Extended Realities

Building Resilient Realities

June 5-20, 2024
Wednesday-Sunday, 11am ─ 7pm
4th Floor, WSA 161 Water Street New York, NY 10038

Spanning a symphony of digital creations, the exhibition, "Building Resilient Realities," emerges as a collective inquiry into the possibilities of preservation, resilience, and regeneration through the impact of extended reality (XR). This group exhibition showcases human resilience, rallying against the erosive tide of modernity that endangers our identities, environments, communities, and future histories. It also serves as a collective defiance of established norms to reclaim and reshape our relationship with technology to refocus on connection with ourselves and other organic beings.

By harnessing the transformative potency of XR, the artists represented here repurpose the same technology that is often associated with restlessness and isolation to create a safe space for reflection, community, and accountability. These immersive pieces become emblems of resistance, inscribed with digital runes that offer alternative visions of the future that go beyond just survival – opening portals for renewal and a chance for our tired souls to find moments of stillness and kindle sparks of hope.

The artworks encompass a determined defiance against the monolithic, failing universals that technology sometimes espouses, offering instead a multiverse of new and intersectional futures. Futures that offer the potential to supplant waste with regeneration; where the incessant march of obsolescence is contested by the permanence of care, the insistence of human touch, and a resilient will to endure and persevere.

Technology, so often perceived as an external force that shapes us, is re-envisioned here as a canvas that we paint with our stories and dreams. The evidence lies in the execution of the works: an interactive game facilitates rest and nurture through nature, a multimedia performance resurrects lost artistry from historical ashes, a speculative architectural model offers a blueprint for sustainable futures, the opening of a portal for the preservation of a lost culture, a new toolkit for creative expression, human adaption and resilience against everchanging and overwhelming triumphs, and the biases and inaccessibility of emerging technologies are exposed and become an avenue for powerful change. Each experience provided by the collective melds the lines between user and creator, pushing participants towards an introspective journey that questions and redefines our coexistence with the tools we wield.

In "Building Resilient Realities" artists become architects of a world in which we are no longer estranged from the ecosystems and histories that sustain us, nor alienated by the technology we have birthed. As stewards of this virtual expanse, they choreograph a digital embodiment of liberation, guiding us towards a more integrated, more resilient understanding of self and community amidst the humanless innovation that shapes our era.

Curated by Danielle Mcphatter. Produced by Carlos Johns-Davila.

About the Track:

Our NEW INC member cohort consists of 5 unique Tracks or focus areas guided by a Mentor-in-Residence: Art & Code, Cooperative Studies, Creative Science, Social Architecture, and XR (Extended Realities). Annually, our members are invited to contribute to a group showcase demonstrating the Track’s guiding questions. These exhibitions are curated and produced by invited guests.

Our XR (Extended Realities) track explores how artists can use, interact with and leverage XR tools to create dynamic experiences. Artists in this cohort leverage emerging tools that are forming new audience relationships to technology and are interested in the third space between our physical and digital worlds. Here they develop projects that explore aesthetic and technical opportunities for motion capture, virtual reality, augmented reality, the metaverse, immersive sound and more.

Featuring Work From:

Ai Xia
Showcase
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Leah Smithson
Talk
Showcase
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Nat Decker
Talk
Showcase
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