Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1
PhD student in Visual Arts, Isfahan University of Art, Isfahan, Iran.
2
Professor, Faculty of Visual Arts, University of Art, Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
Abstract
Objective: The computer art movement of the 1970s laid the groundwork for the emergence of postmodern art, digital art, and artificial intelligence within the artistic domain, marking the transition from modernity to postmodernity not merely as a stylistic shift, but as an ontological rupture in the relationship among reality, representation, and the perceiving subject. Within this context, the works of Refik Anadol, a Turkish-born, American-based pioneer of data-driven art, function as conceptual laboratories in which the boundaries of reality, simulation, and perception are redefined. The primary objective of this research is to undertake a postmodern rereading of Anadol’s oeuvre through three theoretical frameworks: Baudrillard (hyperreality and simulation), Manovich (database logic and cultural transcoding), and Merleau-Ponty (embodied perception), with the aim of deepening our understanding of postmodernity in the digital age and bridging the research gap between postmodern philosophy and AI-based, digital art.
Methods: Given the postmodern nature of the subject (marked by plurality and the collapse of grand narratives) this study adopts a multilayered, interdisciplinary approach, comparatively analyzing eighteen key works by Anadol within a tripartite theoretical framework.
Results: Three simultaneous transformations emerge: reality is superseded by fourth-order simulation; the artist becomes a curator of algorithms, and the artwork shifts from a fixed object to a space of infinite reconfiguration; the perceiving subject becomes an algorithmic observer, blending lived and computational experience. Despite differing ontological grounds, all three frameworks converge on the collapse of the sign-reality referential contract, though its interpretive meaning differs across them.
Conclusions: Anadol’s works redefine the boundaries between art and data science, subject and machine, and embodiment and computation, constructing ontological laboratories in which the human being, as the center of perception, is expanded and assumes new forms. Accordingly, this artist’s practice signals not the end of art, but the beginning of a new era of art that fundamentally transforms the rules of the game. Future research may extend this framework to a broader range of AI-based artistic practices, while paying particular attention to the socio-political economy of database construction and the ethical considerations surrounding the training of generative models on borrowed cultural visual archives.
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