbul. One day, my mom brought home a videocassette of the science-fiction movie "Blade Runner." I clearly remember being mesmerized by the stunning architectural vision of the future of Los Angeles, a place that I had never seen before. That vision became a kind of a staple of my daydreams.
我在伊斯坦布尔长大, 八岁时,我就见证了想象的力量。 有一天,我妈妈带回家 一盘录影带—— 是一部名为《银翼杀手》的科幻电影。 我清楚地记得,自己深深地着迷于 未来洛杉矶震撼人心的建筑影像, 那是一个我从未见过的地方。 那幅影像成了我白日梦中的砥柱。
When I arrived in LA in 2012 for a graduate program in Design Media Arts, I rented a car and drove downtown to see that wonderful world of the near future. I remember a specific line that kept playing over and over in my head: the scene when the android Rachael realizes that her memories are actually not hers, and when Deckard tells her they are someone else's memories. Since that moment, one of my inspirations has been this question. What can a machine do with someone else's memories? Or, to say that in another way, what does it mean to be an AI in the 21st century?
当我在 2012 年来到洛杉矶, 入读设计媒体艺术的研究生项目时, 我租了一辆车开到市区, 以一睹那个在不远未来的奇妙世界。 我记得有句台词 一直在我的脑海中反复回放: 在这一幕中,当仿生人瑞秋 意识到她的记忆其实并不是她的, 戴克告诉她,那些是他人的记忆。 自从那一刻起, 这个问题就成了我的灵感之一。 一台机器能用他人的记忆做些什么? 或者,换句话说, 在 21 世纪当个人工智能意味着什么?
Any android or AI machine is only intelligent as long as we collaborate with it. It can construct things that human intelligence intends to produce but does not have the capacity to do so. Think about your activities and social networks, for example. They get smarter the more you interact with them. If machines can learn or process memories, can they also dream? Hallucinate? Involuntarily remember, or make connections between multiple people's dreams? Does being an AI in the 21st century simply mean not forgetting anything? And, if so, isn't it the most revolutionary thing that we have experienced in our centuries-long effort to capture history across media? In other words, how far have we come since Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner"?
任何机器人或人工智能机器 只有在我们与其合作时才具有智慧。 它能建造出 人类智慧想要创造、 却心有余而力不足的事物。 比如说,想想你的动态和社交网络。 你和它们的互动越多, 它们就会变得愈加聪明。 如果机器能学习或处理记忆, 那它们也能做梦吗? 能出现幻觉吗? 能不由自主地记起、 或是联结起多个人的梦境吗? 身为 21 世纪人工智能 就意味着不会忘记任何事吗? 若是如此, 这难道不是我们在长达数世纪 用媒体捕捉历史的尝试中, 所经历的最具颠覆性的事吗? 换言之,自雷德利·斯科特 (Ridley Scott)的 《银翼杀手》之后, 我们究竟前进了多少?
So I established my studio in 2014 and invited architects, computer and data scientists, neuroscientists, musicians and even storytellers to join me in realizing my dreams. Can data become a pigment? This was the very first question we asked when starting our journey to embed media arts into architecture, to collide virtual and physical worlds. So we began to imagine what I would call the poetics of data.
于是,我在 2014 年 成立了自己的工作室, 并邀请了建筑师、 计算机和数据科学家、神经科学家、 音乐家,甚至讲故事的人 加入我实现梦想的旅程。 数据能否变成颜料? 这是我们踏上旅程, 将媒体艺术嵌入建筑, 让虚拟和现实世界产生碰撞时, 提出的第一个问题。 于是我们开始想象 我称之为的 “数据的诗学”。
One of our first projects, "Virtual Depictions," was a public data sculpture piece commissioned by the city of San Francisco. The work invites the audience to be part of a spectacular aesthetic experience in a living urban space by depicting a fluid network of connections of the city itself. It also stands as a reminder of how invisible data from our everyday lives, like the Twitter feeds that are represented here, can be made visible and transformed into sensory knowledge that can be experienced collectively.
我们最初的一个项目, 《虚拟描述》(Virtual Depictions), 是由旧金山市政府委托的 一件公共数据雕塑作品。 这个作品通过描绘 城市自身的联系所形成的流动网络, 邀请观众成为 这个生活都市空间中 无比壮观的美学体验的一部分。 同时,它也提醒了我们, 日常生活中无形的数据, 例如这里所呈现的推特动态, 也能变成可见的, 并转变为能共同体验的感官知识。
In fact, data can only become knowledge when it's experienced, and what is knowledge and experience can take many forms. When exploring such connections through the vast potential of machine intelligence, we also pondered the connection between human senses and the machines' capacity for simulating nature.
