The World’s First Museum of A.I. Art Will Open in Los Angeles as the Art World Ponders Questions of Ethics and Sustainability; Smithsonian Magazine, April 24, 2026

 Michele Debczak, Smithsonian Magazine ; The World’s First Museum of A.I. Art Will Open in Los Angeles as the Art World Ponders Questions of Ethics and Sustainability

"The four-block strip that houses such Los Angeles institutions as the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad and the Museum of Contemporary Art will get a different type of cultural attraction this summer. Dataland, billed as the world’s first museum dedicated to A.I.-generated art, is set to open on June 20.

The brainchild of digital artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç, Dataland will anchor the Grand LA complex, designed by architect Frank Gehry, in downtown Los Angeles. The privately funded museum covers 35,000 square feet, 10,000 of which are reserved for the technology required to support the exhibitions. Rather than traditional halls displaying individual artworks, Dataland’s five galleries and 30-foot ceiling are designed for total immersion.

“It’s very exciting to say that A.I. art is not image only,” Anadol tells Jessica Gelt for the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience—meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”

The museum’s inaugural exhibition, called “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” was inspired by a trip to the Amazon. Anadol’s studio created an open-access A.I. model called the Large Nature Model, fed it millions of images of nature, and then prompted the machine to “learn and play with the intelligent behaviors of the natural world,” Richard Whiddington writes for Artnet. The result, as Anadol puts it per the Times, is a “a living museum” where visitors can walk among “digital sculptures.” In addition to a kaleidoscope of imagery, museum guests will be immersed in soundscapes, woven from audio that includes oral histories of the Yawanawá people of Brazil and the last recorded call of the extinct Kaua‘i ‘ō‘ō bird of Hawaii, Léa Zeitoun reports for Designboom."

[Webinar] Who Pays the Freight? Open Access: The Future of Funding, 5/25/16

[Webinar] Who Pays the Freight? Open Access: The Future of Funding:

Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Time: 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Duration: 1 hour

"Who Pays the Freight? Open Access: The Future of Funding

Now in full flight, the Open Access movement promises to revolutionize the discipline of peer-reviewed research. Billed as a treasure trove for citizen scientists and major institutions alike, the benefits of Open Access still need to be paid for - but by who?

The attention on funding models has been increasing for years, as has discussion around journal transition and conversion. Best practices presume these models are continually refined through historical experience, policy and competition. But the iterative nature of OA can come with a cost in terms of implementation, integration, and aggregation performance. Questions remain about sustainability and integrity.

So, who pays the freight? In this webcast, our experts will highlight how librarians are tackling this important issue, and how the library can shape the future of funding Open Access.

Speakers

Ann Oakerson, Senior Adviser, The Center for Research Libraries

Rebecca Jozwiak, Analyst, The Bloor Group"

[Book Review of ‘Culture Crash,’ by Scott Timberg], New York Times, 3/17/15

[Book Review of ‘Culture Crash,’ by Scott Timberg] Ben Yagoda, New York Times:

CULTURE CRASH

The Killing of the Creative Class

By Scott Timberg 310 pp. Yale University Press. $26

"In 1999, recordings generated $14.6 billion in revenue to the music business; by 2012, the figure was down to $5.35 billion. Of course, owing to the change in the dominant distribution model from physical CDs to (first) downloading MP3 files and (now) streaming on services like Pandora and Spotify, performing artists get a thinner slice of the smaller pie. Timberg puts a human face on the statistics with portraits, scattered throughout the book, of poets, artists, moviemakers and reporters who had been doing good work and making not great but decent livings, when all of a sudden the rug was pulled out from under them..."

As Timberg himself acknowledges elsewhere, artistic expression is essential to human existence. Its forms are rapidly changing. Its economics are, too, and at this moment artists are finding it harder and harder to make a living from their work. But it will persevere. Who knows? Maybe the commenters were right, and an old-fashioned symphony orchestra isn’t sustainable any­more. Music will survive — including, for the time being, in Louisville, where, after the bankruptcy filing, the orchestra cut back on its schedule and staffing, and suffered a musicians’ strike as a consequence, but posted a $20,000 surplus last August."