Refik Anadol Opens Dataland in Los Angeles as an AI Museum Built Around the Body
Downtown Los Angeles now has a museum that asks visitors to do more than look. At Dataland, the new project by Turkish artist Refik Anadol (b. 1985), the experience unfolds through light, sound, scent, and biometric feedback, turning the act of viewing into something closer to participation. The 25,000-square-foot space sits inside the Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA development, directly across from Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Anadol has described Dataland as the world’s first AI art museum, and the claim is matched by the scale of the installation. The project uses more than half a billion pixels and datasets developed in collaboration with institutions including the Smithsonian Institution and Getty. Visitors wear a wristband that tracks heartbeats and other physical reactions, while a neck ring delivers a rotating set of 12 scents created with L’Oreal Luxe. As the visuals shift, the soundscape and aromas change with them, creating an environment that is designed to be absorbed all at once.
The museum’s opening work, Machine Dreams: Rainforest, is rooted in Anadol’s visit to the Amazon and his meeting with Indigenous leaders in the Yawanawá community. The piece draws on his Large Nature Model and on a dream he says came to him about a hummingbird in the forest, linking memory, data, and ecological imagery in a single narrative thread. Another familiar element, Infinity Room, has appeared in more than 35 cities since 2015 and offers a more open-ended encounter with Anadol’s signature visual language.
The project also reflects Anadol’s broader argument that artists should help shape the public conversation around AI. He has called Dataland a “laboratory of imagination,” and the museum’s phone-free approach reinforces that idea by asking visitors to stay present rather than document the experience.
That emphasis on immersion, sensation, and shared attention places Dataland somewhere between museum, experiment, and spectacle. With tickets starting at $49, it also marks a distinctly commercial model for an institution that wants to redefine what an art museum can be in the age of AI.
