Mind the Tech NY 2024"Creating a new movement": A look at the new Museum of Art & Technology in New York
Mind the Tech NY 2024
"Creating a new movement": A look at the new Museum of Art & Technology in New York
The participants of Calcalist and Bank Leumi’s Mind the Tech New York conference were given a tour of the Mercer Labs Museum of Art & Technology which will officially open in April. "The idea is to create a new movement, to decipher things that are impossible," says Roy Nachum, the driving force behind the establishment of the museum
It's not what you imagine when you think of a museum. The first exhibition at the Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology (MOAT), the newest museum in New York City, is a huge space that projects a mesmerizing video exhibit combined with music on each of the surfaces in the space. And it's just gets more and more unpredictable from there.
"The idea is to create a new movement, decipher things that are impossible, and try to create completely new things. If it's trying to see a movie in 360 degrees with directional sound; if it's a room of four-dimensional sound, a technology that we developed and with which we created a completely different dimension that allows you to experience sound as a hologram. Each room speaks of something completely different," said Israeli artist Roy Nachum, who is the driving force that led to the establishment of the museum. Nachum designed and developed the space and its concept, leads its current activities and is also responsible for all 15 exhibits of its debut exhibition.
As part of Calcalist and Bank Leumi’s Mind the Tech New York conference, participants were given a tour of the museum, which will officially open in April, guided by Nachum himself.
New York is perhaps the city with the most museums in the world, certainly the most famous museums in the world. What can you, an Israeli artist, innovate here?
"I designed the museum so that each of the 25 rooms in the space is a white canvas that can be changed to whatever we want. Any artist, musician, actor, architect, can create amazing things, completely different, and in a very, very fast way. Our world is fast, people consume Information quickly and I wanted to create a space that makes it possible to change the exhibitions quickly and create something new. The first exhibition is all mine. We will collaborate with artists and musicians to take it to the next level."
Artists usually want to exhibit in a museum. You wanted to create a museum. Why?
"First, to allow blind people to come and touch art and be a part of it. And second, to create a new movement. To develop something that will allow 20 artists to sit together in the lab that we have upstairs, and start brainstorming. Artists usually sit in their studio, creating the work in front of the canvas. It's something I've done in the past too. I wanted to bring back the interaction. As an artist in New York, galleries tell you to focus on your art, don't bother with design, with things that have nothing to do with art. But in my DNA I believe that today's artist can do anything, fashion design, interior design, poetry."
In the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo dealt with all kinds of mediums. But in the current era, there is a tendency to require artists to specialize in one area. Here you are leading a new-old trend of multidisciplinary artists.
"That's the approach. Every time I design or create something I do very broad research on how it started. If I'm designing a chair, I'll think about what the caveman sat on. What kind of stone or wood did they choose, and from there what was the evolution of the chair. Then I take it one step further with a very deep study of what was in the past. Once you start from a strong concept it will take you to very interesting places creatively."
What is the cost of building the museum?
"I can say that we are 3 times over the original budget. The reason is that me and my business partner, Michael Cayre, wanted to create something really different, and we didn't want the money to stop the idea. We designed the place 30 times to get to the perfect result, the starting point we want to start from.”
Will you also open a branch in Israel?
"We are looking at the possibility of taking it to a world level, and Israel is one of the places we would be happy to do it."
Mercer Labs will officially open in early April, and is currently in a soft launch. According to Nachum, thousands of visitors are already coming to the museum every day, after hearing about the place by word of mouth.
