Entertainment
Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, sets opening date and first exhibition
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
Arts
Mother Mary
Director: David Lowery
A24, Topic Studios, Access Entertainment
In Theaters: 04.24.2026
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” or whatever the fuck those silly little Catholics say. With David Lowery’s ninth feature, our dear Mother Mary is anything but full of grace. Though she is full of something … g-g-g-GHOSTS!
Mother Mary follows a distraught pop star (take a wild guess at her name), played by the always lovely Anne Hathaway (The Princess Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada), who dramatically ends up on the doorstep of her ex-best friend and costume designer, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel, Chewing Gum, Black Mirror). She confesses to Sam, after barging her way into her secluded design studio, that she needs a dress that feels like “her.” This is something she feels her current team of designers can’t do and is very important, as she’s performing a new unreleased song to celebrate her comeback. During the creation of the gown, the two women reminisce and catch up, all in the same haunted breath. During their heart-to-heart (pun intended), they both realize that at some point since their separation, they each have been taking turns experiencing a haunting by the red, shapeless form of a (what they both determine is at least female) “ghost.”
Now, not to sound like a broken record, kids, but what is my favorite saying? That’s right, “there are no perfect movies,” and Mother Mary is an example of a very complicated and imperfectly okay movie. Lowery’s writing is, at times, far too abstract or obtuse, which can lead to quite a bit of confusion for about 100 of the film’s 112-minute runtime. Before it’s clarified, the relationship between the two female leads is hard to decipher. Are they best friends, former lesbian lovers or a secret, worse, third option? Does this red ghost actually have anything to do with unresolved feelings these women still have for each other, or is it just aesthetic?
There are also interesting “visions” Sam gets when talking things through with Mother Mary that feel somewhat like they tangle the film’s overall seam. It also lacks a lot of raw edges you would normally see when two women discuss a “friendship break-up.” Mary Mother also has yet to break the curse of the inaccurate on-screen popstar portrayal. I’m not sure why, but for some reason, Hollywood cannot get the feel of a popstar just quite right on screen. Mother Mary is supposed to be Lady Gaga, yet it feels like her on-stage scenes are what dads imagined watching Hannah Montana must’ve looked and felt like to their daughters. This is something that seems unfathomable when you have Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX to help write the soundtrack.
That being said, once the ending hits you in the face and you finally get the full picture that Lowery is painting, the film saves itself. Lowery does something interesting and unique when it comes to the haunting genre of horror, as his characters are not haunted by ghouls and goblins but by emotional moments or memories in time. This is something that, when done right, is the epitome of beauty and is frankly more terrifying than any jumpscare by a James Wan demon. What’s more haunting than the what-ifs and what-could-have-beens of an intense connection with another human being, romantic or platonic? What’s more punishing than being the one who committed the sin that severed your red thread connection? Lowery also puts the infamous Bechdel Test to shame, as there is not a single male character with dialogue for the entirety of the film.
Do I love what Lowery is trying to do here? Yes. Does he stumble and fumble along the way? Absolutely. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t see Mother Mary, but also if you miss it … you’re not missing much. —Yonni Uribe
Read more film reviews by Yonni Uribe:
Wasatch Mountain Film Festival Review: Protecting Our Playground
Film Review: The Drama
Anderson Cooper has signed off from “60 Minutes” for the last time.
After two decades as a correspondent on the CBS’ news magazine, he officially ended his run Sunday night.
Cooper, who also hosts a news program on CNN, announced in February his plans to leave CBS, months after an internal shake-up that followed the arrival of editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.
“Things can always evolve and change, and I think that’s awesome, and things should evolve and change, but I hope the core of what ’60 Minutes’ is always remains,” Anderson said on-air. “I think the independence of ’60 Minutes’ has been critical.”
Throughout the farewell segment, the 58-year-old journalist, who was hired in 2007, reminisced about some career highlights, like speaking with Holocaust survivors and people battling malnutrition in Niger, as well as interviewing A-listers like Lady Gaga and Prince Harry. He also said he hopes the show continues to be a reliable source of investigative journalism.
“I think the trust it has with viewers is critical to the success of ’60 Minutes.’ When you see a ’60 Minutes’ story, and you’re like, ‘That was a really good story.’ It was a good story because it requires time, it requires patience, it requires money,” he said. “I hope that’s known and honored and valued and continues.”
His departure comes at an uncharted time for CBS, as the company undergoes several leadership changes. Last year, billionaire David Ellison successfully merged his company, Skydance Media, with Paramount, CBS’s parent company. Soon after, Ellison hired Bari Weiss as CBS News editor-in-chief.
Two months after taking on the new role, Weiss made the widely panned decision to pull a “60 Minutes” episode that examined the alleged abuse of deportees sent from the U.S. to an El Salvador prison. The decision earned Weiss heavy criticism and accusations that the move was politically motivated, which CBS has denied.
Cooper said that he’s leaving the program to spend more time with his young children. He will remain as an anchor for CNN.
He added, “I hope ’60 Minutes’ is around for when my kids grow up and have kids of their own, and they can watch it with their kids.”
3.5/5 stars
The American filmmaker started his career with 1994’s Little Odessa, starring Tim Roth as a Russian-Jewish hitman operating in the Brighton Beach area of New York. His next two films, The Yards (2000) and We Own the Night (2007), kept him ensconced in the world of low-life criminals.
Paper Tiger also casts the Russian mob as the antagonists. Set in 1986 in Queens, New York, it stars Miles Teller and Adam Driver as the Pearl brothers, Irwin and Gary.
Irwin (Teller), an engineer, is married to Hester (Scarlett Johansson) and has two teenage sons: Scott (Gavin Goudey), who is about to turn 18, and the younger Ben (Roman Engel), who is diligently studying for his exams.
Gary (Driver), a former policeman who still has connections on the force, encourages Irwin to team up and create an environmental clean-up business involving the filthy Gowanus Canal.
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