Refik Anadol – Wind of Lilydale, Lilydale train station, Lilydale
T Projects commissioned Australia’s first permanent work by Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol. The digital artwork at the new Lilydale Railway Station, sits atop a 27m lift shaft, towering above the elevated station and the highway below, and visible from all directions.
Refik Anadol is world famous for digital screen art. His work combines media, science, technology and data, and his works are specific to their sites.
The spectacular Wind of Lilydale is an artistic interpretation of local weather data, which is captured by equipment monitoring wind speed, direction, gust patterns and temperature, and processed through a unique algorithm specific to the commission. It interprets weather data in real time so the pattern you see on the screen is the weather you’re experiencing.
Anadol has created location-specific Wind pieces (called data paintings) for cities around the world, including Beijing, London and Istanbul and throughout the USA. Not all are permanent outdoor public works, and Melbourne’s famously erratic weather brings a particular character to this one.
Artistically, Wind of Lilydale interprets the fluid interactions between the environment and the city, representing the many interlocking layers of nature, humanity, and technology. It combines cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies and scientific data analysis into a mesmerising work. Creating an illusion of architectural multi-dimensionality and emphasising our embeddedness in nature, ‘Wind of Lilydale’ presents an entirely new and poetic way of re-locating ourselves in the world in relation to the urban and environmental factors.
Client
Level Crossing Removal Project
Artist
Project Team
South Eastern Program Alliance with BKK Architects, Kyriacou Architects, Jacobs, & Laing O’Rourke
Photography and video
Peter Bennets. Renders courtesy of the artist
Refik Anadol
Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is an internationally renowned 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 centred around discovering and developing trailblazing approaches to data narratives. Anadol is also teaching at 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.
Residing at the crossroads of art, science, and technology, Anadol’s site-specific three-dimensional data sculptures and paintings, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take varied virtual and physical forms.
A pioneer in his field, and the first to use artificial intelligence in a public artwork, Anadol has partnered with teams at Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, NASA/JPL, Intel, IBM, Siemens, Epson, MIT, UCLA, Harvard University, Imperial College, Stanford University, and UCSF, to apply the latest, cutting-edge science, research and technologies to his work.
