Good morning, Bon Appétit, Good night, from me to you, whenever and wherever you are reading this today!
Every single day at New York is a new, unexpected experience. You would imagine for me to run from one class to another, spend nights sleeplessly studying at the library, drink ten shots of espresso daily, and barely find time to leave for myself. Well, there is all that, except of course, I try to limit my caffeine consumption to four shots a day. Now stop for a second and imagine having hundreds of pages to read and multiple essays assigned for tomorrow in alignment with the midterm season so subtly yet hastily approaching.
This scenario sounds too exhausting, depressive even. Thankfully, that is not the case — at least it partially is. Classes begun full paced right after the orientation-intended Welcome Week at NYU and I have been assigned new tasks on a daily basis yet somehow, I am not complaining. Well the reason is quite obvious: I am in New York! Every day is a new adventure and the complex simplicity of the unknown factor that is instilled in my daily ‘routine’ fuels me to be hyped at all times.
Let it be encountering Nina Dobrev or Alec Baldwin on your way to class, having exclusive access to the screening of The Politician with cast members before its stream on Netflix, sitting next to famous Youtubers, photographers, actresses, singers, and even princes at class, randomly winning free Broadway tickets, going to a different concert every day, cheering loudly for Yankees on a Wednesday night even though you do not speak fluent baseball, or simply making friends over common interests like having purple hair, the city has a lot to offer.
This week’s personal highlight was a temporary immersive exhibition held at Artechouse, a leading contemporary digital art space located in Chelsea Market. The digital exhibition on display at this time was called “Machine Hallucination.” Being Turkish myself, the fact that the media artist and director of the art installation being Refik Anadol, also of Turkish descent, has sure been an incentive towards my interest. However, the work of the established media artist is guaranteed to attract and appeal to an audience that exceeds the borders of a particular nation.
I entered the space fully unaware of what to expect and perhaps it was for the best. In its simplest form, you enter a room surrounded with and consisting only of large screens displaying high quality images. As you take a seat on the floor, you find yourself being a part of an illusionary movement. As colors, shapes, and concepts shift seemingly spontaneously yet indeed quite purposefully, you enter a state of becoming both delusional and entertained. You have complex emotions because following the constant movement is too demanding a task yet you find your curiosity surpassing that tiresome resistance and you can’t help but willingly keep up with the pace.
Would I recommend this experience? Absolutely yes — Assuming you are a typical 21st century individual with a decent interest in what your Instagram feed looks like. This exhibition provides you various alternative backgrounds to get creative and make your next Instagram post stand out. You are literally meant to stay inside the same room for 45 minutes so chances are high that you will capture an artsy pic that doesn’t even need any editing!
All that said, I wouldn’t worry if I were to miss this particular exhibition because this is New York and a similar or even slightly improvised version of it will likely be offered soon.
My recommended time frame for this event would be after 7 PM so that you can get out of school or work, bring your A-game on for putting together an Instagrammable outfit and just fully immerse in the experience. Just to give you a heads up if you are interested in this digital art reflection: you will find yourself feeling dizzy, almost nauseous towards the end of the duration. A smart thing to do could be to leave not as it actually ends but as you get all your pictures taken so avoid such unpleasing distress.
The exit door of the exhibit will magically open to Chelsea Market with more food options than you can ask for. Considering your inevitable need and desire for choosing the most Insta-worthy picture your friends have taken inside, you will have to be seated. If you are lucky enough to find a real seat to grab any food, good for you — If, and unfortunately more likely, there is no seat available for your friend party of five, do as I did with two of my older accompanies: find yourself a nearby restaurant! No matter how late it is, there is always Joe’s Pizza to count on after all.
We went to Serafina for some Italian food indulgence and the atmosphere matched our mood as we were neither dressed too streety nor too swelly. At the end of the day, this experience sure was a way of spending a Monday that is specific to New York and the best part is that it wasn’t planned months ago, contrary to how such events are schemed way prior to the dates. This freedom of exploration and living Mondays entertaining at an extent indistinguishable from that of a Monday is just this week’s example of how Becoming a New Yorker is a magical process worth sharing.
Till next time’
Sincerely, Yaprak
Becoming A New Yorker 
With machine learning to bring creativity where humans and machines overlap, it does seem like there can be a radical new visualization of our environment past and evolving. In the artistic realm, it seems to work pretty well. But I do wonder about how well the machine learning of language will perform with nuance and how well it will faithfully convey the original meaning. You can see in the following how the subjects and objects get a little mixed up:
İnsanların ve makinelerin kesiştiği yerlere yaratıcılık getirmek için makine öğrenmesiyle, çevremizin geçmiş ve gelişen radikal yeni bir görselleştirmesi olabileceği görülüyor. Ancak, makine dilinin öğrenilmesinin nüansla ne kadar iyi bir performans göstereceğini ve bunun orijinal anlamını tam olarak nasıl sadık kalacağını merak ediyorum.
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Maybe this is a little better:
Makine öğrenimi ile İnsan ve kesişimine yaratıcılık getirmek, çevremizin geçmiş ve gelişen radikal yeni bir görselleştirmesi olabileceği görülüyor. Ancak, Bilgisayarın insan dilinin nüanslarını ne kadar iyi öğreneceğini merak ediyorum.
Ooops. I guess not. Anyway, it’s not easy and immediate yet.
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Reblogged this on Poet Laureate of the Primitive Planets and commented:
It looks like Refik Anadol has done a great job. It’s intriguing how he has used machine learning to synthesize all the visual data of architecture, past and present styles etc. [Reblog from Yaprak Ugurses]
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