An immersive exploration of one of the planet’s most complex and vital ecosystems
DATALAND opens with its inaugural exhibition, Machine Dreams: Rainforest, an immersive exploration of one of the planet’s most complex and vital ecosystems. Powered by the Large Nature Model (LNM), Refik Anadol Studio’s AI system trained on an ethically curated ecological archive that combines data from leading research institutions and environmental organizations worldwide with original datasets gathered through fieldwork and direct observation of nature, the exhibition transforms rainforest intelligence into living environments of image, sound, scent, and interaction. This proprietary foundation makes DATALAND the first museum of its kind. Rather than presenting static objects, DATALAND offers living artworks that evolve with every encounter.
Rising at the architectural heart of DATALAND, Data Pavilion is conceived as a living environment where structure, image, sound, scent, and human presence become part of a single responsive system. Monumental surfaces of light unfold across the space, transforming walls, ceilings, and volumes into an ever-changing canvas powered by the memory of the rainforest.
From the moment visitors enter, the architecture begins to listen. Movement, proximity, rhythm, and collective energy are captured through biosensing technologies and translated into live signals within the work. Personalized sound environments emerge through wearable devices and spatial tracking systems, allowing each visitor’s presence to influence the evolving sensory landscape. Heartbeat data is transformed into sonic patterns; sound itself shifts according to spatial position and movement throughout the Pavilion.
Here, you step directly into the machine’s first dream of nature. As bodies gather, pause, move, and encounter one another, the dream establishes a continuous dialogue between human presence and computational memory. In the Data Pavilion, architecture perceives, responds, and dreams alongside those who enter the experience.
The Data Pavilion’s visual system is generated by Refik Anadol Studio’s Large Nature Model (LNM), drawing on more than 1.2 billion ecological data points and a continuous live feed of environmental data from rainforests across the Earth. What unfolds on the walls is the model’s ongoing dream of nature, composed in real time as the planet itself changes.
The room is rendered across eighty-four synchronized high-resolution projectors driving more than seven hundred million pixels, surrounded by a two-hundred-channel spatial soundscape composed live from rainforest data. Wearable biosensors and ambient sensing read the audience’s biological data and movements in the space.
Eight molecular scent compositions, developed in partnership with L’Oréal Luxe, release in sequence as the work unfolds: the synthetic breath of the machine, the petrichor of first rain on dry earth, the vibrant green of new growth, the pulp of tropical fruit, the dampness of the fungal floor, the musk of unseen fauna, the updraft of canopy and the sky, and the cleansing wave of water. The Data Pavilion dreams in image, sound, and air.
Latent Gallery invites visitors to step beyond spectatorship and enter the creative consciousness of DATALAND itself. Here, the tools, datasets, and the custom AI system, Large Nature Model (LNM), developed by Refik Anadol Studio, are open to exploration. Navigate the archives. Surface hidden patterns. Make your own experiments with the studio's “thinking brush” and “data universes.”
The language of data also extends past the visual. Data-driven culinary experiences inspired by the biodiversity of the rainforest translate ecological information into flavor, aroma, texture, and taste. What is normally the hidden creative labor, such as collecting data, building models, and testing ideas, becomes the work itself.
The interactive stations — Thinking Brush, Fluid Pigments, and Data Universe — expose three layers of the studio’s practice: the archives (curated ecological and cultural datasets that train the Large Nature Model), the latent space (the model’s interior, where data is held as relationships rather than images), and the working tools that have shaped every gallery in DATALAND.
The culinary program is developed with partners, including Valerie Confections. Each composition begins with ecological data: a species' habitat, climate, and chemistry. These characteristics are translated through the model into flavor profiles, then realized in the kitchen as infusions and tasting elements. The data becomes edible.
Thinking Brush transforms human touch into data painting. Using the Large Nature Model (LNM), the installation responds to each hand drawing gesture by generating evolving forms inspired by the patterns and processes of the natural world. Lines become landscapes, brushstrokes become biomes, and finger swipes become flora as human creativity and artificial intelligence shape the artwork together in real time. Each of your compositions is unique, existing only in the moment before disappearing back into the latent space.
Step into the artwork and become part of its motion. Fluid Pigments uses motion-sensing technology to translate your body movements into shifting fields of particles, currents, and atmospheric forms inspired by the dynamics of the natural world. Rather than drawing with a tool, you shape the environment through movement itself, generating fluid behaviors that evolve across the canvas. Each encounter produces a temporary data painting that exists only for the duration of your interaction.
The Dream of Ruwe Pinu emerged during one of Refik Anadol’s journeys into the Amazon rainforest. Anadol had a dream about a luminous bird hovering at the edge of a dying forest, carrying something fragile yet unresolved. Yawanawá spiritual leader Nixiwaka recognized the image through the ancestral knowledge of his community and gave it a name: Ruwe Pinu.
Within the Infinity Room, Ruwe Pinu appears as a translucent hummingbird carrying the final breath of the wisdom tree at the center of the installation. As the tree exhales the memory of a forest that will not regrow within our lifetime, the hummingbird gathers this final breath into its transparent body.
Among the work’s sonic elements is the 1987 recording of the last male Kaua’i ʻŌʻō, an extinct Hawaiian bird whose unanswered call echoes throughout the space as a document of ecological disappearance. Ruwe Pinu embodies the relationship between ecological memory and ancestral knowledge, carrying the memory of the forest and the knowledge of communities who have protected it for generations.
