At Serpentine there’s some immersive AI video works by Rafik Anadol. He is an early mover in using AI for art on a grand scale. There are 3 projects, though working out their boundaries in the gallery is hard, as is distinguishing the project names. The gallery describes one project Living Archive: Large Nature Model, which trained on images from the Smithsonian, National Geographic, and London’s Natural History Museum (Artnet February 15, 2024) in this way:
“The installation wraps the gallery walls in AI generated images inspired by data of flora, fungi and fauna from over 16 rainforest locations globally, which was collected using technologies such as LiDAR and photogrammetry.”
Beautiful or banal? The artist’s recent work at MOMA (Unsupervised, 2022), was a nice antidote to hours of cruising the collection, but as a standalone piece it felt like spectacle. Is that enough? Is it art? It’s described in the show as the nexus of art, technology and nature. First steps towards something very new? Below: Artificial Realities: Coral, “highlighting the role of coral reefs.”
