An immigrant Artist's 10-Year Journey to becoming a Multi-Millionaire

How Refik Anadol is demystifying media art while making money

Hi everyone,

Science of Art is a newsletter written by me, Shagun Singh. I deconstruct and analyze the careers of artists who support themselves solely through their art. I am a user researcher, designer, and public artist.

If you haven’t read my last post where I analyzed my first artist, you can read it here.

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Digital art has gained momentum (thanks to the rise of the NFT market). Museums are finally making peace with the fact that artists are working with new technologies and that art institutions have to keep up. The artist whose career I am analyzing today has made 30 Million dollars¹ through the sale of NFTs. Needless to say, he is making a living through his art. I would have picked an artist whose struggles were more relatable but Refik’s work is much more than NFT’s.

Just 16% of artists are arts graduates² and Refik Anadol is one of them. Even though his career seems like a fairy tale where the graph keeps going upwards towards the right, there is much more than luck and fairies involved here.

Refik is primarily known for his large-scale immersive experiences and projection mapping projects, and he is making a splash in the art world with his data and AI-based large-scale public artworks.

But is he an artist?

One of Refik’s most high-profile projects was the Museum of Modern Art commission to create an AI artwork called“Unsupervised”. The artwork uses all 138,000 artworks from the museum’s collection that are fed into an AI model to create mesmerizing three-dimensional animations on a 24-foot-tall screen in the MoMA lobby. MoMA acquired this piece recently putting Anadol squarely in the center of the contemporary digital art conversation.

Refik uses data to create stunning visualizations. In the past 7 years, he has used data sets (visual, auditory, seismic, geographic, meteorological, cultural) in collaboration with organizations like NASA, Google, MoMA, Nvidia, and others. He refers to these artworks as “data paintings.”

Developing his style while shipping projects

Even though some of Refik’s earlier work was created as a part of his BFA and MFA degree programs, he was also a part of a design and technology studio called Antilop where he was able to get a lot of practical experience designing and putting together experience for brands like Volkswagen, Coca Cola, and Samsung. The work included projection mapping, audio visualization, and architectural data sculptures which is the hallmark of Refik’s art now. Alongside the work Refik did with Antilop, he was also developing his portfolio of artistic work experimenting with algorithms and data.

A big part of technology-based artwork is that it is fickle. Code and computers break at the most unexpected times. It is not for the faint of heart. Developing real-life projects for real clients may have helped Refik get better at the practical aspects of making projects happen. He has created projects for high-profile iconic places like Gaudí’s Casa Batlló, and Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Network

A lot of artists who come from well-to-do backgrounds use graduate school as a way to widen their horizons by building networks. Some studies state that an artist’s network is not related to their artistic impact, but there are conflicting theories where networks are directly correlated to an artist’s success. More diverse, bigger, better, and international groups tend to be more creative and innovative and the right school can help provide that group of people³.

..the personal ties in our network not only potentially shape individual-level creativity but also shape opportunities and an artist’s perception in the critical discourse of the period, which we call her creative identity.⁴

One could say that Refik has a big network of collaborators and mentors. A lot of this network building could be serendipitous but a lot of it is intentional.

Showing work, learning new skills,

Refik’s exhibitions and lecture circuit involves the who’s who of the digital art world like MIT Media Lab, UCLA Media Arts, Microsoft Research, ISEA, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, Resonate, EYEO, INST-IN, and others.

His influences were his UCLA faculty, Christian Moeller, Casey Reas, and Jennifer Steinkamp, which is where he picked up creative coding, and the prestigious Google Art and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency where he started working with A.I.

Refik has been consistently giving talks, and showing projects at events. He has also consistently shown in Istanbul where he is from and has a network of supporters and friends.

Make once, show forever - with tweaks

Refik has created immersive shows and pieces like Infinity Room, and Machine Hallucinations that he has repeatedly shown at various prestigious venues.

This artwork (Infinity Room) traveled to 48 cities in the world on every continent, except Antarctica. ⁵

For data-based pieces like Machines Hallucinations, he utilizes contextual data based on where the piece is being displayed. This allows him not to create bespoke pieces over and over again which are expensive to create. Repurposing projects helps save time and allows the artist to double down on distribution.

An intelligent lava lamp

Refik’s work is crowd-pleasing. It doesn’t follow the art history protocols. I am not sure how intentional Refik’s cyberpunk psychedelic aesthetic is but it is fun and goes down well with the crowds. This is speculation but I feel that his no-holds-barred AI optimism might not be such a hit if it was paired with a more somber and restrained aesthetic. Add the latest tech jargon like AI and Machine Learning to it and it may as well be gold. In this case, museums, galleries, festivals, and expos all want a piece of this.