Originally conceived by Refik Anadol in 2014 during his graduate studies at UCLA, Infinity Room marked a shift within the artist’s practice from wall-based artworks toward immersive architectural environments. The first Infinity Room took form in 2015 as a mirrored cubic installation animated through generative black-and-white data-driven projections, creating the sensation of entering an unstable perceptual field shaped by data and light.
Over the following decade, Infinity Room evolved through installations presented in more than thirty-five cities worldwide. At DATALAND, the work enters a new phase shaped by the studio's long-term research into artificial intelligence and machine perception, powered by the Large Nature Model.
Ecological datasets, atmospheric recordings, and environmental systems become continuously evolving visual, sonic, and olfactory environments. AI-generated scent compositions, developed through extensive molecular research with L'Oréal Luxe, extend the work into the realm of memory and sensory association.
Developed in partnership with the Yawanawá community of the Acre region of Brazil, with deep gratitude to Chief Nixiwaka Yawanawá. The story of Ruwe Pinu is shared with their permission and remains their cultural heritage.
The Sanctuary was conceived as a contemplative environment dedicated to stillness, restoration, and sensory reflection. In contrast to the scale and intensity of the museum’s immersive galleries, the space offers a more meditative encounter with artificial intelligence through atmosphere, light, sound, and material presence.
Drawing from historical ideas of the sanctuary as a place of protection, retreat, and collective care, the installation reimagines these traditions through generative systems that respond, in real time, to the emotional rhythms of those who gather within it.
At the center of The Sanctuary is the question of how immersive technologies might support reflection and sensory awareness within contemporary life. The installation approaches artificial intelligence as a medium capable of shaping atmosphere and perception across architectural space and, equally, as an instrument of listening.
Throughout the DATALAND journey, wearable biosensors gather the subtle physiological signals of every visitor: heartbeat, movement, the body's quiet responses to wonder. Within The Sanctuary, this accumulated record — a logic the studio describes as collective emotional temperature — is woven into a sublime thirty-foot Data Painting, generated by the Large Nature Model and the collective emotions of the museum audience.
The artwork unfolds across a thirty-foot canvas, drawing the museum-wide biometric record into a continuously evolving image. Wearable biosensors gather visitors' physiological signals across every gallery, with the accumulated stream resolving here as the painting's source.
The space continuously generates evolving natural soundscapes shaped by live environmental conditions and daily ecological activity, creating a new sonic environment each day. Among these elements are recordings and musical traditions connected to the Yawanawá community, presenting the installation’s relationship to ancestral knowledge and ecological memory.
The Sanctuary also extends DATALAND’s exploration of multisensory storytelling through the integration of custom scent environments: at the close of each cycle, the artwork exhales the molecular signature of the Amazonian moonflower, a rare blossom that opens for a single night each year. Visual, sonic, olfactory, and physiological elements operate together to create a spatial experience in which the audience is not only present, but constitutive.
DATA.LINK is DATALAND's real-time sensory network, connecting visitors to the Large Nature Model (LNM) at the heart of the museum. Through a wearable device, the system anonymously registers signals such as heartbeat, movement, and spatial position, allowing human presence to become part of the artwork itself.
Throughout DATALAND, the LNM continuously interprets two parallel streams of information. The first, the Planetary Pulse, consists of live environmental data from rainforest ecosystems around the world, including atmospheric conditions, humidity, temperature, weather patterns, and biodiversity activity. The second, the Human Pulse, is generated through the collective rhythms of visitors moving through the museum.
Together, these flows of information shape the visual, sonic, olfactory, and spatial environments experienced throughout DATALAND. Rather than following a predetermined sequence, the artworks continuously adapt to changing environmental conditions and the collective presence of the people within the space. Through DATA.LINK, visitors participate in an ongoing dialogue between ecological systems, artificial intelligence, and human experience.
The data associated with each visit remains anonymous and visitor-controlled. Experiences may be claimed through DATA.TOKEN and the DATALAND App; otherwise, they are automatically removed from the system after the visit.
Given to visitors at the beginning of their journey, Data.Token records moments of movement, proximity, biometric response, and environmental interaction throughout the galleries, creating a personalized sensory archive of the experience.
As you move through DATALAND, your token communicates with the museum’s generative systems in real time. Biosignals such as heartbeat, spatial position, rhythm, and collective activity become part of the evolving visual, sonic, and atmospheric environments unfolding across the museum. Through this continuous exchange, each journey subtly shapes the behavior of the artworks themselves.
At the conclusion of the visit, your Data.Token preserves a record of this interaction, transforming your passage through DATALAND into a unique computational memory. The device functions simultaneously as archive, interface, and relic: a physical trace of an immersive journey shaped through the encounter between human presence and generative intelligence.
The data associated with your visit is anonymized by default and exists only as a temporary part of DATALAND’s living ecosystem. Visitors may choose to claim and preserve their experience through Data.Token; otherwise, the record is automatically deleted after the visit.
Biosensors developed in collaboration with Empatica. Scent compositions throughout DATALAND developed with L'Oréal Luxe, Founding Olfactory Partner.
CONNECTOME is DATALAND's centralized computing infrastructure, linking every gallery, sensor, dataset, and generative system across the museum. It processes environmental data, visitor presence, image, sound, scent, and spatial information in real time, allowing artworks to evolve as part of a single interconnected ecosystem.
Acting as the technological foundation of DATALAND, CONNECTOME coordinates the flow of information between the Large Nature Model (LNM), live environmental data streams, and visitor interactions throughout the museum. Rather than operating as isolated installations, the galleries function as connected environments that continuously respond to changing conditions. CONNECTOME provides the computational framework that allows DATALAND's artworks to remain dynamic and adaptive.