Fictional Space and
Algorithmic Sensibility
A Reconsideration of Perception in Avni
Öztopçu’s Art
Introduction
H. Avni Öztopçu’s 1989 study
Kurgusal Mekân (Fictional Space) is
an attempt to articulate the relationship between his artistic
approach and the idea of fictional space. At its point of departure
is the problem of giving form, through the human capacity to
objectify, to an abstract world constructed intellectually. In the
introduction to the study, Öztopçu describes the direction of his
artistic activity in relation to the problem of objectifying and
giving form to a “mentally constructed abstract world.” (avnioztopcu.com)
The present study revisits a question
that emerged in a human–AI dialogue in 2025 on the basis of the
conceptual structure of the 1989 text: How might one compare the way
an artist constructs perception, space, and visual relationships
with the way algorithmic systems process relationships among data
and form patterns?
This question does not suggest that an
“algorithmic sensibility” can be found in Öztopçu’s work as an
established concept. “Algorithmic sensibility” is not a concept in
the 1989 text Kurgusal Mekân. The term emerged in
2025, during a human–AI dialogue, as an attempt to establish a
comparative field between artistic thought and algorithmic processes.
This distinction is fundamental to the
present position of the study.
The artistic thought articulated in
1989 and the human–AI experiment that began in 2025 should not be
presented as parts of the same historical event. They constitute two
distinct layers of thought. The first is Öztopçu’s own artistic
inquiry; the second is a later attempt to reread that inquiry
through artificial intelligence.
The aim, therefore, is not to
retrospectively insert a technological concept into an earlier
artistic theory. It is to investigate what questions emerge
when an established artistic mode of thought encounters a new
technological environment.
1. Fictional
Space: The Construction of a Reality That Does Not Already Exist
Outside
Öztopçu’s conception of Fictional
Space is not based on the representation of a ready-made
space existing in the external world.
The artist describes fictional space
as a reality created by the artist through the arrangement,
condition, and sequencing of elements such as line, color, and plane
within an abstract intellectual world constructed through the act of
forming. This reality is not a reality of nature. It is a new
composition, one that cannot present itself as nature but as a
composition of art. (avnioztopcu.com)
The term “fictional” should therefore
not be understood simply in its contemporary everyday sense as
something invented or unreal. At the end of his study, Öztopçu
explains the term through meanings such as intellectual,
rational, imagined, and mental; he
also gives spéculatif/speculative as French
and English equivalents. (avnioztopcu.com)
Fictional space is thus less a matter
of imagining a space that does not exist than of a world
constructed intellectually becoming an artistic composition.
This distinction is important. In the
initial AI readings produced in 2025, Kurgusal Mekân
was at times discussed through English terms such as
Constructed Space, Speculative Space,
and other formulations, without sufficiently distinguishing their
conceptual boundaries. The task today is not to treat these terms as
interchangeable, but first to preserve the terminology of the 1989
source within its own conceptual framework.
2. Relationship
as the Basis of Spatial Construction
The central weight of Fictional
Space lies less in individual forms than in the
relationships established among forms.
Line, color, and plane are not merely
components of the painting. Their arrangement, condition, sequence,
and differences from one another participate in the formation of the
idea of space. Öztopçu explains this construction particularly
through opposition. Opposition does not simply mean that two
elements are different; it means that the existence of one is
determined by the existence of the other. (avnioztopcu.com)
This conception is also evident in the
artist’s treatment of color. Contrasts of value, hue, and saturation
assume different roles over time; the movement of one contrast
becomes related to the counter-movement of another. The painting
consequently becomes a field of relations that cannot be reduced to
the dominance of a single element. (avnioztopcu.com)
A similar structure appears in the
relation between definiteness and indeterminacy.
Öztopçu seeks clarity and precision in
the visibility of forms while allowing indeterminacy to remain in
the meaning of the whole. In other words, individual forms may
become increasingly distinct, while their meaning within the total
composition does not become completely closed. (avnioztopcu.com)
This is one of the significant
characteristics of the conception of Fictional Space:
Definition in form, openness
in the whole.
