{"id":845829,"date":"2026-06-05T09:39:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/845829\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:39:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:39:25","slug":"dataland-defies-expectations-but-will-l-a-embrace-the-worlds-first-ai-arts-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/845829\/","title":{"rendered":"Dataland defies expectations. But will L.A. embrace the world\u2019s first AI arts museum?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe system is the art,\u201d says Refik Anadol during a recent tour of Dataland, the 25,000-square-foot immersive, environmental, generative, multisensory AI arts museum in downtown L.A. that represents the culmination of Anadol\u2019s career thus far.<\/p>\n

Set to open later this month inside the stacked towers of Frank Gehry\u2019s Grand LA, and in the context of Gehry\u2019s enduring vision for a Grand Avenue arts corridor, the museum lately occupies Anadol\u2019s every waking moment<\/p>\n

AI will do that. Dataland \u2014 a museum built with artificial intelligence \u2014 arrives as debates explode across socio-political lines about the impact of the advancing technology on our culture, cognition, communication, economy, environment and careers, including in the arts. From the Holy See to Silicon Valley, each day brings a fresh wave of discourse.<\/p>\n

With Dataland, Anadol and his studio co-founder, artist, producer and cultural researcher Efsun Erk\u0131l\u0131\u00e7, are diving headfirst into this heady, discursive vortex bearing a message: AI doesn\u2019t need to be an opponent when humanity has the power to turn it into an ally.<\/p>\n

Dataland\u2019s inaugural exhibition, \u201cMachine Dreams: Rainforest,\u201d is the studio\u2019s opening salvo in the battle to redefine our burgeoning relationship with the evolving technology.<\/p>\n

\"Two <\/p>\n

Dataland co-founders Refik Anadol, left, and Efsun Erkilic stand inside the Infinity Room at the museum.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

With minimal spoilers, a visitor\u2019s journey begins with a very spaceship-like onboarding that involves voluntary biometric sharing and a certain amount of agency as to the contours of your experience, including what it will smell like.<\/p>\n

You are oriented within the mainframe and its manifesto by a calming female voice with a soothing British accent, before you gently descend into a vast, destabilizing cavern built entirely of light, sound and liquid-like floors.<\/p>\n

It is a wonderment-inducing sensoria that, while rainforest themed, reaches beyond imagery into nostalgia, surrealism, futurism and a sublime cognitive reorientation toward overwhelming beauty that seems designed to target and destroy whatever skepticism and cynicism you brought with you.<\/p>\n

Thus cleansed of expectation, you move through a series of smaller, even intimate spaces in which you are given free access to a literal universe of biological data. You also witness your own body energy \u2014 and that of your fellow viewers \u2014 affect the art as it evolves in real time, and peek behind the scenes into the nerve center of the whole operation.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

Dataland runs on a generative AI system called the Large Nature Model, which was trained on material from partner institutions including the Smithsonian, London\u2019s Natural History Museum, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, iNaturalist and Getty.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

L\u2019Or\u00e9al Luxe partnered with the studio to develop a projective scent journey inspired by the rainforests, and eventually, the sense of taste is engaged through Data.Chocolate, a limited-edition four-piece tasting collection crafted with Valerie Confections that translates datasets of cacao genetics and Amazonian concepts into physical flavor profiles.<\/p>\n

The underlying engine driving the museum\u2019s experience is the Large Nature Model, a first-of-its-kind open-access multi-modal artificial intelligence system trained entirely on environmental datasets rather than human text outputs.<\/p>\n

To ground this heavy computational architecture in environmental responsibility, the Large Nature Model is hosted by a dedicated Google Cloud server cluster in Oregon running on 87% carbon-free renewable energy. The power required to process and reiterate the artwork for a single visitor\u2019s stay is roughly equivalent to one smartphone charge.<\/p>\n

Any heavy electrical footprint is restricted to the initial training phase of the neural networks, whereas the daily interactive inference runs at highly optimized, slower processing speeds to maintain strict carbon neutrality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all ethically collected data as well,\u201d insists Anadol, referring to partnerships with institutions including the Smithsonian, London\u2019s Natural History Museum, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, iNaturalist and Getty, which provided access to a comprehensive corpus exceeding 500 million nature images and representing 2.2 million distinct biological species.<\/p>\n

