The Dali Museum
The Endless Garden

IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

Press

The Endless Garden is an immersive installation inspired by an unrealized 1930s conceptual sketch for a "Dream Garden" by Salvador Dalí and Alberto Giacometti. Using generative AI and real-time pipeline, the project moves the sketch from the archives into a digital space where visitors become active co-creators. The goal is to transform the museum experience from passive observation into a shared, creative dialogue between the artists’ history and the visitor's imagination.

Panel Talk at Museum Next Digital Summit 2026

Design Philosophy

Our design was driven by a fundamental question: How can participatory storytelling transform a museum visit into a moment of active discovery? To achieve this, we moved beyond traditional digital labels to create an experience rooted in spontaneous co-creation. We distilled Dalí’s complex visual lexicon into 30 symbolic archetypes, inviting visitors to engage with these symbols through a series of lighthearted, dream-logic prompts. By establishing a personal connection with a "Dream Object" first, we lower the barrier to art history, allowing learning to happen naturally through curiosity and wonder.

User Journey:
From Portal to Manifestation

The experience is structured as a "phygital" loop that bridges between the digital installation and the museum’s physical paintings..

  • The Dream Portal: Visitors enter the experience via a low-friction mobile web interface, engaging with psychoanalytical prompts inspired by Dalí’s dream logic.

  • Collective Co-Creation: These responses trigger a pipeline that manifests a unique 3D artifact. This object is then "tethered" to the user before being released into the communal garden.

  • Spatial Immersion: Inside a U-shaped gallery, visitors witness their personal creations joining and interacting within a monumental, projection-mapped environment.

  • The Full Circle: Upon exiting, users are prompted to learn more and find the original paintings that inspired their objects in the galleries below, effectively driving digital engagement back into physical art appreciation.

Technical Innovation:
The Uniqueness Engine

A core challenge in generative museum installations is "repetition fatigue." To preserve the "aura" of the individual experience within a shared space, we developed a proprietary real-time orchestration system. This algorithmic engine manages the population of the digital garden, ensuring that no two visitors in the gallery at the same time cycle encounter identical objects. This technical constraint safeguards the user's sense of authorship and ensures that the "Endless Garden" remains truly infinite and non-repeating, mimicking the unpredictable nature of a dream.

Impact & Behavioral Insights

The success of The Endless Garden is validated by significant shifts in visitor behavior, proving that "experience-first" design leads to higher retention:

  • Deep Stickiness: Each visitor interacted with the co-creation tool an average of 1.8 times, indicating a high desire to explore multiple creative outcomes.

  • Creative Ownership: A remarkable 54% share and download rate suggests that visitors felt a strong personal identity within their generated art, transforming a temporary museum visit into a lasting digital keepsake.

  • Pedagogical Conversion: The 31% "Learn More" rate demonstrates that by leading with creativity, we successfully triggered a secondary desire for historical knowledge, proving that immersive design is a potent tool for modern museum education.

Cultural Context

The experience was created for Alberto Giacometti & Salvador Dalí: Through & Beyond Surrealism, a collaborative exhibition between The Dalí Museum and Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti in Paris. Marking the first comparative presentation of these two artists in the United States, the exhibition brings together paintings, sculptures, and archival materials by Giacometti alongside works by Dalí from The Dalí Museum’s collection, revealing unexpected parallels in their approaches to surrealism, the subconscious, and the human form.

Within this context, the project draws inspiration from a lesser-known episode in their shared history: an unrealized 1930s commission in which Dalí and Giacometti were invited to design an imaginative garden for the Count and Countess de Noailles. Though never realized, this speculative collaboration became the conceptual anchor for the digital experience. All symbolic references are derived from Dalí’s surrealist language and correspond to works in The Dalí Museum’s collection, allowing visitors to encounter the original artworks after participating in the experience and activating the museum space as a whole.

Credits

Creative Director & Art Director & Unreal Developer & AI Workflow Integration

Lois He

Technical Director & Project Manager

Vio Zhu

3D Artist & Animator

Yunhang Qin

Technical Artist & Animator

John Luo


Special Thanks

Beth Harrison, Hank Hine, Jeremy Beam, Christina Tang

Marlon Evans, Todd Bryant, Winslow Porter

Jon Fisher, Jack Jacober, Branden Figuero