WDCH Dreams
When we dream, our minds process memories to form new combinations of images and ideas. Can a concert hall do the same?
Aerial view of Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, California. by Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
Just before the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Centennial season, media artist Refik Anadol is designing a visual projection for the steel exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Refik Anadol edits WDCH Dreams (2018-09-11) by Jackie RussoLA Phil
Refik Anadol has been working with AI experts at Google’s Artists & Machine Intelligence program to study generative machine learning techniques for audio and video since 2016.
Projection rendering, courtesy Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
The resulting performance, WDCH Dreams, uses multiple machine-learning algorithms to interpret nearly 45 terabytes of data from the LA Phil’s digital archives.
Excerpt from the WDCH Dreams trailer by Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
Digital files were parsed into millions of data points, and then categorized by hundreds of attributes using deep neural networks.
These neural networks are capable of remembering the totality of the LA Phil’s “memories” and creating new connections between them.
“With machine learning, we can understand the massive archives of cultural institutions, and generative techniques allow us to see and sense them in new ways. But it takes artistic vision and collective creativity to turn these perceptions into a collaborative 21st century culture.”
- Kenric McDowell, Program Lead, Artists & Machine Intelligence
A visual storyboard of WDCH Dreams by Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
The performance uses the exterior of the concert hall as a canvas for multiple neural networks to dream upon in three distinct chapters.
Convolutional neural network (CNN) models help classify images and generate metadata for the orchestra’s visual archive. by Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
The opening sequence – “Centennial Memories" – uses convolutional neural network (CNN) models to classify images and generate metadata for the orchestra’s visual archive.
WDCH Dreams (excerpt) by Parag K. Mital & Refik Anadol (2018-07-01) by Parag K. Mital and Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
Generative adversarial networks (GAN) were trained on images from the orchestra’s archives in order to hallucinate new ones.
In this WDCH Dreams excerpt, computational artist Parag K. Mital applies GAN algorithms to custom data sources from the LA Phil visual and music archive to create generative images and sound.
A neural network renders new architectural sketches of Walt Disney Concert Hall. by Ross GoodwinLA Phil
Character-level text-prediction neural-network models help generate new architectural sketches based on Frank Gehry’s original CAD drawings in the sequence's third act: "Dream."
WDCH Dreams Video Teaser by Refik Anadol StudioLA Phil
The performance's score was also designed with the help of machine learning.
LA Phil's audio universe represents their entire performance history over the last 100 yearsLA Phil
Computational artist Parag K. Mital with sound designers Kerim Karaoglu and Robert Thomas explored the LA Phil Archives with machine intelligence tools. LA Phil's entire audio archive (more than 18,000 hours of audio) was divided into nearly 10 million segments and each was then characterized by 256 attributes such as pitch, timbre, amplitude, tempo, tonality, and key. These attributes were then projected into a 6 dimensional space and represented as a 3D plane with space (x, y, z) + color (r, g, b) mapped to the 6-dimensions.
Within this new data universe, Refik Anadol’s team hand-picked specific memories and curated a unique soundtrack that accompanied the visual narrative of WDCH Dreams.
Refik Anadol (2018-09-11) by Jackie RussoLA Phil
“It was a rhetorical question: ‘How could our past not just inform our future but help invent it…?’ And from that, WDCH Dreams was born. Refik has taken our digital archives as his material, and by applying machine intelligence, he’s given us a totally new way of conceiving of our history. And at the heart of it all is Walt Disney Concert Hall. Refik has used the Hall’s exterior as his canvas, and through his projections, he makes it a fluid, moving space with a type of 'consciousness' — full of memories, both of its creator, Frank Gehry, and all the music that's been performed inside."
- Chad Smith, Chief Operating Officer, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association
Refik Anadol Studio:
Carrie He
Christina Moushoul
Efsun Erkilic
Kian Khiaban
Ho Man Leung
Nicholas Boss
Nate Mohler
Raman Mustafa
Refik Anadol
Toby Heinemann
Collaborators:
David Gann
Kenric McDowell
Kerim Karaoglu
Eva Kozanecka
Kyle McLean
Parag K. Mital
Robert Thomas
Ross Goodwin
schnellebuntebilder
Sebastian Neitsch
Simon Weckert