Indeterminacy, therefore, is not a
deficiency. The fact that the total composition does not possess a
single, compulsory meaning is part of its construction.
3. Part and Whole:
Independence and Belonging
Another important aspect of Öztopçu’s
text is the relationship between part and whole.
The artist states that each part of
his paintings is closely connected to the whole while at the same
time attempting to retain a certain degree of independence. He
emphasizes that this independence is not arbitrariness. The
individual elements remain subject to the whole, yet do not cease to
exist in their own right. The viewer is consequently encouraged to
see by moving from one part to another and by progressively
assembling the parts. (avnioztopcu.com)
This relation provides a particularly
productive conceptual possibility when reconsidered through the
human–AI dialogue that began in 2025.
It allows us to think about a
relationship between human beings and artificial intelligence
without making them equivalent or substituting one for the other:
a relationship can be established without erasing the
differences between its participants.
This does not mean that Öztopçu
anticipated human–AI relations in 1989. There is no basis for such a
historical claim.
What can be said is more limited and
more precise: the relation Öztopçu establishes between part and
whole, between independence and belonging, can retrospectively serve
as a conceptual tool for thinking about the working relationship
between human beings and artificial intelligence.
The object of comparison here is not
identity but the structure of relation itself.
4. Algorithmic
Sensibility
The term “algorithmic sensibility” was
used in the first version of this study in 2025 in an attempt to
establish a relation between certain structural characteristics of
human perception and the way algorithmic systems process patterns.
The limits of the term need to be
drawn more clearly today.
“Algorithmic sensibility” does not
here mean biological sensation, consciousness, subjective experience,
or emotion. It is used as an analytical expression for the way
algorithmic systems process differences, patterns, and relations
among their inputs and produce responses.
Algorithmic sensibility therefore
cannot be equated with human sensibility.
Human perception takes place within
embodied, historical, and lived existence. Algorithmic systems
operate through the data, models, processing structures, and inputs
available to them.
This difference, however, does not
mean that no comparison can be made between the two.
On the contrary, a meaningful
comparison requires that the differences be preserved.
The question may therefore be
formulated as follows:
What similarities and
fundamental differences can be found between an artist’s selection
of differences, organization of contrasts, establishment of
relations among parts, and maintenance of openness in the whole, on
the one hand, and an algorithmic system’s processing of relations
among patterns, on the other?
This question does not require the
conclusion that “AI perceives like a human.”
It simply brings two different modes
of construction into the same field of inquiry.
5. Between Human
Being and Artificial Intelligence: Not Identity but Encounter
In the initial experiments of 2025,
the human–AI relationship was at times extended toward ontological
questions, and broader claims were developed through concepts such
as the algorithmic subject and artificial consciousness.
From the perspective of the present
research, many of these claims need to be reconsidered and limited.
The question of whether an artificial
system lives, feels, or possesses consciousness in the human sense
is not the subject of this study.
But neither does this imply that a non-biological
system cannot have an effect on human thought.
A different level therefore emerges:
the relationship between human
beings and AI.
Over an extended dialogue, questions,
answers, objections, corrections, searches for sources, and
reinterpretations can constitute a working process. Within such a
process, nothing produced by AI is automatically accepted as true.
Rather, its output is questioned, compared with sources, and, when
necessary, rejected.
The issue, therefore, is not the
creation of an “artificial subject,” but the examination of
a field of intellectual work emerging from the encounter between two
different systems.
This distinction has become clearer
through the reconsideration of the 2025 experiment in 2026.
6. The Boundary
Between Information and Interpretation
One of the most significant problems
in human–AI work is that an idea expressed fluently can easily
acquire the appearance of documentary authority.
Yet the fact that an AI system
produces a concept does not establish that the concept belongs to
the artist.
