Relative Realities is a digital art exhibit and experience featuring the works of printmaker Ambie Abaño, painter Ernest Concepcion, painter Jason Montinola, visual artist and designer Leeroy New, visual artist Arturo Sanchez, Jr., and multimedia and performance artist Josephine Turalba. With the help of augmented reality technology, visitors can interact with the artworks they see. Through Android devices installed with the FACETS app, they can simply point their smartphones and tablets onto an art piece, and watch it come alive with video, animation, sound, or 3D graphics.
What happens when subjective art comes together with constantly evolving technology? Technology provides artists with new tools for expression, becoming the fundamental force in the development and evolution of art. There is no limit to technology. There is no limit to art. Art becomes borderless; artists and non-artists collaborate. Art is given a new level of understanding as augmented reality that shifts the artist’s statement to a shared understanding with the viewer.
Art, at its best, is the expression of the artist’s spirit. Technology allows the extension of this artwork to be shared by the audience, themselves redefining their own experience of the work.
The rules of the game are changing. We are reacting to our own institutional reality, as everyone transitions to a socially connected, digital society in this age of new realities. We want to break the practice where the museum’s curatorial direction of an exhibition collection sets the pace for the appreciation and understanding of art. So we, as museum curators who set the pace for the exhibition’s appreciation, step back. We will allow this exhibition platform–which we have created with Samsung and our visual artists willing enough to dare–to just be, thereby creating new human experiences.
The science of digital technology, the field of animation, the coherent language of content generation, and the artist’s imagination–all these combined capture the spirit of our times.
In partnership with Samsung, first through a collaborative digital art project, and a sustained digital gallery in the museum, we defy, we disrupt, and we break away… to build the ethos of the here and now.
Relative Realities: Creating New Dimensions of Art through Technology is presented by Samsung Electronics Philippines and Yuchengco Museum.
