As a 21st century museum, we strive to be at the forefront of new technology while offering opportunities for the healthy exchange of ideas and dialogue through a Miami lens. When it came to commissioning an artist to work with the museum’s architecture and Miami’s landscape for our augmented reality (AR) exhibition, Miami-based artist Felice Grodin was the perfect choice. Felice Grodin: Invasive Species was made possible thanks to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
“We really wanted to activate the outside space of the museum and bring the art experience to this outdoor public space… and we couldn’t think of a better artist to work with other than Felice. Her work fuses discussions that are of interest to the museum, particularly the changes that are rapidly occurring to the landscape of Miami,” PAMM AR + Art Project Manager Monica Mesa says.
Last year, we launched the PAMM App, allowing users to experience guided tours and interviews all from the palm of their hands. But now, we’re taking guests to the next level with our newest AR exhibition during Miami Art Week. For the first the first time ever, we’re leveraging cutting-edge technology to animate Grodin’s digital renderings on the PAMM App.
“Through this project, PAMM will engage with its visitors in a completely different way,” said PAMM AR + Art Project Manager Monica Mesa. “Our institution hopes to ignite cultural excitement using augmented reality as a conduit to broaden and democratize our visitors’ art-viewing experience.”
In a digital age, being able to share content instantly is part of experiencing art through a new medium. As guests visit artworks Mezzbug and Terrafish in the East Portico’s hanging gardens and Padma and Raj Vattikuti Learning Theatre, they’re encouraged to share their experiences and start the conversation digitally.
“We are very excited because Felice’s work will serve as an AR bridge between our visitors and the museum. Not only will they experience art through a new medium, but they will be exposed to ideas we have been presenting through our exhibitions, now with a new twist as they will engage in this conversation by using technology and their phones, an object that is so familiar them,” Mesa says.
The Miami-based artist worked with Apple’s augmented reality ARKit platform and Cuseum to animate her work and fuse it with the museum’s architecture. When art and technology collide, challenges may arise, but Grodin isn’t worried.
Grodin says, “I applaud PAMM for commissioning this project. It reflects a willingness to take a risk, and what is art without risk?” She explains, “AR is a new medium not unlike video or the camera once was, and this project will present the public with one of the earliest institutional examples of augmented reality as an artistic medium. Fifty years from now there may be hundreds of such projects archived in some way. I find this very exciting for PAMM and for our art community in general.”
About Felice Grodin (Miami)
Felice Grodin is an artist with a background in architecture. Her practice focuses on the speculative integration of art and design by developing strategies for modeling our present conditions and making meaningful imprints upon them. Through ArtCenter/South Florida and the Bureau for Cultural Strategies (BUX), she is currently participating in the fellowship The Recalibrated Institution, a laboratory for developing and testing intelligences that address emerging and long-term systemic challenges. In addition, she is a member of the collaborative A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle), an initiative exploring how artistic and cultural possibilities can be reimagined in light of climate change and political volatility by leveraging the dynamics already in process. She has also contributed essays to various publications including The Miami Rail. She obtained her Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University, where her thesis was a recipient of the Thomas J. Lupo Award for Metropolitan Studies, and her Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University.