{"id":748317,"date":"2026-06-20T06:46:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T06:46:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/748317\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T06:46:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T06:46:16","slug":"ai-museum-brings-sights-sounds-and-smells-of-the-rainforest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/748317\/","title":{"rendered":"AI museum brings sights, sounds and smells of the rainforest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8212; or rather, an AI version of it.<\/p>\n<p>Data collected from those visitors &#8212; their movements, their heartbeats and even the temperature of their skin &#8212; will feed the computer that is creating the immersive display, using a network of sensors, including those on the wrists of ticket-holders.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Machine Dreams: Rainforest&#8221; is the inaugural exhibition at Dataland, a new museum in the heart of America&#8217;s second biggest city that is the brainchild of Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkilic, whose 10 million lines of code power the animations &#8212; using 1.5 billion pixels.<\/p>\n<p>Anadol said he was inspired by a visit to the Brazilian Amazon, a place he thinks everyone should experience.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But I do not believe we should all go to the rainforest,&#8221; he told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The question was: can the rainforest come to us? Can we still connect, feel special, respect and love nature, learn about it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Wall-mounted sensors will track visitors&#8217; movements, and guests will wear a medical-grade, watch-like device to monitor their emotions and heart rate for interacting with the model. They will also carry a portable scent diffuser throughout the experience.<\/p>\n<p>Using billions of images and datapoints, the model will create a constantly evolving experience.<\/p>\n<p>It is as if the system were &#8220;dreaming,&#8221; Erkilic explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s moving all the time, because it&#8217;s gathering data. As soon as it builds one structure, it also affects the overall storytelling,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s coming from a more poetic place instead of a scientific place. The machine itself is trying to recreate the reality based on the data points, it&#8217;s like bringing all the little bits and dots and trying to build the reality itself.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the experience, visitors can sample chocolates with flavors generated by the model, or print T-shirts and paintings resulting from their interaction.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>These are intended to serve as tangible souvenirs of the ephemeral dream in Dataland.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The system forgets you; that is the beauty of it,&#8221; says Anadol.<\/p>\n<p>Dataland opens to the public on June 20.<\/p>\n<p>pr\/hg\/jgc\/cms<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The squawks of macaws, the smell of wet earth after rain and a swirl of colors will transport&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[256,257855,11480,449,458,8952,459,64,63,460,46134,5224,134,1379,257863,15393,481,21815,5070,257864,269677,359600,359601,257867,351970,257868,257866,39,1055,2489,3780],"class_list":["post-748317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-ai","tag-american-edition","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-digital-world","tag-english","tag-entertainment","tag-features","tag-global-edition","tag-international-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-museum","tag-offbeat","tag-online-news-en","tag-online-news-en_arts-entertainment","tag-online-news-en_digital-world","tag-online-news-en_features","tag-online-news-en_international","tag-online-news-en_offbeat","tag-online-news-en_top-stories-int","tag-online-news-en_us-news","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}