Museums, AI-generated art, blockchain, and NFTs

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Refik Anadol Studio, co-founded by Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç in 2025, is opening an immersive AI art and NFT museum called DATALAND at The Grand LA, with a flagship location on the Frank Gehry-designed site in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. .

DATALAND will deliver immersive AI art experiences, taking immersion to the next level with the AI-powered scent of galleries, creating a new model for artistic expression at the dawn of the digital age. As AI artist Refik Anadol explained to me:

“We are not announcing details of DATALAND’s artistic programming yet, but there will be many moments for AI artists to share/exhibit their work both physically and virtually so that people who cannot travel to Los Angeles can access AI artworks. And it can purchase NFTs of AI artwork minted on an Ethereum-based platform and many other sustainable chains for exciting arts and culture events.

Refik Anadol Studio announced the launch of DATALAND at Climate Week NYC, which is celebrated for the first time across New York and runs parallel to the United Nations General Assembly meeting, where world leaders come together to find solutions to critical global challenges. DATALAND’s inaugural exhibitions will be crafted with the Big Nature Model, an open-source AI model that relies solely on nature data to produce unprecedented immersive AI-powered digital environmental artworks. The studio first presented such installations at the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to promote environmental awareness, and then at the United Nations in New York during the 2024 UNGA. As UN Under-Secretary-General Melissa Fleming agrees:

“Refik Anadol’s works are a testament to the beauty and fragility of our natural world. This is a clarion call to world leaders: we must harness the power of technology [AI art & NFTs] and human creativity and action to spur action to protect our planet before it is too late.”

The award-winning studio is commissioned by leading technology companies, groundbreaking researchers and cutting-edge thought leaders to produce projects that have been shown in more than 70 cities spanning six continents and experienced by millions of passionate fans. These exhibition venues include various United Nations Climate Change Conferences, MoMA, Center Pompidou-Metz, Serpentine Galleries, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Casa Batlló, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Daejeon Art Museum and Istanbul. Contemporary Museum. Yet Refik Anadol Studio chose Los Angeles as the perfect city to launch DATALAND, a forward-thinking, revolutionary museum that supports the fields of art, science, technology and art to which Refik explains, “I have dedicated my career.” Artificial intelligence research.” And he continued:

“Since LA has long been a city looking to the future in art, music, cinema, architecture and more, it’s only natural to open DATALAND here. Having a permanent space where we can develop a new paradigm of what a museum can be by combining human imagination with machine intelligence and the most advanced technologies available is the realization of one of my greatest dreams. “To do this in a building designed by one of my heroes, Frank Gehry, is almost incredible.”

DATALAND will use millions of photographs and other records from partner museums, including the Smithsonian and London’s Natural History Museum, to create its installations. “We currently have three major collaborations with museums in progress and we are extremely confident that we will join forces around the world,” added Refik.

The history of AI art, NFTs and museums

“Looking forward to learning more about DATALAND,” Whitney Museum digital art curator Christiane Paul detailed the Art History of Artificial Intelligence at the groundbreaking symposium “AI Discussions,” held April 11-12 at the Rhode Island School of Design : 2024 invited artists from around the world. He explained that the art of artificial intelligence has a fascinating history that intertwines technology and creativity, and continues to evolve by pushing the boundaries of what is possible at the intersection of technology and creativity.

Whitney Museum Digital Art curator Christiane Paul discusses AI art history

Early beginnings: 1950s-1970s. The roots of AI art can be traced back to the first experiments with computer-generated art, where artists and computer scientists collaborated to create visual and abstract compositions using early computer algorithms. A notable example from this period is the Whitney Museum’s exhibition curated by Christiane Paul, which traces the evolution of David Lisbon’s Harold Cohen’s AARON, the earliest artificial intelligence program designed to create drawings and paintings. AARON was first exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1972.

Developments in algorithms: 1980s-2000s. During this period, advances in algorithms and computing power allowed for more complex and diverse artistic output, and AI art began to gain recognition in academic and artistic circles.

The city of Los Angeles, which will host DATALAND, served as the foundation for the Gray Area Foundation, a cultural incubator founded in 2002 with the mission of developing, sustaining, and implementing cross-disciplinary collaborations to integrate arts, technology, science, artificial intelligence, and technology. and the humanities – towards a more just and regenerative future. This foundation moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 2005.

Deep learning revolution: 2010s. The emergence of deep learning has brought significant changes in generative adversarial networks and other machine learning techniques, allowing the creation of extremely complex and realistic works of art. Artificial intelligence art has begun to be exhibited in galleries and museums in the form of NFTs and auctioned at leading auction houses, raising questions about creativity and authorship.

In 2014, digital artist Kevin McCoy released his first art NFT.

