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,我是媒體藝術家。 我用資料當顏料, 用人工智慧輔助的 智能筆刷來作畫, 我用建築空間當作畫布, 和機器合作, 讓建築物也能作夢、幻想。 你可能在納悶,這些是什麼意思? 請容我帶你來看看 我的工作和我的世界。
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.
在伊斯坦堡長大的我, 八歲時,目擊了想像力的力量。 有一天,我媽媽帶了一支錄影帶回家, 是部科幻電影《銀翼殺手》。 我清楚記得我對未來洛杉磯的 驚人建築想像深深著迷, 那是我從來沒有見過的地方。 那幅影像便成了我作白日夢的主題。
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?
2012 年我到洛杉磯 就讀設計媒體藝術研究所, 我租了一輛車開到市區, 去看那個在不遠未來的美妙世界。 我記得在我腦中有一句話 不斷重覆播放: 在這一幕中,機器人瑞秋 發現她的記憶其實不是她的, 戴克告訴她那些是別人的記憶。 從那一刻起,這個問題 就一直是我的靈感之一。 機器如何使用他人的記憶? 或者,換個說法, 身為二十一世紀中的 人工智慧,有什麼意涵?
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"?
任何機器人或人工智慧機器 都只有在我們和它 連結合作時,它才具有智慧。 它能夠建造出 人類智慧想要製作 卻沒有能力做出來的東西。 比如,想想你在社交網路上的活動。 你越和它們互動,它們就變得越聰明。 如果機器能學習或處理記憶, 它們是否也能作夢? 幻想? 非自願性地回想 或在多人的夢境中建立連結? 身為二十一世紀的人工智慧 就僅表示什麼都不會忘記嗎? 若是如此, 我們花數世紀的努力 在各媒體中捕捉歷史, 這不就是我們所能體驗到 最革命性的經歷了嗎? 換言之, 從雷利史考特的《銀翼殺手》之後, 我們又走了多遠?
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.
於是,我在 2014 年 成立了我的工作室, 並邀請建築師、 電腦及資料科學家、神經科學家、 音樂家,甚至說故事的人 一同加入來實現我的夢想。 資料能變成顏料嗎? 當我們開始這段旅程時, 這就是我們問的第一個問題, 我們的目標是將媒體藝術 置入到建築當中, 讓虛擬和實體世界碰撞。 我們開始想像我所謂的資料詩學。
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.
我們最初的計畫之一是《虛擬描繪》, 它是一件公共資料雕塑作品, 由舊金山市委任我們製作。 這件作品邀請觀眾 在一個活生生的都市空間中 參與壯觀的美學體驗, 這件作品描繪出 城市本身的連結網路。 它也是在提醒我們, 我們日常生活中看不見的資料, 如這裡所呈現的推特推文, 也能變成可見的, 並轉變為可全體一同體驗的 感官知識。
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.
事實上,資料一定要被體驗, 之後才能夠變成知識, 而知識和體驗都可以 有許多不同的形式。 在透過機器智慧的強大潛能 探索這類連結時, 我們也會思索人類感官與機器 模擬大自然的能力有什麼關聯。
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.
這些疑問出現在用風的資料作畫時。 它們呈現出來的形式,是視覺化的詩, 其基礎是我們從風感測器 收集來的隱藏資料集, 接著,我們使用生成演算法 將風速、陣風以及風向 轉變成為以太資料顏料。 產生的結果是種帶著沉思 又有推測性的體驗。 這件名為《博斯普魯斯海峽》的 動態資料雕塑作品, 則是質疑我們重新想像 自然現象的類似嘗試。 我們用馬摩拉海的高頻率雷達 收集海面的資料, 並用機器智慧將其動態做投射。 我們在一種平靜卻又經常 改變的合成海景中, 創造出了一種沉浸感。
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.
用大腦來看,通常就稱作想像, 對我來說,對建築的想像 超越了單純的玻璃、金屬或混凝土, 而是去實驗沉浸的最大可能性, 以及在既有環境中 擴增我們感知的方法。
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.
人工智慧的研究每天都有進展, 讓我們覺得被連接到一個比我們自己 更大、更有知識的系統上。
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.
