DATALAND | Traces of Nature

Year: 2023
Type: Installation
Client: DATALAND Los Angeles
Role: Creative Director, Designer

Featured

Traces of Nature is the design language I developed in the early conceptual phase of Dataland,
the world's first Museum of AI Arts and digital ecosystem dedicated to data visualization and
machine-based creativity.

I came in to set creative direction, drawing on earlier work around sensory experience (the Nike
Hyperfeel Film is one example) and what it means to feel a piece of work, not just see it.

The direction began with a simple idea: every complex living system starts from a seed, then expands
through traces, branches, filaments, and recursive growth. Inspired by the structures of flora,
fauna, and fungi, the work translates natural emergence into procedural form, where mathematical
simulations echo the biomechanics of leaves, blooming flowers, branching trees, and mycelial networks.

The visual field is paired with scent. As a pattern grows from its seed, the intensity of its smell
grows with it: two worlds (one seen, one inhaled) evolving alongside each other. The pattern doesn't
only emerge on screen, it emerges in the room. By the time a visitor recognizes the form, they've
already been breathing it in.

Traces of Nature

Rather than treating data as something cold or abstract, Traces of Nature imagines it as a living
field, unfolding through organic motion, layered color, and compositional rules drawn from the natural
world. These visuals capture the foundation of that language, where data begins to behave less like
information and more like growth.

Dataland opens June 20, 2026 at The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles, with its broader mission centered
on data visualization, machine creativity, and the meeting point between human imagination and
technological systems.