DATALAND, the world’s first Museum of AI Arts, has deployed a Riedel Bolero Standalone wireless intercom system to provide secure, reliable communications for front-of-house and technical teams across its immersive gallery environment.
Installed inside The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles, the system supports staff communications across DATALAND’s approximately 25,000 sq ft environment, which includes five public galleries built around omni-sensory immersive art experiences.
Bolero gives staff a closed, encrypted communications network with the professional-grade performance, coverage, and discretion required for daily operations in a highly immersive, guest-facing environment.
DATALAND’s operating environment places unique demands on staff communications. Its inaugural exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” draws on Refik Anadol Studio’s Large Nature Model, an open-access AI system sustainably trained on ecological data, to create a continuously evolving, omni-sensory visitor experience.
Across the museum, galleries combine high-powered projection, large-scale LED walls, high-impact audio, and guest-worn sensors and scent-emitting collars that are tracked, charged, and sanitized throughout the day.
Coordinating those workflows across the front desk, galleries, and control room required a communications system that could remain discreet for guests while giving staff dependable reach across the museum.
“DATALAND’s AV technology is an integrated part of the guest experience, so our front-of-house conversations constantly cross into technical territory,” said Dave Hunt, DATALAND’s Executive Project Manager.
“We need those conversations to happen invisibly to our audience until they don’t, because there are moments when we need to reach everyone at once, whether it’s an operational issue or an emergency.
Bolero gives us that balance: private, reliable communication when we need to stay in the background, and the reach to communicate broadly when we don’t.”
Before installing Bolero, DATALAND’s operations team used off-the-shelf radios for room-to-room communication.
As the museum’s operations evolved, the team needed a professional communications platform with greater clarity, volume, privacy, and reliability for its high-impact gallery environments.
The previous radios struggled with audio performance and operated on open, unencrypted channels.
“The biggest pain point was the clarity and intelligibility of the audio,” said Nathan McWilliams, Director of Technical System Design and Production at Refik Anadol Studio.
“There are times when our rooms are comparable to a cinema during an action film. Our previous radios simply couldn’t deliver enough volume or clarity. I’ve used other professional communication systems, and based on my experience, Bolero is the one I prefer. It gives us the clarity, volume, and reliability we need to communicate confidently, even in our loudest spaces, while keeping those conversations secure and discreet — invisible to our audience.”
Riedel deployed a three-antenna Bolero Standalone system supporting 15 to 20 beltpacks, paired with Riedel TAC in-ear headsets for staff working in the loudest galleries.
Bolero’s Power-over-Ethernet design simplified deployment across a building where extensive steel and concrete construction complicates conventional RF communication, while the system’s standard beltpack, rated for approximately 30 hours of use, helps DATALAND avoid mid-shift battery swaps during long operating days.
By recommending Bolero Standalone rather than a larger matrix-based configuration, Riedel met the museum’s coverage, reliability, and security requirements without adding unnecessary infrastructure.
Since deployment, DATALAND staff have adopted Bolero quickly, with operations teams learning the system in about a day and relying heavily on its page-recording feature to replay missed calls instead of asking colleagues to repeat messages over the channel. As DATALAND’s operations mature, the team also plans to expand its use of Bolero’s paging capabilities to reach entire galleries directly.
“DATALAND is the first museum of its kind, and the demands on its communication system reflect that. Between the acoustic complexity of the galleries and the amount of steel and concrete in the building, DATALAND needed a communications platform designed for professional-grade reliability,” said Patti Gunnell, VP of Key Accounts, Riedel Communications. “A standalone Bolero system solved that without adding unnecessary infrastructure, and it gave the team a closed, encrypted channel they could trust in a guest-facing environment.”
