Dataland’s First Artist Residents Take AI as Tool and as Subject in “Plus Ultra”
Refik Anadol Studio’s Los Angeles-based museum of AI arts to present exhibition of work by Maya Man, Lucia Rebolino, Penny Slinger, and Jess Starns, in partnership with Google Arts & Culture
Penny Slinger, The 64 Dakini Oracle, 2026. Seven-channel video installation, with photographic collages, collected objects, and written documentation. Courtesy of the artist
“Plus Ultra” is a free exhibition at The Grand LA, Los Angeles, December 2, 2026 to March 15, 2027
Dataland, the museum of AI arts in Los Angeles co-founded by the media artist Refik Anadol and the artist and entrepreneur Efsun Erkılıç, is to present “Plus Ultra”, a free exhibition of work by its first cohort of AI artists in residence. The show of new pieces, developed in the six months of their residency by Maya Man, Lucia Rebolino, Penny Slinger, and Jess Starns, will be staged, in partnership with Google Arts & Culture, at The Grand LA in Downtown Los Angeles, opening on December 2, 2026.
The New York City-based artist Maya Man uses custom generative software, in her residency work Forever & Always, Everything, Yours, mixing excerpts of found pop song lyrics with an instrumental soundtrack, generated by an AI model in real time. The artist, architect, and computational designer Lucia Rebolino has created a 12-channel web-based video installation, Mean Prognosticator, a work that examines how AI forecasting models can “smooth” extreme weather events toward a mean.
Maya Man, Forever & Always Everything Yours, 2026. Custom generative software, single-channel display. For Man, the words “forever”, “always”, “everything”, and “yours” express “grandiose emotion, obsession, and possession”. Courtesy of the artist
Lucia Rebolino, Mean Prognosticator, 2026. Twelve-channel video installation. Courtesy of the artist
Jess Starns, Picture Palace, 2026. Single-channel projection of archival silent film and AI-restored film. Courtesy of the artist
The Los Angeles-based Penny Slinger has made The 64 Dakini Oracle, a seven-channel video installation in a multi-screen temple-like enclosure, that forms part of the artist’s long-term meditation on the 64 Yogini temples of India. The project created by the inclusive arts practitioner Jess Starns is Picture Palace, a projection of archival silent film and AI-restored film which addresses the role of AI in film restoration, and asks at what point the act of restoration evolves into something new.
The artists, Dataland said in a launch statement, took diverse approaches to AI, “either working with it as a tool, making possible what wasn’t before, or working on it as a subject, examining the cultural conditions that surround it”.
Louis Jebb is Managing Editor at Right Click Save.
