The arts thrive on change – even  when it comes to museums and archives where preserving the rare, the beautiful and meaningful is a mission and way of life.  New tools, advanced  technologies and wider design boundaries now stretch the meaning of “architecture” and create new ways of seeing and experiencing  the arts.

Today, immersing yourself in a total experience with augmented reality and high-tech digital  is trending strongly in all sorts of arts and cultural venues.

Here are some examples  you’ll find below in our sampler:

• Helsinki’s below-ground  Amos Rex Museum,  with high tech inaugural exhibition
• Tokyo’s new all-digital museum —  エプソン チームラボボーダレス、没入していく
• In Paris, an immersive experience – get into paintings by Gustav Klimt, Hundertwasser and others
• Going below ground: The largest aquarium in South America boasts a 650-foot circular viewing tunnel
• The Serpentine in London —  experience the arts in temporary space
• The plaza at Cineteca  — “the place” to see films in Mexico City’s Colonia  Xoxo District

Amos Rex Museum Helsinki

Twenty feet under Lasipalatsi Square in Helsinki, there’s a new, 23,500-square-foot museum, with a maze of underground exhibition spaces, in one of the most novel solutions to deal with tight urban spaces. On the street level, the Amos Rex Museum is nothing more than five mound-like islands on the plaza – they are large skylights – that shoot natural light to the below-ground museum.  The skylights also offer the public a portal to the exhibition spaces below, which are free of supporting pillars.  Architectural Digest says the $57-million museum has serious “wow” factor.

Here’s another “wow.” The museum’s inaugural exhibition is a high-tech extravaganza,  a solo show called “Massles” by Japanese art collective teamLab, known for creating interactive installations (see below, the new digital art museum in Tokyo) on view through January 6, 2019.

teamLab says:  “The digital has liberated human expression from the physical. Expression no longer requires an irreversible bond to the material in order to exist, thus dissolving the notion of mass. Expression freed from physical constraints also makes our experience of artworks and space in Massles.”

The themed immersive videos projecting throughout each space include Graffiti Nature: Lost, Immersed and Reborn, Crows are Chased…, and Black Waves. They invite the visitor to become part of the video with rolling images over, around, under and on everyone going through. They move seamlessly from space to space. See the video 

Helsinki’s JKMM architecture firm was tasked with finding the solution to a very constrained site: a plaza adjacent to the iconic Bio Rex Cinema, a modernist film theater built for the 1936 Olympics. “Asmo Jaaksi, the leading architect at JKMM, came up with the idea to build the museum 20 feet under the square adjacent to the theater,” according to an Architectural Digest story. “‘The only free space was this open square,’ said Jaaksi…in a walk through the museum. ‘Building underground was the only option, but I think it works quite well because the exhibitions have natural light.’” Talk about “wow” factor: The construction team had to dig out 460,000 cubic feet of rock to create the underground space. See the building

Amos Rex adds to an already- rich cultural district with other nearby museums:  Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Museum of Finland, and the Helsinki Art Museum.

Tokyo’s new digital art museum

teamLab Borderless, Become Immersed / エプソン チームラボボーダレス、没入していく

People have grown accustomed – even world weary of exhibitions that shock or surprise, think of Damien Hirst’s Shark in formaldehyde or the traveling human body parts exhibition that circled the globe.

Now we have an unprecedented, borderless world of digital imagery – a 21^st century, computer-driven Fantasia,  housed in a 10,000-square-meter complex, created with 520 computers and 470 projectors.

Formally known as the Mori Building Digital Art Museum Epson teamLab Borderless, the museum is on Tokyo’s Odaiba island  inside the Palette Town Development, and charmingly, next to an outdoor ferris wheel – a perfect 19^th century metaphor when people viewed the world from new perspectives.

teamLab is a group of tech-art whizkids whose work has already appeared at exhibitions in Singapore, London, Paris and Shenzhen. Now they’ve created a Borderless world —   segments of original,  light-filled, laser and computer digital driven artworks.

“Create new experiences with others, immerse yourself in borderless art, and explore the world with your body.”

teamLab promises, “no two visits will be the same,” and here’s why. Visitors are invited to walk, touch, follow, climb, hop, crawl, slide through level and pillowed surfaces.  (You should wear flat shoes!) The art changes constantly – it actually depends on audience participation — with “original organic movements” caused by human motion . TeamLab says the art changes constantly through “smart learning.”