Of course, this doesn’t come without criticism. Here is what Ben Davis⁶ for Artnet had to say about ‘Unsupervised’, Refik’s piece at MoMA.

What the endorsement of “Unsupervised” as an alternative art history simulator insinuates, for its audience, is that art history is just a bunch of random visual tics to be permuted, rather than an archive of symbol-making practices with social meanings.

NFT’s

NFTs are financial instruments. They make it easier to sell digital files by creating scarcity.

Refik has hit his stride at a time when immersive installation, NFTs, and generative AI are hot topics in the art world, and he is a big part of this conversation.

“The NFT world has given my studio economic independence.”

According to Refik he has reinvested a lot of money from the sale of the NFTs into his 15 people studio and given the rest to charity.⁷

Refik’s “Unsupervised—Machine Hallucinations—MoMA Dreams” line of NFTs based on MoMA’s collection was sold on an NFT marketplace. MoMA got a percentage of the sales of digital artworks—17 percent of primary sales and 5 percent of secondary. Some of the NFTs from the show ended up selling for thousands of dollars making it a win-win for Anadol, MoMA, and the NFT marketplace.⁸

With a tough few years, museums and art institutions are jumping on the NFT bandwagon to have an additional source of income. ⁹

Consistency

Refik’s work is driven by his technical skill and prowess. There is no question that he is extremely talented and skilled, but one other thing that works for him is that he is extremely consistent and has been producing work religiously since before he moved to the U.S. in 2012 to go to UCLA's digital media arts program for his MFA.

A research study from 2019 evaluates the evidence of success or luck in creative careers. To understand career impact, the researchers use a model called the Q-model, which breaks down an individual's impact into two parts: Qi, which is related to the individual's abilities, and pi, which is a measure of luck or randomness associated with each work. These values are calculated based on a mathematical formula. They find that the magnitude of career impact isn't random; it varies between individuals. The model indicates that a single high-impact work isn't enough to have a high Qi; a person needs to consistently produce high-impact work throughout their career to be very successful. Refik falls in the category of people with high Qi.¹⁰

Novelty and Variety

Refik’s work has settled into a recognizable visual language. To get to this point, he has repeatedly experimented and produced novel work with lots of variety. He has embraced galleries (even though he isn’t represented by one), museums, public spaces, NFT, and the metaverse. To thrive as an artist over time, adaptation to evolving audience preferences is essential. Creators must grasp the significance of variety and novelty to stay relevant in the creative industry and Refik is at the forefront of it all.¹¹

Key insights

Here are some takeaways from Refik Anadol’s artistic journey

1. Start early in your career by working, interning, and apprenticing to learn the ropes of your desired job. School alone isn't sufficient.

2. School is valuable for developing critical thinking skills, tools for your work, and building a network of collaborators and mentors.

3. Showcase your work to a friendly audience whenever and wherever possible.

4. Rather than creating entirely new work for each project, focus on refining a particular style or approach to increase your productivity.

5. Promote work that appears well-crafted and effortful; not everyone can be an exception like Robert Nava.

6. As a public artist, consider using NFTs to distribute your work effectively in digital spaces, providing new avenues for people to experience and own your art.

7. Stay persistent and continue creating, even on days when you lack motivation.

8. While it's important to create innovative work early in your career, remember to diversify your creations. Offering variety can expand your audience's horizons and introduce them to new experiences.

That’s it from me today folks. I am off to mint my first NFT (please don’t cringe!). If you have a friend, family member, or colleague who is an artist in the body of a 9-5’er please share this post with them.

Until next time,

Shagun

1. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/refik-anadol-adam-lindemann-conversation-2288481

2. http://bfamfaphd.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/05/BFAMFAPhD_ArtistsReportBack2014-10.pdf

3. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ondj2tnl7bkfmznca01ag/SSRN-id3258318.pdf?rlkey=1122g8bfa4x3b7eav3i99nfzj&dl=0

4. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ondj2tnl7bkfmznca01ag/SSRN-id3258318.pdf?rlkey=1122g8bfa4x3b7eav3i99nfzj&dl=0

5. https://www.xibtmagazine.com/2020/10/augmenting-perception-an-interview-with-media-artist-refik-anadol/

6. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/refik-anadol-unsupervised-moma-2242329

7. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/refik-anadol-profile-interview-2115809

8. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/arts/design/nfts-moma-refik-anadol-digital.html

9. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/arts/design/nfts-moma-refik-anadol-digital.html

10. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ondj2tnl7bkfmznca01ag/SSRN-id3258318.pdf?rlkey=1122g8bfa4x3b7eav3i99nfzj&dl=0

11. https://podcastdisclosed.com/success-2-0-getting-to-the-top-and-staying-there-shankar-vedantam-hidden-brain/