Imagine walking into a museum where artworks respond to your heartbeat and even the scents adapt to your body’s signals. That is the promise behind DATALAND, media artist Refik Anadol’s new Los Angeles institution, whose founders describe it as the world’s first museum dedicated to AI-driven art.
Anadol founded DATALAND with his wife and longtime creative partner, painter and cultural researcher Efsun Erkılıç. The institution is the latest venture from Refik Anadol Studio, which the pair launched in 2014. Located inside Frank Gehry’s The Grand LA complex, the 25,000 square foot venue sits among some of Los Angeles’ best-known cultural landmarks, including Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Broad, and LACMA.
Rather than displaying traditional paintings and sculptures, DATALAND surrounds visitors with ever changing projections, spatial soundscapes, custom fragrances, and responsive installations. No two visits are exactly alike.
Its inaugural exhibition, Machine Dreams: Rainforest, runs through January 31, 2027. Inspired by rainforest ecosystems, it combines field recordings, ecological data, and AI-generated imagery powered by the studio’s proprietary Large Nature Model (LNM).
Visitors wear a wristband that tracks biometric signals, while a lightweight device worn around the neck releases one of 12 fragrances developed with L’Oréal Luxe. As they move through the galleries, both the visuals and scents adapt in real time. The journey culminates in a room called Sanctuary, where the collective biometric data of everyone present is transformed into a single, continuously evolving artwork.
Ethics and consent are central to the project. The work draws on datasets shared with permission by institutions including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum, the Getty, and Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. It also reflects a partnership with the Yawanawá Indigenous community in the Brazilian Amazon. According to Anadol, the concept originated from a dream about the rainforest before being developed in collaboration with community leaders and with their approval.
Behind the scenes, DATALAND relies on Google Cloud infrastructure and a high-performance supercomputer powered by GPUs donated by Nvidia founder Jensen Huang. According to the studio, its Oregon data center operates on approximately 87% carbon neutral energy, while each visit consumes roughly the same amount of electricity as charging an iPhone.
Early reviews have been largely enthusiastic. Critic Ann Hirsch argued that DATALAND marks a significant evolution in Anadol’s practice, addressing many of the criticisms levelled at his 2023 MoMA installation Unsupervised by placing greater emphasis on immersion, interaction, and emotional engagement.
DATALAND operates as a for-profit museum, with tickets starting at $49. Whether it becomes a blueprint or a curiosity, it is testing the boundaries of what a museum can be.
