Refik Anadol’s name is synonymous with generative and digital art. The designer’s work has displayed on the face Las Vegas sphere, in the lobby of the MoMA, and more recently on the Intuit Dome. For its next venture, Refik Anadol Studio—cofounded by Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç—is thinking bigger and grander. It plans to open DATALAND, “the world’s first Museum of AI Art.” The forthcoming museum is slated for construction in downtown Los Angeles inside The Grand Los Angeles, a $1 billion development designed by Frank Gehry that’s a short walk from Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad, and MOCA.
DATALAND is financed by Related California, the same real estate group driving The Grand Los Angeles. The project will designed by Gensler and Arup. According to the design team, DATALAND will be The Grand Los Angeles’s anchor and provide art experiences that blend “human imagination and artificial intelligence” and establish “a new model for artistic expression at the onset of the digital age.”
Renderings of DATALAND haven’t been released, but the artists on view there will utilize machine learning and harness technology to curate sensory experiences for patrons.
The future museum will consist of a “digital ecosystem dedicated to data visualization and AI-based creativity,” Related shared in a press release. Among the artworks planned for display in DATALAND, are its own AI model, the Large Nature Model. Using images of nature from institutions—such as the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology—the AI will generate unique art pieces.
DATALAND will combine years of experience at Refik Anadol Studio working at the intersection of art of technology. “Los Angeles is the perfect city to launch DATALAND, a forward-thinking, revolutionary museum in support of the fields to which I have dedicated my career: art, science, technology and AI research,” Anadol in a statement.
Anadol continued: “To have a permanent space for us to develop a new paradigm of what a museum can be, by fusing human imagination with machine intelligence and the most advanced technologies available, is a realization of one of my biggest dreams. To do so in a building designed by one of my heroes, Frank Gehry, is almost unbelievable.”
“DATALAND will be a place where audiences of all ages are transported to new worlds of discovery, inspiration, and wonder,” Erkiliç added. “We are building a visionary museum that redefines learning and community, igniting the human spirit and fueling a journey into the beauty of our collective memories—the world of data.”
