It has been announced that Refik Anadol, a Turkish-American artist, and UNICEF, will auction off an AI data sculpture as an NFT. The NFT is titled ‘Sense of Healing’. Anadol says that the piece “visualizes the healing processes in mental health patients through interpreted datasets of brain activities collected with EEG sensors, fMRI and DTI imaging techniques.”
Refik Anadol is a famed Turkish artist, now working with UNICEF.
Refik Anadol x UNICEF
The Turkish artist and UNICEF are working together. They have created one of the largest AI data sculptures in the world titled ‘Sense of Healing’.
It will be auctioned off at the fourth annual UNICEF Summer Gala, which is happening in Capri, Italy, today, 30th July. All of the funds from the launch will go to UNICEF.
The evening will include a gala dinner and live auction under the stars, all while raising funds for the huge charity of UNICEF, and their programmes helping children in need. Last year’s event included chairpeople of Adrien Brody, Adriana Lima, Alexander Gilkes, Alicia Silverstone, Andrea Panconesi, Austin Bulter, Caroline Scheufele and many more. The ticket options for this evening’s event start at £10,000 per person or £75,000 per table of 10.
Furthermore, you can see the piece here, as Refik Anadol posted to his Twitter.
About the Artist
Refik Anadol is a Turkish-American new media artist and designer. His projects consist of data-driven machine learning algorithms that create abstract, dream-like environments. Despite being born in Istanbul, the artist lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Some of Anadol’s work includes ‘Interconnected’, 2,147-square feet of animated art screen at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, works onto the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the ‘Virtual Depictions’ project in San Fransisco.
Recently, his work has focused more on the NFT industry. Last year, he sold 8 NFTs named ‘Machine hallucinations’ for $5 million in a Sotheby’s-organised Hong Kong event. Above all, this set a record for being the most expensive NFT sold in Asia by a single artist.
UNICEF in NFTs
UNICEF’s only other movement in the NFT space was releasing a collection of NFTs. It was done to help raise money to provide school children in poverty-filled areas with access to the internet. This happened in December of last year.
The collection, at the time, celebrated its 75th anniversary through its early steps into the blockchain space.
Although it has been their only NFT work so far, the charity began work in the crypto industry in 2019. To clarify, this was done through the launch of CryptoFund which lets the charity receive, hold, and give out crypto.
