DATALAND IS HERE TO PUT THE ART IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

“THE SYSTEM is the art,” 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’s career thus far.

Set to open later this month inside the stacked towers of Frank Gehry’s Grand LA, and in the context of Gehry’s enduring vision for a Grand Avenue arts corridor, the museum lately occupies Anadol’s every waking moment. AI will do that. Dataland — a museum built with artificial intelligence — 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. With Dataland, Anadol and his studio co-founder, artist, producer and cultural researcher Efsun Erkılıç, are diving headfirst into this heady, discursive vortex bearing a message: AI doesn’t need to be an opponent when humanity has the power to turn it into an ally.

Dataland’s inaugural exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” is the studio’s opening salvo in the battle to redefine our burgeoning relationship with the evolving technology.

With minimal spoilers, a visitor’s 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.

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.