Refik Anadol Studio presents DATALAND, the world’s first Museum of AI Arts, which is set to open in 2025 at The Grand LA, the Frank Gehry-designed development in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. DATALAND features art experiences blending human imagination and artificial intelligence, establishing a new model for artistic expression at the onset of the digital age.
The decision by co-founders Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç to launch DATALAND in Los Angeles reflects their deep commitment to the city. Los Angeles has long held Anadol’s fascination, beginning when he was eight years old with the discovery of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, set in a mesmerizing futuristic reimagining of LA. Anadol first ventured to LA in 2012 to attend a graduate program in Design Media Arts at the University of California Los Angeles, where he has taught for the last ten years. In 2014, Erkiliç joined Anadol in Los Angeles to establish Refik Anadol Studio permanently in the city. Now celebrating its ten-year anniversary, the Studio’s works have been exhibited worldwide in more than 70 cities on six continents, and are beloved by millions of ardent fans. DATALAND brings their future-forward vision to a permanent home.
“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,” says DATALAND co-founder and Artistic Director Refik Anadol. “L.A. has long been a city that looks to the future in art, music, cinema, architecture, and more, and it feels natural to open DATALAND here. 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 co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Efsun Erkılıç remarks, “DATALAND is a place where human creativity meets innovation, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Our Studio has presented exhibitions in incredible places all around the world, but having a space of our own gives us a blank canvas to work with, allowing us to truly push ourselves to dream without boundaries. DATALAND will be a place where audiences of all ages are transported to new worlds of discovery, inspiration, and wonder. 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.”
Establishing DATALAND at The Grand LA, in the heart of Los Angeles’ cultural corridor, is a full-circle moment for Anadol, Erkılıç, and the Studio. The Grand LA is situated directly across the street from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, where, in 2018, Refik Anadol Studio presented one of their defining projects to date, the ambitious and groundbreaking WDCH Dreams, celebrating the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Centennial. Using 42 large scale projectors, the nightly live performances featured machine dreams of the LA Phil’s 100 years of digitized memories, mapped directly onto the undulating stainless-steel exterior of the iconic building.
The Grand was always envisioned as a place that would complement and connect its neighboring world-class cultural institutions for generations to come, and there’s no better way to realize that mission than by welcoming a future-forward AI arts museum from the mind of Refik Anadol to Grand Avenue,” said Nick Vanderboom, Chief Operating Officer, Related California. “DATALAND will inspire entirely new audiences to visit downtown LA, infusing new energy into the neighborhood and further cementing Grand Avenue as a place to see and be seen in the international arts community.”
The opening of DATALAND follows a series of groundbreaking presentations from Refik Anadol Studio, including Living Paintings at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, in Los Angeles; Machine Hallucinations at The Sphere, in Las Vegas; Living Architecture: Casa Batlló at Antoni Gaudí’s famed building, in Barcelona, Spain; Living Archive: Nature at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland; Echoes of the Earth at London’s Serpentine Galleries; and Living Arena at the Intuit Dome, in Inglewood, CA. Unsupervised, presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, attracted nearly 3 million visitors in one year. The Washington Post heralded Unsupervised as an “early masterpiece of AI-generated art.” The work was acquired into MoMA’s permanent collection and Anadol became the first artist to have a generative AI piece added to the museum’s collection. DATALAND is designed in collaboration with award-winning architecture firm Gensler and global sustainable development consultancy Arup.
The inaugural exhibitions of DATALAND will be expressed through Refik Anadol Studio’s Large Nature Model, the world’s first open-source AI model based solely on nature data. Additional information and details on DATALAND will be available in the coming months.
