Art's New Frontier | ACUTE ART

Neil Koenig, former Senior BBC producer and current ideaXme board advisor and guest interviewer, interviews Daniel Birnbaum, artistic director Acute Art. Chapter headings: 00:00We're here to idea everyone! To fire up your curiosity and connect you with the people and ideas that shape our world.

00:20 Welcome to ideaXme. I'm Neil Koenig.

00:25 For more than 50 years the Serpentine Gallery has shown work by some of the world's most famous contemporary artists.

00:38 This creature is a product of augmented reality.

01:04

A parallel digital version of the show has been launched in Fortnite, a hugely popular video game developed by Epic Games.

01:15 The artistic director of Acute Art and curator of the New Fiction show is Daniel Birnbaum.

38:04 At the centre of the game is a replica of the Serpentine Gallery.

38:57 I think it will be the best attended exhibition ever produced.

39:42 What kind of work is on show in both worlds?

39:52 KAWS, many people know his work. 41:15 On the Acute Art App and you can place those paintings in your living room.

41:26 It is an exhibition that lives in 3 worlds.

51:33 Maybe that hybrid world will be the future of art.

52:45 There will be entirely new kinds of platforms I think.

The pandemic has had an impact on most aspects of our lives, and the art world is no exception. With many galleries and museums closed, there's an urgent need for new ways to experience art. Technology might provide some answers, and one enterprise at the forefront of developments is Acute Art, which collaborates with artists on projects involving virtual and augmented reality. Acute Art has already worked with many high-profile artists, including Ai Weiwei, Marina Abramović, Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, Olafur Eliasson, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Bjarne Melgaard, Jeff Koons and many more. The most recent project that Acute Art has been involved in is NEW FICTION, the first major solo exhibition in London by KAWS (Brian Donnelly b.1974). The show, which opened in January 2022 at the Serpentine gallery in London's Hyde Park, includes new and recent works in physical and augmented reality. A parallel digital version of the exhibition launched simultaneously in Fortnite, the hugely popular video game developed by Epic Games. In addition, an app developed by Acute Art will "offer a bridge between the virtual and the physical worlds".

All the paintings and sculptures in the exhibition, as well as a miniature version of the entire show, will exist as AR works on the app, which can be viewed at home by audiences around the world, and shared on social media.

In this interview, producer, journalist and ideaXme board adviser Neil Koenig talks to Acute Art's artistic director, Daniel Birnbaum, about his career in the art world, the creative challenge of curating the NEW FICTION show, and what part technologies such as augmented and virtual reality might play in the future development of art. Before joining Acute Art in January 2019, Daniel Birnbaum was Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Previously, he curated the 1st Moscow Biennale (2005), "Airs de Paris" (with Christine Macel) at the Centre Pompidou (2007), the 2nd Yokohama Triennial (2008), and "Zero" (with Tijs Visser) at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin (2015). In 2009 he was director of the 53rd Venice Biennale. Daniel Birnbaum co-authored 'Spacing Philosophy: Lyotard and the Idea of the Exhibition' with Swedish philosopher and professor Sven-Olov Wallenstein published by Sternberg Press in September 2019. Video footage of Fortnite game courtesy of Epic Games © Epic Games.

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