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Lightly Through The Looking Glass With Apple’s [AR]T Walk
Alert the critics: The cutting edge of New York City’s art avantgarde can now be found at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. Amid the blistering doldrums of summer, Apple has offered [AR]T Walk a guided tour of their new augmented reality exhibit. Co-curated with the New Museum, the tour is being offered in five other cities around the world: London, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, though the latter has been suspended indefinitely due to the political instability.
The star-studded slate of contributing artists appears as if it has been plucked straight out of a curator’s dreams: Nick Cave, duo Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg, John Giorno, Cao Fei, Carston Höller, and Pipilotti Rist were each commissioned to make their first augmented reality work for the show.
Though all the pieces are the same in every location, the tour here in NYC, a local Apple employee informed me, is the best of the lot. This is because “it’s in, you know, Central Park.” And he was right; the combination of the park’s natural quietude with the explosive thrum of the cityscape nearby is an electrifying backdrop for art that a few mere years ago would have been relegated to the world of dreams.
Before you go running off to the park, know now that you won’t be able to see [AR]T Walk on your own. Lamentably, Apple maintains a draconian hold over who can and cannot access the art. Though augmented reality is the imposition and coexistence of digital…
