ARTECHOUSE Innovation
Image courtesy of Bella Ramon
By Bella Ramon
ARTECHOUSE, Washington D.C. opened in June 2017 as an innovative space that is dedicated to showcasing art and technology. Its mission is to shed light on how technology can stir a sense of creativity, while also educating the public on experimental art forms. With a wide variety of artists, ARTECHOUSE is an incubator and launchpad for aspiring technology-based artists. Located at 1238 Maryland Ave SW, it is about a 7-minute walk from the Smithsonian metro stop which makes getting there extremely accessible.
Prices range from $8-16, but with a student ID, the price of admission is brought down to $13. With this ticket, visitors can currently experience Zach Lieberman’s Future Sketches. Being his first solo exhibit, it explores digital poetry and creative capacities through code and technology. Three labs are offered within Future Sketches for the next few months: Code Lab, Interactive Lab, and Face Lab, two of which are interactive and allow visitors to better understand the relations between sound, shape, facial recognition, and light.
Through his eclectic style, Lieberman explores how the body, voice, and gestures can be transformed in unique and creative ways. The boundaries between the visible and invisible are immediately broken through his work.
Photography is welcomed and highly suggested by the artist and workers at the facility. Snapping a photo to look back at and reminisce on what the artist was trying to convey is their goal.
This exhibit will be open until March 1, 2020, and has multiple open time slots each day between the hours of 10 a.m.-10 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday and between 10 a.m.- 11:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. After 5 p.m. each day, an ID will be required to ensure all visitors are over the age of 21. A fully functioning bar is opened and guests are free to roam and interact with the exhibit. ARTECHOUSE offers the U.S’s first full-functioning augmented reality bar and drinks through their app.
Open in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Miami, each location has a different exhibit open for a few months at a time, showcasing these otherwise unknown artists to the world.
Being open in D.C. for only a few years has not stopped ARTECHOUSE from welcoming over 400,000 visitors to date. Aside from being a popular destination, they have also been featured in the New York Times, BBC, USA Today, National Geographic, and numerous other nationally and internationally acclaimed media outlets. These outlets have named ARTECHOUSE one of the premier contemporary art spaces in the world.
ARTECHOUSE believes that art should be cultivated in a creative and user-friendly environment and connects its guests with the endless possibilities of art in technology. Immersion is an important experience to fully understanding and challenging the mundane.
ARTECHOUSE has found that working across mediums and disciplines is the best way to represent the complex world that we live in. Challenging the way that the world sees both art and technology, the facility is determined to showcase these relations and undiscovered artists to the world.
