The scent of a damp forest floor :: Now Smell This

A thunderous soundtrack swelled from ambient minimalism to cinematic triumph, peppered with bird chirps and the howls of monkeys. The scent of a damp forest floor wafted through the air, dispersed by a device I wore around my neck. The walls seemed to shift around me, and my heart began racing. It was exhilarating. It was mesmerizing. I felt like I was going to be sick.

This was my initial experience of Dataland, billed as “the world’s first museum of AI Arts,” co-founded by media artist Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç and opening to the public on June 20.

— Read more in My Queasy, Forest-Scented Stroll Through LA’s New AI Art Museum at HyperAllergic.

A.I., with human intervention, is used to generate Dataland’s scents, created in partnership with L’Oréal’s Luxe division, and its tastes — chocolates created with a local partner, Valerie Confections. “We can look at a Rothko and feel incredible emotions,” Anadol said, “but that artwork will never feel us back.” Unlike the artworks in Dataland.

— Read more in At the Ambitious New A.I Museum, You Feel the Art, and It Feels You Right Back at The New York Times.

L’Oréal Luxe’s Fragrance Métier team developed 12 bespoke rainforest-inspired scents using a proprietary fragrance model and data from Refik Anadol Studio’s Large Nature Model. The fragrances include concepts such as Scent of Data, designed to evoke the rhythm of algorithms, and Scent of Rain, which recreates the smell of rain-soaked earth through advanced scent-capture technologies.

— Read more in L’Oréal Luxe partners with DATALAND to create AI-powered immersive fragrance art experience at Global Cosmetic News.