AI digital exhibition of Turkish cinema fascinates art lovers in Istanbul

By Xinhua Published: Nov 26, 2021 12:33 PM

People visit a digital art exhibition at a movie theater in Istanbul, Turkey, on Nov. 24, 2021. A digital art exhibition, created by using artificial intelligence (AI), fascinates art lovers at a newly renovated ancient movie theater in Istanbul.(Photo:Xinhua)

A digital art exhibition, created by using artificial intelligence (AI), fascinates art lovers at a newly renovated ancient movie theater in Istanbul.

The exhibition, "Alkazar's Dream," was designed and produced by the renowned Turkish contemporary artist Refik Anadol as a devotion to the history and culture of Turkish cinema.

Anadol processed through AI algorithms 150 movies screened between 1947 and 2010 in the ancient Alkazar Movie Theater on the Istiklal Avenue.

"If Alkazar, which keeps countless memories in its mind at its ancient building, had a dream, what would it contain?" he asked.

His answer was purely digital based on the latest AI technology and artificial neural networks, reuniting the historical memory of the theater with the audience in 3D.

"We were able to reach an average of 35 million images and more than 500,000 unique words in two frames per second taken from each movie," the artist was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet daily.

"This is the first time in the world that such a large amount of data turned into a performance by passing through AI," Anadol noted.

The experience consists of two parts and takes 20 minutes. In the first 10 minutes, the audience has the opportunity to watch the AI-created images of Turkish cinema with the combination of music.

"Each movie is understood by reading one by one from AI networks, and then the AI has a dream," the artists explained the process.

In the second part, "the AI understands the movement, direction, and speed of people and transforms each viewer into a pigment with light," so that viewers can interact with art through motions.

Karpat Polat, an advertiser agent, said it was an "incredibly interesting experience."

"I am a visual arts person, but when I arrived here, I came across a completely different experience," Polat spoke of his feeling about the exhibit. "You are on a completely different domain where you lost the sense of reality."

Burcu Ozdemir, an Istanbul resident, said watching something so innovative in such a historic setting was very impressive.

"Seeing some sequences (of Turkish movies) we loved and valued in the past in this environment in digital form fascinated me a lot," Ozdemir told Xinhua.

After getting a facelift, the Alkazar Movie Theather, built in 1923, has reopened its doors earlier this month with the new name Hope Alkazar. In the venue, different events will take place under the theme of The Stage of the Movement.