I took three different dates, ages 6, 72 and 35, to see Dataland, the unusual digital art experience in downtown Los Angeles.
As we entered and were warmly welcomed by creator Refik Anadol, we were given wrist bands to measure our biological responses to the exhibit and a neck yoke to emit scents in synch with the immersive AI artistry. We read the fervent thanks to the Yawanawá spiritual leader Nixiwaka for the ancestral memories he contributed to creation of the exhibit.
Free range six-year-old Julie found it all “awesome.” She said she felt like she was playing “inside machines” from the moment we descended on the long escalator into the Data Pavillion. Captivated by the evolving plays of light and color on the floors, walls and ceilings, music emanating from every surface, she frolicked around in it as did other children. Babies set free from transfixed parents’ arms crawled happily, giving chase to dazzling, pulsing patterns.
Seventy-two-year-old Stan noticed the circles of light forming around his feet in one sequence wherever he stepped. “I’m always aware of vision and sound’s effects on me and forget that my biology has an impact back on the world. Here, it’s minor visual evidence — more of a suggestion that the environment feels my presence.” Articles on Anadol mention that the art can “feel you back.” I didn’t see or get the promised taste of that feedback or how mine might be singularly identified among a crowd; but perhaps I was overstimulated by captivating musical and visual aspects and didn’t notice my personal readout on the walls or floors.
Thirty-five-year-old Angie, while loving the Infinity Room “where memory, landscape and storytelling were really immersive,” found the scents from our neck pieces “… synthetic. Instead of adding to the experience, it pulled me out, reminding me of the artificial intelligence element rather than helping me feel connected to the natural world.” I agreed — the L’Oreál Luxe-created fragrance bore no resemblance to the indelible aroma of a real rainforest I was fortunate to sniff firsthand years back.
at neckline, with daughter Julie
As a nice Jewish cynic who was engulfed in nonjudgmental wonderment in a Team Labs Tokyo’s immersive exhibit just two years ago, I was surprised I didn’t surrender to the more spectacular aspects of this one. I found the culminating flight through the simulated Amazon woodlands exhilarating. But when we flew into the eye of the hovering bird, I found myself wondering if we were looking at actual retinal and colorized bird brain matter or just an AI impression of it.
I wondered if the plaintive, unanswered call of the now extinct wild bird, and the reminder of forestry forever lost was a manipulation of our longing and felt the poignance nonetheless. I pondered how much of the beautiful two-hour show artist Anadol had hand-drawn and story-boarded and how much was a lucky AI improvisation captured and looped. I worried that the accelerating proliferation of AI slop and chronic scams of the last two years has made me far more suspicous than openly susceptible to such new works of fine art, and if they even are fine art. I wondered if natural talent at the bases of these arts can still be discerned as talent as it evolves and submerges in electronic media effects.
Another element that took me out of the phenomena was the bottlenecked lines that formed as a final chamber only admits 15 people at a time. From the crowds building up throughout the morning, that seems shortsighted. I felt for poor little Julie and another child, forced to look at adults’ butts for over 12 minutes. And, the wrist band that led to a coded souvenir disc for us adults can’t be deciphered by unenhanced human eyes. I’m not sure for whose benefit our biological interactivity was captured or if it even was, but it brought up privacy concerns, as that is the sort of paranoia such measurement produces in me in this era.
Perhaps Dataland and Anadol’s promise to “feel us back” can ease these minor discomforts for all ages in its rosy future.
Melanie Chartoff has acted on Broadway and television. She is the author of “Odd Woman Out.”
