Every year, as the temperature drops and the days get shorter, gloves become more and more important. Even on my five-minute bike ride to work, my joints freeze, dry, and crack without the pair I bought at an Amsterdam flea market last year (soft suede and obnoxious leopard print because I can never pass up the opportunity to be as extra as humanly as possible). Gloves are functional, beautiful and provide another layer of self. They wrap around the human form but are not constrained by it; I may not be a leopard but with my gloves on my hands are.
If the freezing weather in Berlin doesn’t allow you to appreciate gloves enough, there is another remedy. NEW DAWN | Tools to touch in the times to come, a virtual reality gallery experience uses the glove as a focal point. The multimedia display presents 33 artists who explore the glove through photography, CGI, animation, graphic design, dance, performance, sound design and curatorial practices as a ‘device enabling holistic experiences in one. discursive, material and visual speculative future. . And to experience it, you don’t have to leave the comfort of your screen.
The exhibition is set in a potential future reality in 2070 in which artificial intelligence has enabled humans to transcend current notions of aesthetics, science and technology. NEW DAWN envisions a future where the organic and the synthetic meet to rebuild our understanding not only of the human environment, but of the human body as well. The virtual gallery focuses on the glove and its ability to foster performativity and imagination due to its position as an “alien skin”.
The gallery is best viewed with VR glasses, but can easily be enjoyed on a computer or smartphone by using the W, A, S, and D keys to navigate. Upon entering, the viewer enters a bright, crisp room that opens onto a dome room, all crisp white with ambient sounds. Although the gallery itself appears to be inside a spaceship, the back wall features a window with a digitally rendered sea, anchoring the viewer in an earthly reality.
The gloves themselves mimic this combination of organic and synthetic virtual reality. NEW DAWN offers gloves that look like human skin, gloves that could be made from car parts, gloves that could be carbon woven, and gloves that look like gloves. Some pieces are static while others fluctuate as the sound design rises and fades as the viewer focuses on them.
While the central room of the virtual gallery may look like a conventional space for exhibiting art, two side rooms challenge notions of traditional curation. Try to wander left and right to dive into an immersive yet virtual gallery experience.
Initiator Tobias Faisst Creative also produced a performative video piece for the exhibition which is located in one of the side rooms. This video presents a choreography by Franka Marlene Foth and dancers Camille Jackson, Yi Wei Tien, Christophe saint laurent and Ning lie, WHO played at iHeartBerlin’s Checkout Sessions event with Soundboks in September. Direction and video production were carried out by TM act.
NEW DAWN challenges the definition of a gallery and provides a glimpse into the future of art curation in our increasingly digital world: a hybrid of manufactured, anthropomorphic and natural elements.
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through Adri
November 16, 2020
in art