Dataland opens in Los Angeles with wearable-based AI art exhibit

In short: A new Los Angeles gallery called Dataland has opened with an interactive AI-made rainforest exhibit that changes based on visitors’ movements and body signals.

What happened

Dataland, a downtown Los Angeles gallery cofounded by artist Refik Anadol and studio partner Efsun Erkılıç, opened on June 20. The gallery is billed as the world’s first “museum of AI arts,” and Anadol told WIRED it drew more than 10,000 visitors in its first two weeks.

The opening exhibit is called Machine Dreams: Rainforest. Visitors can choose to experience it without sensors, or they can wear a smartwatch and a shoulder device that track basic body signals, like heart rate and skin temperature. The rooms show large moving images and play sound that shift as people walk around, like a room-sized screen saver that reacts to the crowd.

Anadol says the exhibit is powered by his “Large Nature Model,” an AI system trained on natural science archives, including material from institutions like the Smithsonian. He also says his team collected about 5 petabytes of rainforest data, including trips to the Amazon, and that they worked with researchers for consent and participation. Anadol also says Google DeepMind provided access to “experimental low-energy” computing resources so the gallery can run its systems on Google Cloud.

The gallery includes a section that shows visitors some of the data used to train the system, for example a wall of frog photos. Anadol says the museum deletes visitor sensor data when they leave, while giving the visitor a token to access their own session.

Why it matters

AI art is often criticized because people worry about stolen training material and about fake images that mislead others. Dataland is one example of a different approach, one that emphasizes permissioned data, transparency, and clear boundaries around what visitor data is kept.

Source: Wired