Digital Biosphere of Industrial Waste: Decay and RebirthAI, Data-driven
AI, Data-driven and audio reactive video, Stereo sound, 3840x2160 pixels, 00:04:30
2025
Reviving industrial waste with AI is not only the reshaping of neglected materials with digital projections but also the rediscovery of the lost identities of these materials and their forgotten environmental burdens. This work represents the traces of waste in our environmental and social memory through digital forms, and through the collaboration between humans and machines, these industrial wastes, which are seen as unidentified and burdensome, gain a new meaning. Humans document these wastes by photographing them and creating a data set; while the machine processes and reshapes this visual data by being trained through AI, thus creating a “digital rebirth”. These digital projections, which are made sensitive to the sounds of Gebze/Kocaeli, the largest industrial region in Turkey, point to both the industrial history of the city and the environmental burden of these wastes.
The digital projections produced with the trained AI model interact sensitively with the industrial sounds of Kocaeli. This interaction makes one think about the environmental burden of waste and the ways they continue their existence silently. Using a dataset created from industrial waste in Kocaeli, images reshaped by AI become digital forms. These forms change as if they were “breathing” or “living” entities, responding to the collected industrial sounds. Thus, it visualizes the place of industrial waste in modern society, its disappearances, and its silent effects. Digitally simulated “industrial cycles” create a digital biosphere where nature and humans feed each other.
The data-based feedback particle system presents the city’s recyclable waste data as a number, time, and network-based system. By emphasizing that data transformation is not only a physical process but that every waste leaves a digital trace, industrial wastes cease to be physical masses and become conceptual entities that leave their traces and shape the urban memory.