2017 年,我們發現了 一個開放原始碼的圖書館, 裡面有伊斯坦堡文化的文件, 因此我們便開始投入《檔案夢》, 它是世界上最早的 人工智慧導向公共裝置之一, 這個人工智慧所探究的 近 170 萬份文件 橫跨了 270 年。 在這個過程中,我們的靈感之一 是一個短篇故事, 叫做《巴別塔圖書館》, 作者是阿根廷作家 豪爾赫.路易斯.波赫士。 在這個故事中, 作者構想出的宇宙形式 是個巨大的圖書館, 盡可能收藏所有 410 頁的書籍, 都有一個特定的格式和字元集。 透過這個啟發性的影像, 我們想像出了一種方式, 可以在機器智慧的時代, 實體去探索浩瀚的知識檔案。 因此做出的成品,各位可以看到, 是一個使用者導向的沉浸式空間。 《檔案夢》深刻地轉變了 機器智慧時代的圖書館體驗。
"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.
《機器幻想》是在探索 透過紐約市公共照片檔案 所體驗到的時間和空間。 為了這個獨一無二的沉浸式計畫, 我們採用了機器學習演算法 來找出並處理該城市的一億張照片。 我們設計了一個創新的敘事系統, 用人工智慧來預測 或幻想出新的影像, 讓觀者能夠步入 紐約的過去和未來 融合成的如夢境之地。
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.
隨著我們的計畫更深入到 記住和傳送知識, 我們想了更多關於 記憶為什麼不是靜態的回憶 而是對過去的事件 做出千變萬化的詮釋。 我們思索了機器如何 模擬無意識和潛意識的事件, 比如作夢、回想和幻想。 因此,我們創作出了《熔化的記憶》, 將回想的時刻視覺化。
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.
這個靈感來自一個悲劇事件, 我得知我叔叔被診斷出阿茲海默症。 那時,我唯一能想的就是要找方法 來讚頌我們回想的方式、回想的內容, 且要在我們還能做的時候就去做。 我開始認為,記憶並不是消失, 而是熔化了或改變了形態。 在機器智慧的協助下, 我們和加州大學 Neuroscape 實驗室的 科學家合作, 他們告訴我們如何了解 在記憶形成時的大腦訊號。 雖然我自己的叔叔失去了 處理記憶的能力, 腦電圖資料所產生的藝術作品 探索了回想的具體性, 並向我叔叔所失去的致上敬意。
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.
現代洛杉磯幾乎完全不符合 我童年時對該城市的期望, 不過有一棟很不凡的建築物例外: 華特迪士尼音樂廳, 由法蘭克.蓋瑞設計, 他一直是我心目中的英雄。 2018 年,我接到 洛杉磯愛樂樂團的電話, 他們想找一個裝置, 作為這個知名交響樂團的百年紀念。 為此,我們決定要問這個問題: 「建築物能學習嗎?它會作夢嗎?」 為了回答這個問題, 我們決定要收集洛杉磯愛樂樂團 和華特迪士尼音樂廳的檔案中 所記載的一切資訊。 精確來說,是轉成 77 TB 的 數位檔案的記憶。 使用機器智慧, 我們讓所有這一百年來的檔案 變成了建築物外牆上的投影, 用四十二台投影機, 在洛杉磯的心臟地帶, 實現了這種未來感的公眾體驗, 朝《銀翼殺手》中的 洛杉磯又邁進了一步。 如果真有建築物能夠作夢, 那肯定就是這一刻。
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?
現在,我邀請各位 再跟我去最後一個地方: 機器的腦中。 現在,我們完全沉浸在過去三十年 所有舉辦過的 TED 演講 所構成的資料宇宙中。 也就是說, 這個資料集包含了 TED 舞台上的 7705 場演講。 那些演講被轉變成 740 萬秒, 每一秒都在這個資料宇宙中呈現出來。 各位在這裡看到的每一個影像 都代表那些演講中某個獨特的時刻。 我們使用機器智慧 處理了總共 487,000 個句子, 分成 330 個不重覆的 主題叢集,比如:大自然、 全球排放、絕種、種族議題、計算、 信任、情緒、水和難民。 接著,再用一個演算法 將這些叢集連結起來, 這個演算法產生出 一億一千三百萬條線段, 這些線段揭示出新的概念關係。 如果能記得在演講台上 曾經被問過的所有問題, 不是很不可思議嗎?
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.
我進來了, 身在無數偉大思想家的腦中, 同時也是機器的腦中, 和各種感覺互動, 這些感覺源自於學習、 回想、質疑, 以及想像,全都同時發生, 將大腦的力量擴張出去。
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.
對我來說,在這裡 的確就是身為二十一世紀 人工智慧的意涵。 我們人類有責任 要訓練這個大腦去學習和記憶 我們所能想像的夢想。
Thank you.
謝謝。