Imagine a world where science and art merge; where Da Vinci and Einstein work together on the same project.
It may seem strange, but the concept has come to fruition with the emergence of tech-art. Combining artistic creativity and scientific innovation, tech-art has redefined what can be viewed and considered art.
It all began in 2013 when Portrait of America and Rain Room burst into the art and tech worlds. Rain Room was featured in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and allowed visitors to experience a rain shower in the rain forest without ever actually getting wet. The Portrait of America exhibit at the Smithsonian (which was on display this past February), was an American flag covered in pieces of glass that, when viewed through Google Glass, showcased different events in the history of the United States.
Now, in 2014, artists are continuing to innovate and excite. Below are three new exhibits taking the tech-art world by storm.
First up is Jim Campbell’s Rhythms of Perception located in the Museum of Moving Image in Queens, New York. A graduate of MIT with an electrical engineering and math degree, Campbell is not the stereotypical artist. However, he was actually a fine arts major at first, and, after he made the switch, has been able to integrate both areas of interest. His work includes sculptural LED works that are formed from the union of video and light and custom electronics. Currently, over 20 of his works are displayed in the exhibit.
Next is 5000 Moving Parts at the MIT Museum. The Cambridge, Massachusetts exhibit features six “kinetic” artists whose work focuses on the movement of the human body. One example is that of Arthur Ganson and Christina Campanella’s Machine with Breath — a lung that imitates the regular, rhythmic pace of breathing.
Finally, Dr. James Chung has brought sculptor Auguste Rodin into the twenty-first century with the introduction of Inside Rodin’s Hands: Art, Technology, and Surgery at the Cantor Arts Center at California’s Stanford University. Rodin’s famous hands sculpture is now a classroom tool in diagnosing medical conditions. The sculpture has been updated to a three-dimensional level that shows bones, nerves, and muscles — allowing it to be used for simulated surgeries.
With technology continuing to advance, it is only natural for it to expand into different arenas — and art is simply the newest area to be enriched by technology. We can’t wait to see what masterpieces will be created by the union of these two seemingly contradictory industries.
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Tag: Museum of Modern Art
Why Don’t More Poor Kids Get to See Art?
In New York, a place whose cultural institutions attract people from around the world, there are residents who not only have never visited those institutions but also some who have never even been uptown.
“We have people living on the Lower East Side who have not taken the bus or the train,” says Brigitte Rivera, a family child specialist at University Settlement, a social services organization in Manhattan. This surprising problem—a simple transit hurdle—is just one of the many barriers that separate New York’s lower-income and immigrant populations from its renowned arts and cultural offerings.
As the executive director of Cool Culture, Candice Anderson thinks about how to lower such barriers for exactly the kind of clients that Rivera has. Founded in 1999, Cool Culture makes museums, botanical gardens and zoos accessible to families who have had limited exposure to these attractions. They do this in all sorts of ways: securing free admission to 90 different institutions, facilitating families’ first museum visits and training early educators to encourage arts education in their communities. Funding comes through a combination of individual, corporate and government support. “If you think about the history of museums in the U.S., they’ve been a rarified space,” says Anderson. “There’s a history of class divide, so people rarely think of them as educating the masses.” Continue reading “Why Don’t More Poor Kids Get to See Art?”