AI art pioneer Refik Anadol has just announced plans for the opening the world’s first artificial intelligence museum of the arts, DATALAND. Set to open in 2025 and dedicated to data visualization and algorithmic innovation, DATALAND will be housed at the Gehry-designed Grand LA — joining a band of landmark arts and culture institutions in Downtown Los Angeles, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Broad, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
“DATALAND welcomes people of all backgrounds with unparalleled experiences utilizing machine learning and the latest sensory and visualization technologies at a scale and quality never before realized,” the Refik Anadol Studio said in a recent statement. “In pursuit of its mission, DATALAND combines online access and learning platforms, acts as a public repository for large-scale, nature-focused data sets and will build a comprehensive collection of AI art.”
The museum’s inaugural exhibitions will be expressed through Large Nature Model, an open-source AI model based solely on nature data. The first of its kind, the initiative was presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year in hopes of promoting environmental awareness.
Taking immersion to the next level, even the smell of the galleries will be AI-powered. Anadol has teamed up with a scent-making company on a model trained on over 500,000 scents. “When you enter this room, it is dreaming all the flowers in the world,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “And you can really smell these AI dreams.”
Anadol founded his namesake studio with fellow artist and cultural researcher Efsun Erkiliç in 2014. Since then, the Turkish new media artist has emerged as a new leader of AI-generative art with projects at the Intuit Dome in LA, the Sphere in Las Vegas and the United Nations headquarters. Just last year, the Museum of Modern Art acquired his 2022 installation Unsupervised, the first generative AI piece in its permanent collection.
For more updates and information regarding the launch of DATALAND, head to the museum’s website and Instagram.