Four years later, in 2018, Christie’s art auction house became the first auction house to offer AI artworks for sale. Christie’s also hosted the first Art + Technology Summit on blockchain. In June 2019, the second edition focused on artificial intelligence and art. Since then, blockchain, NFTs, and artificial intelligence have been hot topics that intersect in unexpected ways in the art world. The Whitney Museum, under the direction of digital curator Christiane Paul, became one of the first collectors of NFTs starting in 2018.

Mainstream adoption: 2020s. The mainstream availability of AI art tools has democratized the creation of AI-generated images. This era has also seen debates about NFTs, market bubbles and crashes, copyright, the impact on traditional artists, and the ethical implications of artificial intelligence in art.

Smart Museum in Germany—an application-based research and development project at ZKM | Karlsruhe Art and Media Center and German Museum — supported in 2020 by the Digital Culture Program of the German Federal Foundation for Culture. It explores new ways of museum communication and outreach to connect the museum with existing AI technologies and transform the museum into a center for the arts. experience and experimentation, a social space where art, science, technology and public discourse come together. One of the best-selling AI-generated NFT artists on display at ZKM is a program called Botto, the brainchild of computer engineers and a German artist named Mario Klingemann who created AI art NFTs in 2021. Today, Botto has created more than 75 NFTs that have generated more than $3 million in revenue.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City benefited from a major new grant established by the William S. Paley Foundation before staging its first Artificial Intelligence Art Exhibition, “Unmonitored” by Refik Anadol, curated by Michelle Kuo. Supporting MoMA’s ambitious goals in digital media and technology and enabling new AI Art/NFT acquisitions. Henry Kissinger, then President of the William S. Paley Foundation, said:

“I know how much my friend Bill Paley cares about the Museum of Modern Art and how devotedly he is devoted to its advancement. “With this initiative, the Foundation will fulfill his intention and continue his vision for MoMA.”

But MoMA has taken a cautious approach to NFTs so far. The museum has not been involved in any other AI art or NFT projects, other than contributing data to artist Refik Anadol’s algorithmically generated works and announcing in October 2023 that it had acquired “Unsupervised” for its permanent collection.

Last year’s “Notes from the Ether” in Singapore, curated by ArtScience Museum’s Deborah Lim and guest curator Clara Che Wei Peh, was an exciting and timely exhibition that offered a glimpse into the future of digital art through the work of 20 artists: Memo Akten, Burak Arıkan, Botto , Mitchell F Chan, DEAFBEEF Simon Denny, Harm van den Dorpel, Sarah Friend, Rimbawan Gerilya, Holly Herndon and Mathew Dryhurst, Tyler Hobbs and Dandelion Wistjo+kapi, Larva Labs, Jonas Lund, Ninaad Kothawade, Sarah Meyohas, Rhea Myers, Aaron Penne, Aluan Wang, Emily Xie. These artists are working with emerging non-fungible tokens and generative AI technologies to push the boundaries of what art is and can be.

The future of museums is AI art and NFTs

According to the Academy of Animated Art, over the past 40 years, the use of AI-generated art has undoubtedly been on the rise, with the tokenization of art via NFTs becoming even more popular over the last decade. As Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, explains:

“Artificial intelligence is not just an innovation tool; a force that can reshape the way we view our planet, reconnecting us with the beauty and fragility of nature in ways never before possible. Refik Anadol’s bright vision enables us to use technology [AI Art & NFTs] to stimulate the senses and create a deeper emotional connection with our natural world.”

Throughout this year, many museums and more than 100 “immersive” institutions around the world are publicly exhibiting/purchasing AI art and NFTs to showcase the marriage of human imagination and machine intelligence, including the Seattle NFT Museum, Guggenheim. Museum, Mercer Laboratories, Museum of Art and Light, Buffalo AKG Museum of Art, Center Pompidou, Tate Modern, PST Art: Art & Science Collide, which hosts more than 60 exhibitions in Southern California, and many more.

Working with Kevin McCoy, co-founder of New York City’s Postmasters Gallery and first NFT Artist, Magda Shawon sells digital, AI-generated artwork to museums such as MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art. American Art for over 20 years. He agrees with Vilas and Melissa about Refik’s impressive AI artworks:

“People do not want to stop watching Refik Anadol’s Artificial Intelligence Study when they sit in front of it. Refik’s work is having an impact, but whether NFT sales will spark the creation of a massive AI generative art space is a big question.”

Digital art has been collected for as long as it has existed, but its widespread adoption is just beginning. The tokenization of art through NFTs has helped integrate the digital art world with the traditional art world, leading to increased interest from museums, immersive institutions, collectors, auction houses, NFT markets, and galleries. Kevin McCoy, the first NFT artist to create an art NFT in 2014, is hopeful and supports Rafik’s museum, AI art, and NFT initiative. He emphasized that:

“I am encouraged by Anadolu’s announcement of Dataland. It is exemplary both in its ‘ethical AI’ initiative and in its commitment to the exhibition and preservation of AI and digital art that the museum represents. In this context, the provenance provided by NFTs and blockchain-based records more generally may play a central role. “This will be an important next step in expanding the use of this technology.”