How do new technologies and media affect the role of the traditional gallery space?
How can these new avenues of dissemination be used to reach and
involve the largest and widest possible audience, outside typical
gallery-goers or those near the gallery?
Charged with recasting the role of the traditional gallery space, Swis.Loc Architecture and et al. Collaborative have proposed a new app for broadcasting and cataloging future shows and Green3,
a group show concept that reinterprets the contextlessness of the
traditional gallery as a studio set for capturing and distributing
exhibitions through digital media.
Future shows will be scanned and photographed, creating a catalog of
three-dimensional models for every show, allowing them to be installed
virtually in any space and experienced anytime, anywhere. For those in
the gallery, augmented reality will overlay additional information or
even additional pieces to the show. During the Green3 show, three physical edifices
(GreenSpace, GreenPerspectiveMachine, and GreenDie) will work in
conjunction with the app, utilizing chroma key compositing, also known
as green screening, to replace their real surfaces with digital imagery
and environments submitted by artists.
GreenSpace completely resurfaces Cue’s
primary gallery with green chroma key paint. Painting the gallery’s
floors, ceilings, and walls literally highlights its physical extents
while simultaneously enabling their erasure and replacement with the
most recent forms of pictorial space – augmented and virtual reality
represented on the digital screens of digital cameras, smartphones, and
tablets.
Similarly, GreenPerspectiveMachine, a painting-like rectangular
volume placed on the pristine, white walls of Cue’s entry gallery, acts
as both object and pictorial substrate, a conceptual preamble to the
primary gallery.
GreenDie is the solid to the gallery’s void. Modeled on Tony Smith’s
1962 sculpture, Die, it is a solid 6’x6’x6’ cube that exists outside
the gallery, installed at any location prescribed by the artists on
exhibition, acting as an emblem of the gallery and extending the reach
of the exhibition.
Ultimately, both the gallery and its app act as a conduit, giving
artists a platform to reach viewers. As technology evolves, one can
easily imagine a scenario where 3-D glasses allow the show to be
experienced in one’s own space with full depth and dimension, making the
lines between actual & virtual and physical & representational
even more seamless.