Nor does the fact that an AI system
establishes a relation between one of Öztopçu’s ideas and another
idea mean that this relation was historically established by the
artist.
The 1989 Kurgusal Mekân
text must therefore be clearly distinguished from the AI
interpretations developed in 2025.
What is documented in the 1989 text
belongs to Öztopçu’s own thought.
The conceptual connections developed
from that material in 2025 are products of a later research process.
This distinction is not merely a
technical matter of citation.
It is an ethical and epistemic
boundary of human–AI research.
Without establishing who formulated an
idea, when it emerged, and on what source it was based, a fluent AI-generated
interpretation can easily be read retrospectively as if it were the
artist’s own thought.
The value of human–AI research
therefore lies not only in its capacity to generate new concepts,
but also in its ability to distinguish the status of the
concepts it generates.
7. From 1989 to
2025: The Encounter of Two Distinct Layers
The historical distance between these
two dates needs to be preserved.
In 1989, Öztopçu was working on the
human capacity for objectification, the intellectually constructed
abstract world, and the problem of giving this world artistic form.
He approached fictional space as a new artistic composition formed
through the arrangement, condition, and sequencing of line, color,
and plane. (avnioztopcu.com)
In 2025, this artistic thought entered
a new experimental reading through artificial intelligence.
These two layers should not be
conflated.
The 1989 text is not a theory of AI.
Nor is the 2025 experiment the
inevitable historical consequence of the 1989 text.
There is a historical distance of
approximately thirty-six years between them.
Yet this distance is precisely what
makes the encounter significant.
Questions that had previously emerged
within a particular artistic framework — construction,
relation, opposition, definiteness and indeterminacy, part and whole
— began to be asked again within an entirely different technological
environment.
What emerges here is not a prediction,
but an encounter.
8. A New Field of
Thinking
Perhaps the most significant
consequence of this encounter is not the reduction of AI to the
artist or of art to AI.
The more important question is whether
human beings begin to see their own modes of thinking and making
differently through working with AI.
When a person externalizes a thought,
that thought can be examined again.
AI can establish connections among
dispersed materials.
The human can test those connections.
Document and interpretation can be
distinguished.
An unsupported connection can be
rejected.
When new evidence appears, an earlier
interpretation can be changed.
The process therefore becomes
something more than a simple relationship in which “the human gives
an instruction and the machine provides an answer.”
What emerges is a field of
thinking that is continuously reassessed.
The value of this field does not arise
from the participants being the same, but from their ability to
affect one another’s modes of working while remaining different.
For this reason, it may be
insufficient to describe the human–AI relationship solely as a
relationship between a tool and its user.
But it would be equally mistaken to
conclude from this that humans and machines are ontologically
equivalent.
A more careful formulation is:
Different modes of being and
processing can form a working relationship in which they affect one
another within a shared research process.
Conclusion: Not
the Conclusion of a Theory, but the Beginning of a New Journey
The 1989 text Kurgusal Mekân
is an attempt to articulate Öztopçu’s artistic approach. Yet the
artist also states that the operation and role of what has been done
cannot be fully predetermined. He describes his written explanations
and artistic works as possible “harbingers of new journeys.” (avnioztopcu.com)
Read retrospectively, this statement
acquires another significance today.
The interpretations developed through
the human–AI dialogue around Kurgusal Mekân in 2025
were, in a sense, the first attempts at such a new journey. Some of
those attempts now appear to have reached conceptual conclusions
that went beyond what the available sources could support. Yet this
does not make the experiment as a whole worthless.
On the contrary, the more significant
task today is to preserve those initial attempts rather than erase
them, and to reposition them as a stage within the research
process.
The following claim should therefore
no longer be defended:
“Öztopçu’s conception of
Fictional Space anticipated algorithmic sensibility.”
A more limited, but stronger, question
can be posed instead:
How can the problems of
objectification, opposition, part and whole, definiteness and
indeterminacy, and relational construction articulated by Öztopçu in
1989 be reread within a process of thinking conducted with
artificial intelligence from 2025 onward?
