Notre Dame to show Refik Anadol’s AI nature installation at 2027 Arts Biennial

The University of Notre Dame will present Refik Anadol’s large-scale, multisensory installation, “Machine Hallucinations: LNM Variations,” from Jan. 29 to Feb. 12, 2027, as part of its inaugural Arts Biennial. The work will be installed in the Forum in Jenkins and Nanovic Halls, and admission, including to associated events, will be free and open to the public.

Anadol will give a public artist talk on Friday, Jan. 29, followed by an opening reception. He described the exhibition as part of a biennial devoted to symbiosis, and said the work examines how machine intelligence can learn from nature’s complexity and disclose relationships among ecological memory, technology and human imagination.

The installation belongs to an expanding body of work created with the Large Nature Model, an open-access generative AI system dedicated to nature and pioneered by Refik Anadol Studio. The studio describes the model as both an aesthetic medium and research infrastructure, built through sustainable computational practices and trained on ethically sourced datasets from the Smithsonian Institution, National Geographic Society and London’s Natural History Museum.

Its archive includes images of fauna, flora, fungi, corals and landscapes. Rather than treating photographs as isolated visual data, the model is designed to recognize relationships between species and habitats, climate and behavior, sound and environment, and structure and growth.

Notre Dame said the presentation reflects its commitment to bringing together the arts, humanities and AI. Nitesh Chawla said Anadol’s work shows AI’s capacity to expand imagination and creativity, rather than serving only to automate or accelerate tasks. Michael Schreffler said the Large Nature Model brings visual arts, data science and AI research together in reflecting on the diversity and fragility of the “common home.”

The preparation has involved artists, technicians, faculty members, administrators, architects and engineers, according to Rebecca Struch. Anadol, a media artist and director and cofounder of the Los Angeles-based Refik Anadol Studio, was named to TIME’s inaugural TIME100 Art List as the “Artist of the AI Age.” He is also a cofounder of Dataland, described as the world’s first Museum of AI Arts.

The Arts Biennial runs from January through June 2027 and is the flagship project of Notre Dame’s Arts Initiative. Produced by the initiative and curated by Schreffler and Struch, it is a six-month international festival of visual, literary, spatial and performing arts centered on symbiosis, a theme inspired by close, sustained relationships between different species.

The biennial is set to include more than 100 public events, nearly 40 community and campus-led projects, and participation by more than 85 collaborating campus units and external organizations. Its stated aims include activating the arts on campus, strengthening community partnerships and cultivating global connections through cultural exchange.