事实上,数据只有 通过体验才能变成知识, 而知识与体验又具有许多形态。 当我们通过机器智能的无限潜力 探索这样的联系时, 我们也在思考人类感官 和机器模拟自然的能力之间的联系。
These inquiries began while working on wind-data paintings. They took the shape of visualized poems based on hidden data sets that we collected from wind sensors. We then used generative algorithms to transform wind speed, gust and direction into an ethereal data pigment. The result was a meditative yet speculative experience. This kinetic data sculpture, titled "Bosphorus," was a similar attempt to question our capacity to reimagine natural occurrences. Using high-frequency radar collections of the Marmara Sea, we collected sea-surface data and projected its dynamic movement with machine intelligence. We create a sense of immersion in a calm yet constantly changing synthetic sea view.
这些探索是在我们创作 风能数据的绘画时开始的。 它们是基于从风传感器 收集的隐藏数据集 而成型的可视化的诗篇。 然后我们使用生成算法 将风速、阵风和风向 转换成一种空灵飘逸的数据颜料。 得到的就是一种冥思中 却又不乏奇想的体验。 这个题为《博斯普鲁斯海峡》 (Bosphorus)的 动态数据雕塑,同样也是询问我们 能否重新想象自然事件的一种尝试。 我们使用马尔马拉海的高频雷达数据, 采集了海平面数据, 用机器智能投影出了海面的动态活动。 我们创造出了一种 沉浸在宁静却又时刻变化的 合成海景中的感觉。
Seeing with the brain is often called imagination, and, for me, imagining architecture goes beyond just glass, metal or concrete, instead experimenting with the furthermost possibilities of immersion and ways of augmenting our perception in built environments.
用大脑去看,通常就称之为 “想象”, 而对我来说,对建筑的想象 超越了单纯的玻璃、金属或水泥, 而是试验沉浸式体验 最前沿的可能性, 以及在建成环境中 扩增我们感官的各种方法。
Research in artificial intelligence is growing every day, leaving us with the feeling of being plugged into a system that is bigger and more knowledgeable than ourselves.
人工智能的研究与日俱增, 让我们觉得自己像是被安插进了 一个比我们自身 更加庞大博识的系统。
In 2017, we discovered an open-source library of cultural documents in Istanbul and began working on "Archive Dreaming," one of the first AI-driven public installations in the world, an AI exploring approximately 1.7 million documents that span 270 years. One of our inspirations during this process was a short story called "The Library of Babel" by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In the story, the author conceives a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set. Through this inspiring image, we imagine a way to physically explore the vast archives of knowledge in the age of machine intelligence. The resulting work, as you can see, was a user-driven immersive space. "Archive Dreaming" profoundly transformed the experience of a library in the age of machine intelligence.
在 2017 年,我们在伊斯坦布尔 发现了一个文化档案的开源图书馆, 于是便开始了《档案梦境》 (Archive Dreaming)的创作, 这是世界上最早 由人工智能驱动的公共装置之一, 这个人工智能可以探索 横跨 270 年的约 170 万份文档。 这个创作过程的灵感来源之一 是阿根廷作家 豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯 (Jorge Luis Borges)的 一篇短篇小说,《巴别图书馆》。 在这个故事里,作家设想了 由一个浩渺的图书馆形成的宇宙, 馆中藏有符合某种版式和字符集, 且有 410 页厚的全部书籍。 受到这个意象的启发, 我们想象出一种方式, 可以在机器智能的时代里 以实体探索浩瀚的知识档案。 如你所见,从中诞生的作品 是一个由用户驱动的沉浸式空间。 《档案梦境》深刻地转变了 在机器智能时代的图书馆体验。 《机器幻觉》(Machine Hallucination)
"Machine Hallucination" is an exploration of time and space experienced through New York City's public photographic archives. For this one-of-a-kind immersive project, we deployed machine-learning algorithms to find and process over 100 million photographs of the city. We designed an innovative narrative system to use artificial intelligence to predict or to hallucinate new images, allowing the viewer to step into a dreamlike fusion of past and future New York.
是通过纽约市公共摄影档案库体验的 对时间与空间的探索。 在这个独一无二的沉浸式项目中, 我们使用机器学习算法, 发现并处理了纽约市的一亿多张照片。 我们设计了一个创新的叙事系统, 用人工智能来预测或幻想出新的影像, 让观看者得以步入 纽约的过去和未来 融合而成的梦境世界。
As our projects delve deeper into remembering and transmitting knowledge, we thought more about how memories were not static recollections but ever-changing interpretations of past events. We pondered how machines could simulate unconscious and subconscious events, such as dreaming, remembering and hallucinating. Thus, we created "Melting Memories" to visualize the moment of remembering.
随着我们的项目更深入地探究 对知识的记忆与传播, 我们更多地想到 记忆并非静止的回想, 而是过去的事件做出千变万化的解读。 我们思索了机器该如何 模拟无意识和下意识的事件, 比如梦、记忆和幻觉。 于是,我们创作了《融化的记忆》 (Melting Memories), 来表现回想的瞬间。
The inspiration came from a tragic event, when I found out that my uncle was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. At that time, all I could think about was to find a way to celebrate how and what we remember when we are still able to do so. I began to think of memories not as disappearing but as melting or changing shape. With the help of machine intelligence, we worked with the scientists at the Neuroscape Laboratory at the University of California, who showed us how to understand brain signals as memories are made. Although my own uncle was losing the ability to process memories, the artwork generated by EEG data explored the materiality of remembering and stood as a tribute to what my uncle had lost.