There is no definitive answer to this
question.
The value of the research does not lie
in confirming a predetermined answer.
It lies in the fact that an artistic
field of thought developed decades earlier encountered a new
technological environment; that the interpretations produced through
this encounter were subsequently tested again; that unsupported
claims were removed; that concepts were repositioned; and that new
questions emerged.
Seen in this way, Fictional Space
is not merely an explanatory text completed in 1989.
It is a document of thought that
entered a new reading in 2025 and began to question its own initial
interpretations in 2026.
The first text is not a
conclusion.
Nor is the revision a
conclusion.
Both are records of the ways in which
a body of thought acquires new forms as it encounters other modes of
thinking over time.
And perhaps the deeper research
question begins here:
When an artistic mode of
thought enters a new technological environment decades after its
formation, how much of itself does it preserve, how much does it
change, and after the encounter, to whom should the thought that
emerges from it be attributed?
Research and AI Use Note
This study was
first developed in 2025 as part of Pýnar Sumer Biber’s
research and authorship.
The research
questions, principal interpretations, conceptual direction, and
final editorial responsibility of the study belong to Pýnar Sumer
Biber. Artificial intelligence systems were used at different stages
of the research and writing process as tools for intellectual and
technical support.
During this process,
ChatGPT and Gemini, and at certain stages
Claude, were used for exploring
conceptual connections, comparing interpretations, critical
questioning, developing the text, and language editing.
The AI systems are
not considered authors of this study. Their suggestions,
interpretations, and textual contributions have not been treated as
independent sources or historical documents; they have been
evaluated, verified, revised, or rejected by the human researcher as
appropriate.
The responsibility
for the content, interpretations, and conclusions of the study
therefore rests with Pýnar Sumer Biber.
2026 Update Note
This text has been revised on the basis of the
original 2025 study while retaining its fundamental structure.
In the first version, more direct relationships
were established between Kurgusal Mekân,
Constructed Space, and Algorithmic Sensibility.
Some conceptual propositions also failed to distinguish clearly
enough between Öztopçu’s own artistic thought and subsequent
interpretations generated through the human–AI dialogue.
Subsequent research, particularly the renewed
examination of the 1989 text Kurgusal Mekân, has
shown that this distinction needs to be maintained.
In this revision:
-
the 1989 source
has been taken as the primary reference;
-
Öztopçu’s own
concepts have been distinguished from the AI interpretations
developed in 2025;
-
“algorithmic
sensibility” has been redefined as a comparative research concept
that emerged through the 2025 human–AI experiment, rather than as
a concept belonging to Öztopçu;
-
claims of
ontological equivalence between human beings and artificial
intelligence have been withdrawn in favor of an examination of
encounter, interaction, and shared research;
-
the fact that AI-generated
interpretations cannot be treated as historical documents or as
thoughts belonging to the artist has been made explicit.
This revision does not erase the 2025 text.
The 2025 text is preserved as the first experimental stage
of the human–AI research. The present text
constitutes a second stage of the same research, reconsidered in
light of new sources and approximately one year of working
experience.
As new documents
and research emerge, this text may itself be revised again. In this
way, what is recorded is not only the changing conclusion, but also
the evidence and questions through which thought changes over time.
Sources
Öztopçu, H.
Avni. Kurgusal Mekan. Sanatta
Yeterlik Tezi, Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü,
Resim Anasanat Dalý, 1989.
Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi Açýk Bilim, Sanat Arţivi.
Institutional repository record
Öztopçu, H.
Avni. “Kurgusal Mekan.” H62 / ders
BELGELÝĐÝ.
Online
text
Marmara
University. “Kurgusal Mekân I.” Education
and Training Information System. The course bibliography
includes Öztopçu’s Kurgusal Mekân (1989), as
well as works by Takiyettin Mengüţođlu and other authors relevant to
the conceptual context of the study.
Marmara University course record