Artworks move out of the rooms freely, form connections and relationships with people, communicate with other works, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

Find yourself in Flower Forest: Lost, Immersed and Reborn with walls and floors covered in projected flowers. Touch them and they wilt. Stand still on an empty spot – flowers will sprout. Butterflies are here too –fragile, if they are tapped; then new ones pop up in other places.

Kirsty Bouwers  writes in Timeout from her own firsthand experience

“The museum is divided into five sections: Borderless World, Athletics Forest, Future Park, Forest of Lamps and the En Tea House. Out of these, Borderless World is by far the largest, while the latter two are single installation rooms. In total, there are a good 50 exhibits spread across the vast space. There’s plenty to discover, and we’d recommend setting aside a few hours to see it all. Eat beforehand, as there’s no food available once inside the museum. “

The Forest of Resonating Lamps allows an intimate experience for 20 visitors at a time. Your motion changes the colors of the bulbs (“resonating”) eventually into intense blue, pink or yellow.

In Crystal World, an infinity room, you can control the colors with your smartphone (the app is downloadable at the museum’s entrance)

Not to be missed: The En Tea House offers a respite from the exuberant always-in-motion exhibits, with the chance to sit and sip  a cup of tea that will be magically transformed . Light-filled digital petals drop onto the waiting teacup, and as soon as the cup is filled and picked up, the digital petals are splashed and dispersed across the tabletop.

Artworks move out of the rooms freely, form connections and relationships with people, communicate with other works, influence and sometimes intermingle with each other.

Watch this 3-minute video  that demonstrates how light, shape, pattern, color move throughout the spaces.

Learn more in Soranews

South America’s Largest Aquarium

AquaRio –South America’s largest aquarium which debuted in 2016– boasts a 650-foot underwater circular glass tunnel that offers a unique viewing experience .  The facility holds some 4.5 million liters of saltwater, home to 8,000 marine animals from 350 mostly native species. The visitors’ submerged walk-through the  glass tunnel — unlike any other on the continent –measures over 650 feet long, giving visitors an expansive look at undersea life.

There are an additional 24 smaller aquarium areas. AquaRio was built at a cost of $40.6 million, as a featured attraction for the 2016 Summer Games in Rio and other Brazilian cities. The goal?  To see up close and even interact with an immense variety of fish, invertebrates, rays and sharks.

Several marine ecosystems are represented, from open ocean to environments of the Brazilian coast. It’s also possible to observe reef environments from diverse places, with fish and corals. There’s even a touch tank, so visitors may touch sharks, rays and various invertebrates.

Interactive technologies abound in AquaRio. A digital aquarium feature allows visitors to create an individual environment for visualizing fish, with choice of species, color, size and name. The data are saved on a RFID card and appear by RFID detection at terminals in other points in smaller aquarium viewing areas.

A multitouch  videowall allows up to three visitors simultaneously to use multimedia content.  Features include a gallery of images and videos (without sound) with the species present in AquaRio in its natural habitat, besides addressing themes of sustainability and ecology.

Through augmented reality, (AR) visitors can view 3D models of various species (fish, turtles, dolphins, among others). Through an open camera the visitor is asked to position her hand and follow the instructions:  the species appear in her hand. By moving her hand the visitor can see the animal at different angles and discover details of its biology.   

Multimedia software answers your questions:   about the different types of species, compares sizes, natural habitats and what care is really needed. Through a touch screen for navigation, the visitor will learn the importance of preservation and how humans are impacting the life of sharks. Learn more 

Atelier des Lumières, Paris

If you’ve been to Les Baux in the south of France, you are familiar with the monumental son et lumière shows projected  each year, meters high against rock formations  that takes place during the heavy tourism season. (This year in Les Baux it’s Picasso and the Spanish Masters.)

Now new in Paris, you’ve got a few weeks (through November 10, 2018) to beat a path to the new Atelier des Lumières, in the former Chemin-Vert foundry in the eastern part of the city (11^th arrond.)  where you can have an immersive experience on a grand scale with Viennese Modernist artists  Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele (both died in 1918, along with architect Otto Wagner and the universal artist Koloman Moser). Their lives and oeuvre are being celebrated in this centenary year at the Atelier and in several European venues this year. Hundertwasser makes an appearance too in a mini-exhibition,  the Wake of the Viennese Secession.

