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ARTECHOUSE's Chelsea Market space will let visitors experience architectural hallucinations

Digital Trip

ARTECHOUSE's Chelsea Market space will let visitors experience architectural hallucinations

By processing millions of images through machine learning algorithms, Refik Anadol will create an ever-changing series of "architectural hallucinations" to be projected in New York's new ARTECHOUSE space. (Courtesy ARTECHOUSE/Refik Anadol)

ARTECHOUSE, a technology-focused art exhibition platform conceived in 2015 by Sandro Kereselidze and Tati Pastukhova, has been presenting digitally inspired art in Washington D.C. and Miami. Now they’re coming to New York, “a clear next step for [their] mission,” with an inaugural exhibition by Refik Anadol.

The Istanbul-born, Los Angeles-based Anadol is known for his light and projection installations that often have an architectural component, such as the recent animation projected on the facade of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. For ARTECHOUSE in New York (also Anadol’s first large exhibition in New York),  he’ll be presenting Machine Hallucination. The installation will create what he calls “architectural hallucinations” that are derived from millions of images processed by artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.

“With Refik, it’s been a collaborative process for over a year and a half, bringing a new commission, Machine Hallucination to life,” explained Kereselidze and Pastukhova. “We have worked closely with Refik to develop the concept for this exciting new work, thinking carefully about how to most effectively utilize and explore our Chelsea Market space.” ARTECHOUSE is especially suited to visualizing Refik’s “data universe” with a floor-to-ceiling, room-wrapping 16K laser projector that the creators claim features “the largest seamless megapixel count in the world,” along with 32-channel sound from L-ISA.

The more than 3 million photos, representing numerous architectural styles and movements, will be made to expose (or generate) latent connections between these representations of architectural history, generating “hallucinations” that challenge our notions of space and how we experience it—and providing insight into how machines might experience space themselves. It makes us consider what happens when architecture becomes information. Of the work, Anadol said, “By employing machine intelligence to help narrate the hybrid relationship between architecture and our perception of time and space, Machine Hallucination offers the audience a glimpse into the future of architecture itself.”

Machine Hallucination will inhabit the new 6,000-square-foot ARTECHOUSE space in Chelsea Market, located in an over-century-old former boiler room which features exposed brick walls and a refurbished terracotta ceiling, which according to its creators, “supplies each artist with a unique canvas and the ability to drive narratives connecting the old and new.” ARTECHOUSE will be opening to the public early next month.


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