Refik Anadol, World-Renowned Media Artist, First To Transform Sphere’s Exterior Into Immersive Canvas
Anadol To Debut AI Data Sculpture
Machine Hallucinations: Sphere
On Sphere’s Fully Programable Exterior Starting September 1
Sphere’s Exterior – The Exosphere – Offers an
Unparalleled Canvas for Artists, Partners and Brands to
Showcase Impactful Content to Audiences from Around the World
LAS VEGAS, August 31, 2023 — Sphere Entertainment Co. (NYSE: SPHR) today announced that on September 1, internationally renowned media artist Refik Anadol will become the first artist to utilize the Exosphere, the fully programmable LED exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, as an immersive canvas, debuting an AI Data Sculpture created exclusively for Sphere called Machine Hallucinations: Sphere.
Refik Anadol is a visionary media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of machine intelligence. He uses large collections of public data and machine learning algorithms to create mesmerizing, dynamic, and immersive art installations. Anadol is the founder of Refik Anadol Studio, an award-winning technology-driven creative design studio based in Los Angeles. Anadol’s work has been exhibited on six continents, including at the world’s most preeminent venues for art, such as MoMA, New York; Art Basel, Miami; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Machine Hallucinations: Sphere, an immersive digital experience, celebrates Sphere’s unique architecture by featuring dynamic visualizations using vast amounts of data to create abstract imagery of space and nature. The two-chapter series, which Anadol refers to as “AI Data Sculptures,” creates a collective, meditative, and multisensory experience that takes audiences on a journey of light, movement, and color with vivid pigments, shapes, and patterns. This immersive experience invites viewers to imagine alternative realities constructed by invisible data movements around them.
“I am extremely honored to be the first artist to utilize the exterior of Sphere,” Anadol said. “It’s so exciting to be given such an architectural and engineering marvel as a canvas. This opportunity aligns perfectly with our studio’s long-term mission of embedding media arts into architecture to create living architectural pieces that are in constant interaction with their environments.”
“Refik Anadol’s artistic approach made him the ideal artist to partner with first to showcase his incredible work using the full-scale capabilities of the Exosphere, an incomparable canvas for artists who want to explore their artistic expression on a global stage and push the boundaries of what’s possible,” said Guy Barnett, Senior Vice President, Brand Strategy and Creative Development, Sphere Entertainment. “Through the captivating power of the Exosphere and our unwavering commitment to showcase both art and brands on Sphere’s exterior, we will forever change the way artwork and commerce co-exist.”
Machine Hallucinations is an ongoing exploration of data aesthetics based on collective visual memories of space, nature, and urban environments. For this project, Anadol and his team used themed datasets as the building blocks for two distinct chapters:
Machine Hallucinations: Space is a visual speculation of humanity’s historical attempts to explore the depths of space based on Refik Anadol Studio’s collaborations with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that utilizes publicly available photographs taken by satellites and spacecraft, including millions of raw images that have been captured and recorded by the International Space Station and the Hubble telescopes.
Machine Hallucinations: Nature draws on more than 300 million publicly available photographs of flora and fauna, resulting in pigments, shapes, and patterns that we associate with nature, but only exist in the mind of a machine as “hallucinations.” The second half of this chapter consists of Sphere: Winds of Las Vegas, which harnesses data sets of wind and gust speed, as well as precipitation and air pressure, collected from real time API wind sensors in Las Vegas.
Sphere is a next-generation entertainment medium that will bring wonder to the world and redefine the future of live entertainment. A venue where the foremost artists, creators, and technologists will create extraordinary experiences that take storytelling to a new level and transport audiences to places both real and imagined. The venue will host original Sphere Experiences from leading Hollywood directors; concerts and residencies from the world’s biggest artists; and premier marquee events.
The entire exterior surface of Sphere, referred to as the Exosphere, is covered with nearly 580,000 square feet of fully programmable LED paneling, creating the largest LED screen in the world — and an impactful display for artists, brands and partners. The Exosphere consists of approximately 1.2 million LED pucks, spaced eight inches apart. Each puck contains 48 individual LED diodes, with each diode capable of displaying 256 million different colors – creating a vivid new landmark on the Las Vegas skyline.
Machine Hallucinations: Sphere will be visible on Sphere for four months, starting September 1.
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About Refik Anadol
Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He is the Director of Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles and Lecturer in UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol’s work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. Taking the data that surrounds us as primary material, and the neural network of a computerized mind as a collaborator, Anadol offers us radical visualizations of our digitized memories and expands the possibilities of interdisciplinary arts.
Anadol’s site-specific data paintings and sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, collective experiences, public art, decentralized networks, and the creative potential of AI. Anadol’s work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Art Basel, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Ars Electronica, Istanbul Modern, and ZKM |Center for Art and New Media. Anadol has 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, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award, and Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency Award.
About Sphere Entertainment
Sphere Entertainment Co. is a premier live entertainment and media company. The Company includes Sphere, a next-generation entertainment medium powered by cutting-edge technologies to redefine the future of entertainment. The first Sphere venue is currently under construction in Las Vegas. In addition, the Company includes MSG Networks, which operates two regional sports and entertainment networks, MSG Network and MSG Sportsnet, as well as a direct-to-consumer and authenticated streaming product, MSG+, delivering a wide range of live sports content and other programming. More information is available at www.sphereentertainmentco.com.