DATALAND, the world’s first omni-sensory museum opens to the public on Saturday 20 June, 2026 in Downtown Los Angeles at Frank Gehry’s The Grand LA.
Co-founded by Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, DATALAND, the Museum of AI Arts is conceived as a living cultural institution where art evolves continuously through the convergence of data, machine intelligence, architecture, and human presence. The inaugural exhibition Machine Dreams: Rainforest opens on 20 June and runs until 31January, 2027.
For many years, we have dreamed of a place where audience and artwork could merge – a laboratory of imagination where we can explore burgeoning new artforms. At DATLAND, that dream has now become reality, and we are so excited to open our doors and share it with the public.” Refik Anadol, co-founder and Artistic Director
Over the past decade, our studio has been fortunate to learn from extraordinary teachers, mentors, collaborators, and heroes whose work has helped shape the cultural landscape. We see DATALAND as a bridge between the visionaries who shaped our past and the creative possibilities of our future.” Efsun Erkılıç, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer
January 31, 2027 © 2026 Refik Anadol Studio on behalf of DATALAND. Photo: Refik Anadol
Studio
At DATALAND, art unfolds in real time. “For 5000 years humans have been emotionally moved by artworks, but the relationship has always flowed in one direction,” stated Anadol. “While developing DATALAND we asked ourselves, ‘Is it possible for artworks to feel us back?’”
Machine Dreams: Rainforest explores this possibility through a series of interconnected environments powered by Refik Anadol Studio’s Large Nature Model, an AI system trained on one of the world’s largest ethically sourced collections of ecological data. Visitors may choose to connect to the museum through two wearable devices; a custom medical-grade biosensing device worn around the wrist that incorporates the collective visitors’ emotional reactions through real-time measurements of heart rates, skin temperatures, and skin conductivity; and a device draped around the neck that delivers an individualized scent journey for each visitor.
Throughout the exhibition, a visitor can experience their own data via a random assignment of the biosensing devices, each imprinted with a unique two-digit code. Physiological signals captured by the device, together with live environmental data, reshape what each visitor experiences; a machine dream that is not pre-programmed, but a living dialogue between art and the audience. At various points throughout the museum, visitors can interact with both the data used to create the artworks and their own data.
January 31, 2027. © 2026 Refik Anadol Studio on behalf of DATALAND. Photo: Refik Anadol Studio
Across five galleries spanning 25,000 square feet, visitors journey through monumental machine-generated environments inspired by rainforest ecosystems. Highlights include the much-anticipated Infinity Room, where Anadol’s dream of a glass hummingbird takes flight in a three-dimensional LED cube; the Data Pavilion, an immersive architectural canvas animated by eighty-four 4K Epson projectors; the Latent Gallery, where visitors can delve deeper into the Large Nature Model’s datasets, paint with a “thinking brush,” and sample an edible data sculpture; and The Sanctuary, where the journey culminates with a sacred healing song of the Yawanawá people, and the scent of Lost Flower, the moonflower that blooms only one night each year in the Amazonian Rainforest.
The opening weekend of DATALAND marks only the beginning. This July, details about the museum’s first artist residency program, developed in partnership with Google Arts & Culture to support creatives working with machine intelligence, will be revealed.
