Special Guests - Building 21

Valérie Pisano

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President and CEO of MILA, Québec AI Institute

Michael Lapsley

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Founder of the Institute for Healing of Memories

Professor Michael Levin

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Planarians and Intentionality

Karen Tam

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Eating Gold Mountain Dreams

Professor Paula Williams

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The Psychology of Awe

Alexander Weinstein

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Author of "Children of the New World" and "Universal Love"

Betty Edwards

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Learning to Draw for Thinking's Sake

Dr. David M. Peña-Guzmán

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When Animals Dream

Angus Fletcher

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The Brain and Narratives, The Limits of AI

Leah Price

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Author, Professor, Book Historian

Antonio Zadra

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Dream Researcher, Director of the Dream Laboratory at UdeM

Frédéric Gilbert

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The Ethics of Implantable Brain-Computer Interface

Gabriella Coleman

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The Hacker Community

Dr. Raj Aggarwal

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Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at Panda Health

Dr. Ed Finn

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Founder of the Center for Science and the Imagination at ASU

Jonathan Ledgard

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Director of Rossums, Author of "Submergence", NYT Book of the Year

Dr. Paul Yachnin

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Lead Author of the White Paper on the Future of the PhD in the Humanities

Dr. Sha Xin Wei

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Director of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University

David Krakauer

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President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute

Francesca Panetta

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Creative Director at the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality

David Jhave Johnston

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A Brief History of Brain-Machine Interfaces/Implants and the Underlying Neurological Research

Refik Anadol

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Creating A New Aesthetic By Asking Whether Machines Can Dream

Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is a media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where he owns and operates Refik Anadol Studio and RAS LAB, the Studio’s research practice centered around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives and artificial intelligence. Anadol is also a lecturer and researcher for UCLA's Department of Design Media Arts from which he obtained his Master of Fine Arts.

Anadol’s body of work addresses the challenges, and the possibilities, that ubiquitous computing has imposed on humanity, and what it means to be a human in the age of AI. He explores how the perception and experience of time and space are radically changing now that machines dominate our everyday lives. As a spatial thinker, Anadol is intrigued by the ways in which the digital age and machine intelligence allow for a new aesthetic technique to create enriched immersive environments that offer a dynamic perception of space.

By proposing the possibility of “post-digital architecture,” Anadol invites his audience to imagine alternative realities by re-defining the functionalities of both interior and exterior architectural elements. Anadol tackles this by moving beyond the integration of media into built forms, instead, translating the logic of a new media technology into spatial design. Residing at the crossroads of art, science, and technology, Anadol’s site-specific three-dimensional data sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many virtual and physical forms. Entire buildings come to life, floors, walls, and ceilings disappear into infinity, breathtaking aesthetics take shape from large swaths of data, and what was once invisible to the human eye becomes visible, offering the audience a new perspective on, and narrative of, their worlds.

Refik Anadol and the Studio’s global projects such as Machine Hallucination, WDCH Dreams, Melting Memories, Infinity Room, and Archive Dreaming have received a number of awards and prizes including the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art, Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, iF Gold Award, D&AD Pencil Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award, University of California Institute for Research in the Arts Award, SEGD Global Design Award, and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.