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Dear DNA readers,
I hope you’re doing well and ready for a busy June with Pride, and World Cup soccer taking over L.A.'s "third spaces," from the Santa Monica Pier to the Getty (see Design Things to Do). Then there is the opening of DATALAND.
In 2018, Refik Anadol, a UCLA digital artist, memorably transformed the sails of the Walt Disney Concert Hall into WDCH Dreams, a blaze of swirling light resulting from applying machine intelligence to the orchestra’s nearly 45 terabytes of data. Now, on the other side of the street from the LA Phil, in a storefront at the base of The Grand retail and residential development, Anadol and his partner in life and work, Efsun Erkiliç, have unveiled "the world’s first Museum of AI Arts."
 Photo by Frances Anderton
The AI industry could not have created a better avatar, er, ambassador, than Anadol. The runaway technology has reached fever pitch this year with the blockbuster IPOs of Anthropic and, soon, OpenAI. Meanwhile, college graduates have been booing pro-AI commencement speeches (even though students use ChatGPT and Claude to help write their essays), and communities are pushing back on behemoth data centers.
Into the conversation bounces Anadol, as chipper and kinetic as his digital visuals. He even goes one further, making DATALAND's first show about the Amazon Rainforest, on the debatable grounds that AI and nature can be partners, or as Shana Nys Dambrot phrases it in the LA Times, “AI doesn’t need to be an opponent when humanity has the power to turn it into an ally.”
 Photo by Frances Anderton
DATALAND does this with a fully immersive experience, in which visitors don scent-sets and a personal wrist watch — tracking biometrics, heart rate, blood pressure, REM cycle, pulse, perspiration rate — and move through a series of spaces in which walls of data points morph at hyperspeed into dazzling imagery of flora and fauna of the rainforest. The multi-sensory onslaught includes a soundtrack of birdsong and orchestral music by the acoustic designers L-Acoustics, and wafting scents alleged to reflect each visitor's emotions. As Anadol said in his opening remarks at a recent preview, "For 5000 years, we look at art, and we feel something... The question is, can artwork feel us back?"
Such feeling comes from a custom-designed "Large Nature Model," which processes "ethically gathered" environmental datasets, meaning the team asked credible sources for permission to use images and information; plus, Anadol, Erkiliç, and team visited rainforests, met with the Indigenous Yawanawá people, and gathered sights and sounds.
 Photo by Frances Anderton
As for the obvious question of energy use (wouldn’t any number of AI entrepreneurs happily mow down the rainforest to make way for data centers?), Anadol says their enterprise is fueled by a station in Oregon powered by renewables; plus he says they connect to a "a special fiber cable," reducing each visitor's consumption to that of one smartphone.
What is a Museum?
DATALAND is a full-on, “seductive Alt Reality Artificial Intell dunk,” said hubby Robin Bennett Stein after a tour, adding that, "the experience can be summed up in one word: 'oversaturation.'" It is more themed ride than conventional museum, but then, what is a conventional museum? There are more than 750 self-described museums in Los Angeles, according to Todd Lerew, author of the book Also On View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles, and they range from traditionally understood fine art to personal collections of neon signs, surfboards, Cold War artifacts, hyperlocal history, and much more. Museums are assumed to be not-for-profit, but many are not.
 Photo by Frances Anderton
DATALAND is for-profit, with partners including Nvidia, Google Cloud, LG Electronics, L'Oréal Luxe ("immersive AI-powered fragrance"), and Valerie Confections (rainforest-inspired chocolate), though it has a nonprofit research arm, the RAS AI Foundation. There is no board. As Anadol told me at the preview, “We didn't design this as — no offense — a traditional institution. The reason is: go fast, break things, be as crazy as possible, like art making. We don't want (the) institution to be stuck in conventional thinking, stopping decisions. We want this to change every day.”
With Disneyland in our backyard, and Bladerunner cited by Anadol as one of his formative influences, perhaps it is entirely appropriate that DATALAND lands in LA. It opens on June 20th. Click here to buy tickets.
 Refik Anadol interviewed in a spot of light. Photo by Frances Anderton
Now check out the very analog Design Things to Do.
