Embodied Database: The Haptic Epistemology of Refik Anadol’s AI Data Sculpture

With the digital technologies as a tool and a medium, contemporary art is moving into a multisensory, experiential realm, transcending the previous visual-centric approach to art, creativity, and aesthetics.

This article explores how Refik Anadol’s AI-generated installations transform data into embodied, multisensory experiences. Framing his practice through the lens of haptic epistemology, it argues that Anadol transforms abstract datasets into embodied experiences, allowing data to be felt rather than merely seen. Drawing from Lev Manovich’s theories on database aesthetics and the Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects, the piece examines how Anadol’s immersive environments challenge the limits of cognitive comprehension while offering a poetic encounter with the materiality of data and machine vision.