This weekend, ReGeneration opens at the New York Hall of Science. Curated by Steve Dietz and Amanda Parkes, ReGeneration explores the connection of cultural vitality to sustainability, immigration, and urbanization, through the intersection of art, science and technology. Ten contemporary artists from Asia, Central America, Europe, and the US will present works on the theme of community and sustainability.
One installation—World’s Fair 2.0—was produced by Hive NYC member REV-/People’s Production House. This installation and interactive scavenger hunt bridges Queens’ history past and present with the questions: how did the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs shape the region’s geography and its collectively imagined future? What are the continuities between utopian visions from the past and today’s vision for the future?
Using your iPhone or iPad, you can experience World’s Fair 2.0 as an augmented reality mobile tour at locations in and around the New York Hall of Science. In the museum’s cafeteria, for example, you’ll encounter visions for future living, from the “liberatory” promise of the electric dishwasher heralded at the 1939 World’s Fair, to the friendly-faced food service robots of today, like Snackbot and Chief Cook Robot, promoting a more automated tomorrow.
In addition, 14 teens worked with Rothenberg and Jahn, using innovations in mobile and augmented reality technology to create an interactive scavenger hunt where zombies thwart players in their time-traveling quest to explore the history of the future.
Through the installation, self-guided tour and teen-produced mobile game, World’s Fair 2.0 stages interventions into the past and future, regenerating conceptual tools to interact with the present.
Pingback: When Minecraft met The Hunger Games |