HOST INTRO: A new series of art exhibitions opened at the Fashion Institute of Technology this week. It’s called “The Future is Inclusive”. Stephanie Horton explains. [8 sec]
HORTON: CJ Yeh’s shoes click on the white tile inside the Feldman Building on 27th street. He is explaining the interactive artwork he and his class created [9 sec]
YEH: These are actually AR enabled posters. // So if you have the app called ARILYN and you use it to scan one of these posters…
HORTON: He leads me to a purple poster with two speakers. It looks pretty boring until he holds his phone up and scans it. [7 sec]
YEH: And you can see that it will actually “call” the animated content. And will really start bringing these posters to life.
((fade in: music))
HORTON: Oh wow the poster’s…moving.
HORTON: The speakers on the poster vibrate and blast music. The music bounces off the walls and fills the room. It was pretty cool. [6.8 sec]
((Fade out: music))
HORTON: Yeh is a graphic artist, and co-curator of this series. This first show is titled “The Future is Inclusive”. It features work from artists with a range of cultural backgrounds working in different mediums. Paintings, photography, sound, and, of course, interactive posters. [15 sec]
HORTON: The lack of diversity in the art world has been making news the last few years. Everything from the paintings hanging in museums to the Oscars, people notice the art usually does not reflect the population. According to a report published in 2017 by a CUNY art class 80% of artwork featured in New York’s biggest galleries were by white artists. Museums are starting to notice the disparity. For example last week the Museum of Modern Art launched a collaboration with the Studio Museum in Harlem. It features artists of African descent. Yeh remembers when a collector didn’t want to purchase his work because he wasn’t Chinese, but Taiwanese. [35 sec]
YEH: I mean in arts school you always feel like your brush or pen or chisel or whatever it is speaks for itself. The art speaks for itself. I never realized that the cultural background played that important role in the collector’s mind.
HORTON: Christie Shin is the co-curator of this series. Shin says contemporary artists are changing the way people are interacting with their work, turning the spectator into more of a participant. [11.7]
SHIN: It was more one-way in the past but these days with the digital technology its more interactive both ways so it’s not just you know, let people know but you interact with your audience.
HORTON: This is the first in a series of five shows open until the end of March. Yeh thinks taking action is what we need to make an impact. [10.3]
YEH: Honestly if we all just sit back and say…somebody do it. [laughs] Then it will never happen.
HORTON: Stephanie Horton, Columbia Radio News.
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