\"Inside <\/p>\n

\u201cWe traveled to 16 rainforests, we sought and received all necessary permissions,\u201d says Dataland co-founder Refik Anadol. \u201cThis is not just another AI model. It\u2019s an AI model collected with harmony and with the idea that one day this museum can dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Rather than relying exclusively on archival institutional repositories, the studio executed specialized field expeditions to a variety of distinct global environments to gather raw primary telemetry like detailed images, LiDAR scans, weather data and sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe traveled to 16 rainforests, we sought and received all necessary permissions,\u201d Anadol says. \u201cThis is not just another AI model. It\u2019s an AI model collected with harmony and with the idea that one day this museum can dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anadol means that quite literally.<\/p>\n

He and Erk\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 have achieved international acclaim for their team\u2019s decades of foundational experimentation collaborating with dataset intelligences at the AI frontier, as well as for architecturally-scaled, narratively engaged visual embodiments of abstract technological constructs. This includes 2018\u2019s \u201cWDCH Dreams,\u201d which mapped 45 terabytes of orchestral metadata onto the exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall,<\/p>\n

So when, at a moment of being swept almost literally off one\u2019s feet by a swirling, whirling, radiant light and sound orchestration, enhanced by bespoke scents and actively responsive to your own body\u2019s biometrics, Anadol says that Dataland is alive, insisting that \u201cthe living museum is the art,\u201d it actually seems possible.<\/p>\n

\"Inside <\/p>\n

Inside the Data Pavilion at Dataland, the world\u2019s first museum of AI arts.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

That a digital museum can feel innately organic is a direct outgrowth of Anadol\u2019s environmental awareness and a personal spiritual evolution inspired by botanical stewardship, and endless experiential conjectures as to how art engages and co-creates individual, collective and trans-human consciousness.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach time the museum records the humidity or hears the water inside the trunks we can talk about the heartbeat of a tree,\u201d says Anadol, with obvious delight. \u201cEach time the museum responds to the rainforest \u2014 it can be Amazonia, Indonesia, Australia \u2014 the resultant acoustic archive grows.\u201d <\/p>\n

The LNM holds 50 million bird songs, including a 1987 recording of the final known mating call of the now-extinct Kaua\u2019i \u2018\u014d\u2019\u014d bird, a quasi-mythological creature that Anadol says has also visited his dreams.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe starting point is a real rainforest that exists in the world. Then the story begins. We hear those locations,\u201d Anadol says. \u201cThe sound is also evolving wherever the museum connects with meteorological patterns and weather phenomena. That\u2019s why we call it a living museum because it\u2019s not just a beautiful image or video or sound. It\u2019s truly a living ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

This expansive data-landscape is bound not only to those locations, but to a set of unique cultural collaborations, including Google\u2019s Quantum AI and Envisioning Studio programs, and the Indigenous Amazonian Yawanaw\u00e1 community, a remote nation of 700 people which has become a kind of spiritual home for Anadol. And not only for him.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

Dataland co-founder Refik Anadol stands in the museum\u2019s Data Pavilion.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

The most radical theoretical dimension of the project emerges from a collaboration with Hartmut Neven, Google\u2019s vice president of engineering for quantum AI, who approaches consciousness as an empirical scientific problem \u2014 and who found his own way to the Yawanaw\u00e1 before connecting with Anadol.<\/p>\n

Neven said he is particularly interested in understanding the brain, including, \u201cthe forbidden fruit\u201d of trying to make sense of what constitutes conscious experience. His current best theory is that it\u2019s generated by quantum processes, suggesting that awareness exists on a continuous spectrum across all matter rather than remaining the exclusive domain of mammalian brains.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is made of the same stuff. You know, like my car is made of the same stuff I\u2019m made of,\u201d explains Nevens. \u201cI think consciousness is [part of that, and thus] ultimately understandable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anadol Studio\u2019s active creative partnership with Google deepened after Refik\u2019s own more recent stays in the Sacred Village, taking advantage of what Neven characterizes as \u201cthe ethnobotanical knowledge that Indigenous tribes still possess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Traditional songs are woven directly into the multi-channel soundscapes of Dataland. Specific fluid visual structures shifting across the walls have been formally classified as \u201cRuwe Pinu\u201d by tribal leader Nixiwaka, referring to an ancient mythological entity that appears in ancestral cosmology. In Dataland\u2019s exhibition Ruwe Pinu becomes a responsive software canvas for a faraway culture and a primordial future.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind the walls, as you can see, the medium is more than a screen,\u201d explains Anadol. \u201cWe want to invent this feeling of being inside these universes, the sonification of nature in tune with what we call generative reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

