BOSPHORUS

2020

Refik Anadol

*1985 in Turkey

Bosphorus by Refik Anadol is a data sculpture based on natural movement data. It is no less than an artificial sea surface of synthetic cuboids derived algorithmically from high-frequency radar data collections provided by the Turkish State Meteorological Service. The Meteorological Service measures sea surface activities at 30-minute intervals. The projection is composed of the total data volume produced by thirty days of such data movements. The artificial sea surface transforms the graduation tower into a captivating poetic experience. The visualisation appears to change at every moment, but seems to be organic and harmonious nonetheless, even though, on closer scrutiny, it consists of one unique basic form: an animated, rotating and flowing cuboid, hundreds of thousands of them, in fact. Refik Anadol impressively demonstrates what the artistic/exact transfer of exact scientific data to non-animated objects is capable of: his visualisation triggers in us the same pleasure that can otherwise only be got from actual forces of nature. The work is being adapted and expanded to a special form for the installation in Bad Rothenfelde.

Refik Anadol participated in the group exhibition entitled Winds of Shenzhen, 40 Years of Humanizing Technology at the Ars Electronica in Shenzhen, China, in 2019, among other things, and in the group exhibition Neuro Space at the Society of Neuroscience in Chicago. For more information on Refik Anadol, visit http://refikanadol.com.