New Delhi: AI-generated artwork is no longer confined to blockchain or creative apps. Now there is a full-fledged museum in Los Angeles dedicated to it. Called ‘Dataland’, the interactive space is powered by Google Clouds and opened to visitors on 20 June.
Dataland, described as “the world’s first Museum of AI Arts and digital ecosystem”, is the result of a collaboration between Google and digital artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç.
Located inside The Grand LA complex, the museum spans 25,000 square feet and features five multi-sensory galleries, where visuals, scents, and sounds are blended together to offer a unique experience. Dataland hosted its inaugural exhibition, titled Machine Dreams: Rainforest, last week, which was “an exploration of the inherent intelligence of nature.”
The exhibition was powered by Google’s Large Nature Model, which transformed extensive environmental data into 1.2 billion pixels, resulting in vibrant and interactive artworks displayed on giant screens.
“We explore a new form of museum where data becomes pigment, and art continuously evolves in real time, shaped by human interaction, machine intelligence, and the vast but invisible information that shapes our world,” the museum website says.
The tickets for Dataland range from $49 to $79 per person, which is on the expensive side. New York Post reported that many of LA’s prominent cultural centres, such as the Natural History Museum, LACMA, and the Academy Museum, are cheaper to visit.
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A Google-powered museum
Google first roped in artist Refik for its Artists and Machine Intelligence (AMI) cohort in 2016, following which the two collaborated on several AI art projects, such as visualising Google Quantum AI data in 2020 and the MRI of the Earth project.
The artworks at the AI museum respond to human interaction, thanks to Google, which senses emotions, generates soundscapes, and augments scents.
Google claims that its computing infrastructure runs on 87% carbon-free renewable energy.
Apart from the museum, Google Arts & Culture has introduced the Dataland AI Artist Residency — a six-month programme that offers $25,000 each to four selected artists, who will get trained by Refik Anadol Studio and get access to advanced Google Cloud tools and machine learning models.
The work generated during this programme will be featured at the Dataland museum and on the Google Arts & Culture website later this year.