The server room that runs Dataland takes up an additional 10,000 square feet of the museum.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s soundscape includes original music by composer and sound designer Kerim Karao\u011flu, and incorporates traditional music from the Amazon setting. The sound system is handled by an L-Acoustics L-ISA 250-speaker matrix suspended dynamically behind a specialized acoustic fabric wall, material that Anadol loves to let people touch gently to confirm its woven tensile character.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou walk in, and [Dataland] responds to you. You\u2019re instantly a part of the artwork,\u201d says Mira Lane, Google\u2019s vice president of technology and society, head of the Envision Lab creative cohort, and an artist herself. \u201cWhen you walk into a museum or gallery right now, the artwork\u2019s not responding to you. It\u2019s a one-way conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Dataland, Refik and Erk\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 have constructed a conceptual defense against contemporary cultural anxieties, rejecting the narrative of machine versus human to reframe artificial intelligence as a mirror reflecting civilization.<\/p>\n

Lane positions this effort against broader commercial trends. She says that people reject AI slop because \u201cit feels really easy. It\u2019s throwaway, it\u2019s superficial,\u201d whereas artists like Anadol are, \u201cshowing how much work went into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very clear about his process and the way he\u2019s ethically approached data collection, the way he works with the Yawanaw\u00e1 tribes,\u201d Lane says.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Anadol founded the \u201cWinds of Yawanaw\u00e1\u201d blockchain initiative, a digital art collection that generated millions of dollars to finance Indigenous-helmed cultural infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

Dataland\u2019s co-founders, Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkilic, believe the museum can help people rethink their relationship to AI.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he is being very thoughtful and very intentional about the work that he\u2019s doing, but at the same time, he\u2019s also making us look at things in a different way,\u201d Lane added.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, no matter how alive the museum is or isn\u2019t, implementation of these systems requires humans. The Refik Anadol Studio team consists of 20 people in Los Angeles, from 10 different countries, fluent in 12 languages. It\u2019s an inclusive environment that rejects the solo artistic ego in favor of human-machine collaboration that almost immediately escapes its creator\u2019s grasp.<\/p>\n

To further its mission, Dataland has established an artist residency program in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, providing emerging digital creators with a six-month residency, a $25,000 grant, and advanced cloud processing access to develop new works.<\/p>\n

By inviting the public into a dynamic action-perception loop where human heartbeats and quantum noise co-create the visual architecture, Dataland moves beyond the limits of static historic mediums, shifting AI from a feared opponent into an active creative partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been said that the arts, the religions and the sciences are all branches of the same tree. And I very much live by that,\u201d says Neven.<\/p>\n

Shakespeare wrote that nothing in the world is good or bad but thinking makes it so, and in that spirit Lane, like Anadol and Erk\u0131l\u0131\u00e7, remains resolutely optimistic about what the Dataland model heralds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf everything we believe is true, we\u2019re about to open up a moment where there\u2019s more abundance, more opportunity. And we should all be feeling inspired and hopeful and taking advantage of that and imagining things that we could do better as humanity,\u201d Lane says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s opening another gateway,\u201d says Erk\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 of the museum and its mission. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit of a provocation in that sense because we don\u2019t know anything about AI. AI is still developing. It\u2019s still evolving. We just met AI, whatever it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Erk\u0131l\u0131\u00e7 says she doesn\u2019t give much credence to the AI versus humanity panic. Over thousands of years humans have built and destroyed civilizations, killed gods and created new ones, she says, adding, \u201cRight now you\u2019re telling me that it\u2019s machine versus humans and you\u2019re ready to give up? It\u2019s impossible. We\u2019re too strong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe system is the art,\u201d says Refik Anadol during a recent tour of Dataland, the 25,000-square-foot immersive, environmental,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":845830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[163085,1037,1582,276,163088,24568,2722,345913,2961,224,5337,345914,11365,22050,112708,180033,55283,345912,158,345915],"class_list":["post-845829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-anadol","tag-art","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-dataland","tag-experience","tag-google","tag-hartmut-neven","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-mira-lane","tag-museum","tag-rainforest","tag-real-time","tag-refik-anadol","tag-sound","tag-studio-co-founder","tag-technology","tag-trans-human-consciousness"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116696841760895311","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}