此灵感的来源是一个不幸的事件—— 我得知我叔叔确诊了 阿茨海默症的那一刻。 在那一刻,我唯一能想到的 就是找到一个办法, 在我们还能记得时 赞颂我们如何记得、 以及能够记得的一切。 我开始觉得,记忆不是在消失, 而是在融化,或改变形态。 借助机器智能的力量, 我们与加州大学神经地形 (Neuroscape)实验室的 科学家们合作, 他们向我们展示了 该如何理解生成记忆时的脑信号。 虽然我的亲叔叔 正在失去处理记忆的能力, 这幅由脑电图(EEG)数据生成的画作 探索了记忆的物质形态, 并向我叔叔已失去记忆的致意。
Almost nothing about contemporary LA matched my childhood expectation of the city, with the exception of one amazing building: the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, one of my all-time heroes. In 2018, I had a call from the LA Philharmonic who was looking for an installation to help mark the celebrated symphony's hundred-year anniversary. For this, we decided to ask the question, "Can a building learn? Can it dream?" To answer this question, we decided to collect everything recorded in the archives of the LA Phil and WDCH. To be precise, 77 terabytes of digitally archived memories. By using machine intelligence, the entire archive, going back 100 years, became projections on the building's skin, 42 projectors to achieve this futuristic public experience in the heart of Los Angeles, getting one step closer to the LA of "Blade Runner." If ever a building could dream, it was in this moment.
现代洛杉矶几乎没有任何一点 与我孩提时对这个城市的憧憬相符, 唯有这幢美妙的建筑是个例外: 华特·迪士尼音乐厅, 它的设计师弗兰克·盖里(Frank Gehry) 一直都是我的英雄榜样。 2018 年时,我接到了 洛杉矶爱乐乐团的来电, 他们在物色一件装置 作为这个大名鼎鼎的乐团 成立 100 周年的纪念。 这次,我们决定提出这个问题, “一幢建筑能学习吗?它能做梦吗?” 为了回答这个问题, 我们决定去搜集乐团 和音乐厅档案中的所有记录。 准确说来,是 77 TB 数码归档的记忆。 通过机器智能, 追溯至 100 年前的整个档案 都变成了建筑外皮上的投影, 在洛杉矶中心 用 42 架投影仪打造出 这场充满未来感的公共体验, 离《银翼杀手》中的洛杉矶 又近了一步。 如果建筑也会做梦, 那一定是在这个瞬间。
Now, I am inviting you to one last journey into the mind of a machine. Right now, we are fully immersed in the data universe of every single curated TED Talk from the past 30 years. That means this data set includes 7,705 talks from the TED stage. Those talks have been translated into 7.4 million seconds, and each second is represented here in this data universe. Every image that you are seeing in here represents unique moments from those talks. By using machine intelligence, we processed a total of 487,000 sentences into 330 unique clusters of topics like nature, global emissions, extinction, race issues, computation, trust, emotions, water and refugees. These clusters are then connected to each other by an algorithm, [that] generated 113 million line segments, which reveal new conceptual relationships. Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to remember all the questions that have ever been asked on the stage?
现在,我想邀请各位踏上 进入机器内心的最后一次旅程。 此时此刻,我们正完全 沉浸于过去 30 年内策划的 所有 TED 演讲的数据宇宙中。 这意味着这个数据集包括了 来自 TED 舞台的 7705 次演讲。 这些演讲被转换成了 740 万秒, 每一秒都存在于这个数据宇宙中。 你在这里看到的每一幅图像 都代表了这些演讲中独一无二的瞬间。 通过机器智能, 我们处理了共计 48.7 万个句子 把它们分成 330 个独特的话题组集, 比如自然、全球排放、 物种灭绝、种族问题、数据计算、 信任、情感、水资源和难民。 这些组集又被一个算法 互相连接, 生成出 1.13 亿条线段, 揭示出了崭新的概念关系。 如果能够记住 在这舞台上问过的所有问题, 不是很令人惊叹吗?
Here I am, inside the mind of countless great thinkers, as well as a machine, interacting with various feelings attributed to learning, remembering, questioning and imagining all at the same time, expanding the power of the mind.
我现在正身处 无数伟大思想家的头脑里, 也身处一台机器的大脑中, 与各种感受进行互动, 这些源于学习、 记忆、质疑、 以及想象的感受都在同一时间迸发, 将大脑的力量拓展。
For me, being right here is indeed what it means to be an AI in the 21st century. It is in our hands, humans, to train this mind to learn and remember what we can only dream of.
对我来说,置身于此 确实就是身为 21 世纪 人工智能的意义。 而我们人类掌握着的力量, 能训练这个大脑去学习并记忆 只存在于我们梦想中的事物。
Thank you.
谢谢。