“Future of Today” opens at Times Square in New York City, igniting the topic of future gallery

2015-08-24

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Pioneer of China:Future Gallery of Beijing Today Art Museum

Beijing Today Art Museum (TAM), China's first non-profit private art museum, is going to launch one of its biggest project in history---“Future of Today” on 27th August 2015, with the opening exhibition--- "Imaginary Future" starting on the same day. “Future of Today” consists of three parts: the physical exhibition, the virtual exhibition and the third part display (i.e. augmented reality). At the exhibition, China’s first virtual art museum director, Alex Gao, will be speaking. Differing from reality, age, composition, and even the identity of this virtual director result from the computational processing of a public powers. By offering each viewer a localized perspective, ”Future of Today” presents in a unique way the thoughts on our new living environment of internet-based society. The physical exhibition will feature renowned sculpture artist Sui Jianguo, new media artist Miao Xiaochun, US biology artist and scholar Suzanne Anker, and scores of other Chinese and international artists. Their very new practices incorporating real, virtual and augmented reality concepts and explore the new possibilities of future art.

To construct “Future of today” in the space cloud, Today Art Museum is collaborating with renowned architect Mr. Wang Hui (architect of Today Art Museum) once again. “Future of today” is a new conceptual art museum in the cloud, it brings a brand-new aesthetic perspective to the viewers. Having 360 degree panorama exhibitions and an online display of digitized art works, Today Art Museum elevates with modern technology the artistic concept to a much higher level. In this space on the cloud, there will be thousands of exhibitions and each exhibition exists as a dot. Inside, it is a totally new cubic space and contains art works that are impossible to be displayed in any physical space. “Future of Today” is a self-organized and growing co-existing cultural system. It might even be called a new black hole of art.

The third display space of this exhibition will be created with the help of the augmented reality technology. The production director in charge of the research and development of this technology explains to us that: "The viewer simply needs to point the camera of his or her mobile device at an art work to trigger a pre-defined content made by augmented reality. On the screen the viewer will see a merged image of virtual and real works, or even a completely new art production."

Mr. Huang Du, Academic Moderator of the exhibition,suggests that the audience could understand the exhibition from four perspectives: "the ordinary and the abnormal," "the individual in change, ""the construction of history" and "the future Utopia." More concisely, it is to review the academic quality of an exhibition from the physicality, thinking quality, individuality and social character between media and art. “’Future of Today’ is more than a mere presentation; it is the starting point of a new topic under the current situation: how to build a new system and face the challenges and opportunities in the depth and width of thinking."

The Today Hall of the Future is a joint conception of the Director of Today Art Museum, Alex Gao, the sculpture artist Sui Jianguo, and the architect Wang Hu. It is an endeavor to explore the most avant-garde and future-oriented spatial concept of art museum. The virtual director of the Hall of the Future is supported by ThinkPad S5 Yoga with build-in RealSense 3D Camera. The exhibition will last from 27th August to 12th September, 2015.