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Design Things To Do
Top Pick: Soccer at the Museum
Goal! The World Cup kicks off on Thursday, and eight of the beautiful games will be played in Los Angeles at Inglewood's SoFi Stadium (called the “Los Angeles Stadium” during the tournament). For those not up for paying almost $2k for a quarterfinal ticket, however, there are plenty of outdoor viewing opportunities in the Southland, from the Santa Monica Pier to the Trellis Bar & Lounge and Garden Terrace Café at the Getty Center.
Yes, the Getty. The mountaintop retreat joins the Hammer, LACMA, and other cultural institutions across the Southland in becoming temporary watch party zones, part of an ongoing evolution of many museums into all-purpose public venues, or urban “third spaces.”
The Academy Museum also offers screenings (Bend It Like Beckham, Shaolin Soccer) and “Inflatable human foosball” on its June 14th Fútbol Free Day. Meanwhile, LACMA maintains its art credentials with an exhibition inspired by soccer: Fútbol Is Life: Animated Sportraits by Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr, animator and visual‑effects artist who captures “iconic moments in women’s and men’s soccer in gum wrappers, glue, and paint." Through July 12th. Fun!
 Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr., U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo dives for a decisive save against Australia in 2015;
courtesy of the artist, © Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr.
Quick Picks
Blinn House x 2... Kathy Kikkert’s book Hollywood Signs: The Golden Age of Glittering Graphics and Glowing Neon celebrates the artistry of vintage signs such as the neon dragons of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and the neon Brown Derby hat. She will talk about these graphic classics at an event hosted by Pasadena Heritage at Blinn House, 160 N. Oakland Avenue, Pasadena, on Wednesday, June 10th, 6:00–7:15 PM.
Then, on Saturday, June 13th, from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, the grounds of the lovely Blinn House will open up for the free, public Regional Restoration Expo, presented by Pasadena Heritage and friends. Get your antiques valued by auctioneers, witness artisans at work, and more. Having grown up in old houses in constant states of restoration, I’ll join the line-up of speakers.
 Blinn House. Image courtesy Pasadena Heritage
The Danish collective SUPERFLEX is known for inventive public space projects including Dive-In at Desert X 2019, below. The group says it is “developing a new kind of urbanism that includes the perspectives of plants and animals.” See an exhibition of their work at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture. SUPERFLEX: Rainbows, Sponges, Flies, and Spoons opens to the public with an opening reception this Friday, June 12th, 6:00–8:00 PM.
 Photo by Lance Gerber/Desert x 2019
“After the Revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” asked artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles in 1977. With this crisp provocation, she became the first artist-in-residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation. Also this Friday, June 12th, at 6:00 PM, the Getty Center will host a screening of MAINTENANCE ARTIST, a lauded documentary about Laderman Ukeles’ career. Aptly, it will be introduced by creative strategist Debra Scacco, the first Artist-in-Residence at the City of Santa Monica Public Works Department.
 Touch Sanitation Performance, Landfill, 1979–80, Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Photo: Deborah Freedman. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
If you see one piece of live theater this year, make sure it is WEED OH NO! created by the Seaweed Sisters — Megan Lawson, Jillian Meyers, and Dana Wilson. This is a fresh, pure analog mix of mime, clowning, sound, color-coded set and costume design, and — mostly – dance. Plus, the trio chatter in a comedic, Nordic-adjacent babble. Think, Bob Fosse meets the Teletubbies. Their run concludes this weekend at LA Theatre Center, with two performances on both Saturday, June 13th, and Sunday, June 14th. Highly recommended.
 Photo by Owen Scarlett, courtesy Seaweed Sisters
You may have thought that the Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries at LACMA were already open, but it turns out there’s a Grand Opening (long) Weekend for the hit-and-miss new space, suffused in glare and gloom, starting next Thursday, June 18th through June 22nd. Enjoy a free, campus-wide Block Party, Thelma Golden in conversation with Michael Govan, SPIRITS Summer Solstice Dance, and a Saturday evening Art Parade on Wilshire Boulevard, showcasing mobile sculptures, costumes, banners, inflatables, music, and movement-based works.
While at LACMA, check out the campus's many other shows, including the new Fashioning Chinese Women: Empire to Modernity, tracing “a century of transformation through more than 70 exquisite ensembles from Shanghai, Hong Kong, and America,” in an installation designed by L.A. architects Chu-Gooding.
 Dress (Cheongsam), Hong Kong, 1960s, LACMA, gift of Mei Mei Rado, mannequin head © Jason Wu, photo ©
Museum Associates/LACMA
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