Dataland, L.A.’s museum of AI arts: Opening date and first look images

AI is driving the stock market to record highs, dominating countless debates about the value of human work and radically changing the way schools approach education. It's also caused a stir in the art world: Media artist Refik Anadol is preparing to open Dataland, the world's first AI arts museum, at the Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex in downtown Los Angeles next spring.

The 25,000-square-foot museum was originally scheduled to open this year, but Anadol announced Thursday that the opening has been pushed back to spring 2026. Anadol also provided a sneak peek at the Infinity Room, one of the museum's five separate galleries. The immersive room is decorated with vibrant rotating colors and Anadol imagery and will be filled with AI-generated scents, creating a multi-sensory experience based on a proprietary AI model called the Big Nature Model.

The Infinity Room design dates back to 2014, when Anadol created his first immersive information sculpture at UCLA. He described it as a study of the future movement of Light and Space. It was essentially a 12 by 12 foot cube with mirrored walls, ceiling and floor. The projectors emitted pulses of black-and-white images that used data as pigment. To date, The Infinity Room has toured 35 cities and been viewed by more than 10 million people.

Another look at The Infinity Room, which was seen by 10 million people during its tour.

(Dataland)

“The work arose from my exploration of the idea that information can become narrative material, capable of transforming architectural space into a living canvas. The question that troubled me was simple but profound: what would happen if there was no corner, no floor, no ceiling, no gravity?” Anadol wrote about his “Endless Room” concept in blog post on his website. “At DATALAND, Infinity Room enters a new era. This iteration embodies the technical and conceptual leaps our studio has made over the last decade. Where the original used generative algorithms, this new incarnation incorporates our decade-long exploration of what I call 'machine hallucinations' – dreamlike, surreal realities, that AI can generate from huge data sets.”

The Infinity Room is designed to be a multi-sensory experience.

(Dataland)

In an interview last year Anadol said “ethical AI” is important to his practice. Unlike most major AI models, Anadol received permission to use all of its sources and said all of the studio's AI research was conducted on Google servers in Oregon, which use only renewable energy.