Refik Anadol's AI-Driven Work Breaks Big in 2023

The first time I spoke with Refik Anadol was in 2015. I was asking him to participate in a large-scale digital art installation project I was overseeing for Samsung. He turned me down. I am sure I was not the only one requesting, as he was getting a lot of attention for an architectural installation he had debuted in a building lobby in San Francisco called Virtual Depictions.

This profile is part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2023. For the full list, click here.

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That piece defied the senses as he created depth out of flat digital planes and his fluid dynamic visualizations seemed to spill out from the walls themselves. Creative code as art was coming of age and Anadol is one of the pioneers in a new art style that has journeyed from building lobbies to crypto wallets to some of the most influential museum collections in the world.

Anadol was born in Istanbul, Turkey and now lives in Los Angeles where his studio churns out data-powered digital artworks dancing over the edges of machine learning, AI and human creativity. And 2023 has been a breakout year for the artist.

Meet P1A, the artist who created an NFT image of Refik Anadol for Most Influential 2023.

He has done everything from releasing a 1,000-piece NFT art collection to benefit the Yawanawa indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest (which uses weather data from the village to power the works and has recorded over 8,600 ETH in secondary sales volume, all artist proceeds going to the tribe) to debuting his work on The Sphere, in Las Vegas, alongside visuals from U2 and Darren Aronofsky. Notably, he recently wrapped a significant run at the Museum of Modern Art where his generative artwork, Unsupervised, captivated thousands and was then acquired by the museum for their permanent collection.

It seems not everyone is a fan. Notable art critic Jerry Saltz referred to Anadol's MOMA work as "pointless museum mediocrity" and "a massive techno lava lamp." Anadol and Saltz got into a very public Twitter (X) spat over Thanksgiving, where Anadol pushed back on Saltz's opinions as Anadol and his online fans seemed not to grasp that art critics are called critics for a reason.

Despite this, Refik Anadol is arguably one of the most popular and influential digital artists working today and he is doing his best to raise the profile of data and AI-driven art. Additionally, his work on-chain continues to be highly sought after. He has released numerous NFT editions over the last two years and all maintain healthy floor prices should one want to collect, for example buying a Winds of Yawanawa edition will set you back about $17,000 at today's lowest offer on OpenSea.

As he continues to gain in popularity, we can only assume he'll enjoy more financial success from his thousands of social media shares. And, I can only assume it will be even harder to get him on the phone to discuss my next digital project.