Immersion at the Atelier, like the Helsinki and Tokyo  experiences (above),  demonstrates how  technology is being used to create a  cultural experience – with 140 projectors and 50 speakers – that lets you step into familiar artistic masterpieces. Watch the video

The Atelier des Lumières is the first digital art center in Paris, framed by metal structures, high ceilings, and structural elements left in places. Open 7 days a week, it’s been  called “ 3,000 m² of total and monumental immersion.”

Klimt and Moser were co-founders of the Vienna Secession in 1918, and their major roles in setting Vienna and Austria on the world stage as an arts and design powerhouse,  are being celebrated in a year-long series of events in several cities and a digital Secession site where you can follow their careers and artistic output.

The Klimt paintings – including the iconic portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, above (now in New York’s Neue Galerie) –are projected 10 meters high on the walls and spaces – including floors. This is scenography that allows complete immersion: you walk through and become part of the paintings.

Watch the videos

Serpentine Gallery London: A Changing Architectural Showcase

Every summer, it’s “another opening of another show” at London’s Serpentine Pavilion in Kensington Gardens, which sheds its form – in a complete tear-down – for an entirely new arts space.  The Serpentine is made up of two venues – about 5 minutes’ apart – on either side of The Serpentine Bridge.

The annual tradition began in 2000 with a commission to the late Zaha Hadid, founder of a worldwide architectural practice, to design a temporary pavilion for the arts.  Since then an international roster of  talent has been invited each year by a distinguished jury to design a new structure, including Sou Fujimoto of Japan, selgascano of Spain. Bjarke Ingels of Denmark, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Jean Nouvel.  The temporary gallery stays up for about 6 months of arts activities.

Each year, the Serpentine Pavilion serves as structure and inspiration for new, site-specific works commissioned in art, architecture, music, film, and dance.

This year’s winner is architect Frida Escobedo (b. 1979), a Mexico City native, well known for reactivating urban spaces with designs for housing, community centers and galleries.  Here she draws upon Mexican domestic architecture and British materials in a courtyard-style design that features the interplay of light, water and geometry. (Her inspiration included the Prime Meridian line at London’s Royal Observatory in Greenwich) The Serpentine Pavilion is open to the public

Escobedo’s Pavilion is an enclosed courtyard, comprised of two rectangular volumes positioned at an angle.

“Internal courtyards are a common feature of Mexican domestic architecture, while the Pavilion’s pivoted axis refers to the Prime Meridian, which was established in 1851 at Greenwich and became the global standard marker of time and geographical distance.” A celosia, or breeze wall – a typical element in Mexican vernacular architecture – is composed of a latticework of cement roof tiles.

Light and shadow are added to the visitor’s experience with under-canopy panels that are mirrored and a triangular-shaped pool that refracts sunlight over the course of the day – an additional reference to  time and the Prime Meridian. Explore the Pavilion.

Dezeen notes, “Escobedo’s prize-winning work in urban reactivation ranges from housing and community centres to hotels and galleries. In 2006, she founded her practice in Mexico City, with significant national projects including the Librería del Fondo Octavio Paz and an extension of La Tallera Siqueiros gallery in Cuernavaca. Her designs have featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2012 and 2014), the Lisbon Architecture Triennale (2013), and in San Francisco, London and New York. Recent projects include Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and social housing projects in Guerrero and Saltillo, Mexico.” Slide show with 50 images from Dezeen 

Outdoors at the Cineteca – Mexico City

Cineteca is the beloved national cinephile hub of Mexico—an archive with room to store up to 50,000 film works, house  330,000 artifacts, a museum gallery, Latin America’s only restoration studio and plenty of classroom space.  It’s located in Colonia Xoxo, an easy walk just north of the Coyoacán District where Frida Kahlo’s Blue House and the Kahlo Museum draw thousands every year. Check out the architecture: the renovated Cineteca features clean, sweeping architecture designed by Michael Rojkind and inaugurated in 2012.

Want a completely different cultural experience? National Filmoteca is one of Cineteca’s most popular features.

“Going to the National Filmoteca is always an experience: taking pictures, sitting at one of the small restaurants on the premises and, of course, seeing the best of national and international cinema.

“But now you can add a new touch to your visit: take a blanket with you and sit in front of the huge outdoor screen while basking in the moonlight. You’ll love watching the movie projected on the iconic Filmoteca façade.”