The Real NYC #37 - The Current - Pop-up Digital Museum

Detail of BaaBaa (2016) by Sam Levigne

If you are a devotee of digital art, or if you don't know anything about digital art, but want to learn about it, head to The Current Museum of Art before December 15th. The Current Museum of Art is a non-profit dedicated to preserving and exhibiting digital art.

While it is looking for its permanent home the museum is running a "Beta Test" in a pop-up space at 60 Sullivan Street (entrance on 6th Ave.). Here they are running two exhibitions. In their main space is Test Patterns: Works. This exhibit of works by 10 artists show a wide range of digital art.

One piece that really caught my eye was BaaBaa by Sam Levigne.

Alibaba.com employs uniform metrics for all goods and services, meaning you can order crates of watches and units of coal, but also crates of domestic maids and units of sushi chefs. This blunt quantification if human life, sold alongside tools for the suppression of popular dissent, exposes pattern of trade that support the global economy. - exhibit brochure

Another piece that I really liked was Glitch_Architectures/Azrieli_Towers/Facade_Segment by Nitzan Bartov. When I was an engineering student in the early 1980's I had the chance to use one of the first computer drafting printers. So watching what Ms. Bartov has done with this piece just brought me back to my college days, while showing me possibilities that would never have thought of. Starting with an architectural diagram of the Azraeli Towers in Tel Aviv, Ms. Barotv injected a line of code that begins to randomize the drawing.

...Bartov expresses the dynamic and fluctuating relationship between the people of Tel Aviv and their built environment.- exhibit brochure

Glitch_Architecture (2016) by Nitzan Bartov - original diagram

Glitch_Architecture (2016) by Nitzan Bartov - Iteration 80

 In their downstairs exhibit space is TRANSFER Download a selection of new and existing digital videos on loan from TRANSFER Gallery in Brooklyn NY.

The videos are presented on 3 walls creating -

a unique environment of viewing artworks, inviting visitors to get intimate with new formats. - TRANSFER director, Kelani Nichole

 The videos present many different methods of digital film making, but the general theme was an attempt to bring the viewer into worlds that are surrealistic, and by having viewers sit surrounded by the three walls of projection the effect is to be immersed in the artists visions.

You have 2 weeks to get to The Current Museum's pop-up exhibition. Don't miss it.