The squawks of macaws, the smell of wet earth after rain and a swirl of colors will transport visitors from a Los Angeles museum to the heart of the Amazon rainforest – or rather, an AI version of it.
Data collected from those visitors – their movements, their heartbeats and even the temperature of their skin – will feed the computer that is creating the immersive display, using a network of sensors, including those on the wrists of ticket-holders.
"Machine Dreams: Rainforest" is the inaugural exhibition at Dataland, a new museum in the heart of America’s second biggest city, founded by Turkish media artist and designer Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, whose 10 million lines of code power the animations – using 1.5 billion pixels.
A person walks through immersive visualizations from the inaugural exhibition Machine Dreams: Rainforest are projected at DATALAND, the Museum of AI Arts, Los Angeles, U.S., June 9, 2026. (AFP Photo)
Anadol said he was inspired by a visit to the Brazilian Amazon, a place he thinks everyone should experience.
