Nxt Museum | The first new media art museum in the Netherlands
Biometric Mirror by Lucy McRae and Dr Niels Wouters. Part of the inaugural exhibition at Nxt Museum, Shifting Proximities © Peter Tijhuis
Habitat by Heleen Blanken with Naivi and Stijn van Beek. Part of the inaugural exhibition at Nxt Museum, Shifting Proximities. © Heleen Blanken
Dimensional Sampling #1 by Yuxi Cao (James). Part of the inaugural exhibition at Nxt Museum, Shifting Proximities. © Peter Tijhuis 
Dimensional Sampling #1 by Yuxi Cao (James). Part of the inaugural exhibition at Nxt Museum, Shifting Proximities. © Peter Tijhuis
Dimensional Sampling #1 by Yuxi Cao (James). Part of the inaugural exhibition at Nxt Museum, Shifting Proximities. © Peter Tijhuis
Distortions in Spacetime by Marshmallow Laser Feast. Part of the inaugural exhibition at Nxt Museum, Shifting Proximities. © Marshmallow Laser Feast
Opened on August 29, Nxt Museum in Amsterdam. Visitors can immerse themselves in the futuristic world of the first museum dedicated to New Media Art in the Netherlands. Their inaugural exhibition is ‘Shifting Proximities’. The museum is located in the up-and-coming North of Amsterdam and it presents eight large-scale, multi-sensory art installations, four of which have been commissioned by and are premiering at Nxt Museum. Each of the multi-disciplinary installations has been created in collaboration with local and international artists, designers, technologists, scientists and musicians, fusing creative ideas with pioneering academic research and technological innovation.
For those who love new art installations the Nxt Museum is a new ‘must visit’ museum in Amsterdam. So the moment you can safely travel to Amsterdam after Covid this museum must be on your bucket list! We have really enjoyed our visit to the Van Gogh exhibition in the museum L’Atelier des Lumières in Paris, an art installation that gave an insight in a couple of paintings with technology. The first exhibition in Nxt Museum looks much more futuristic though! In the first couple of weeks they welcomed some 4.500 people to enjoy the installations.
Shifting Proximities | Innovative art and state-of-the-art art technology in Nxt Museum
Curated by Bogomir Doringer with co-curator Jesse Damiani and it examines how human experience and interaction are affected by social and technological change. Visitors are invited to engage and interact physically, emotionally and intellectually with the art — from experiencing the formation of a black hole, to learning how plants communicate with each other, and subjecting themselves to the flaws of facial recognition algorithms.
Curator Bogomir Doringer: “We’re opening the Nxt Museum in times of COVID-19, which has dramatically shifted the proximities between us and has changed life as we know it. In moments like these, we must come together and unite towards common goals. Shifting Proximities explores how technology helps us stay connected and protected, while confronting how it can be mobilised to control and exploit us. We place artists at the forefront of navigating these complex contradictions and, by relying on active audience participation, we aim to highlight the role and responsibility of us all in shaping the future.”
The works in the first exhibition are:
Connected (2020), a new commission by audio-visual artist Roelof Knol with sound by Marc Mahfoud.
Topologies #1 (2020), a new commission by United Visual Artists (UVA).
Habitat (2020), a new work by artist Heleen Blanken with software developer NAIVI and sound artist Stijn van Beek.
Distortions in Spacetime (2018-2020) by audiovisual pioneers Marshmallow Laser Feast.
Econtinuum (2020), a new commission by ecological artist Thijs Biersteker in collaboration with plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso.
Biometric Mirror (2018-2020) by sci-fi artist and body architect Lucy McRae and Dr Niels Wouters, an action researcher in human-computer interaction and digital ethics.
Nxt Stage presents: Dimensional Sampling (2019-2020) by artist and coder Yuxi Cao (James) with sound artist Lau Hiu Kong (Lawrence).
Nxt Lab presents: a series of four videoworks by Algorithmic Justice League and Joy Buolamwini.
Shaking up the tradition of wall texts, digital artist Benjamin Muzzin and sound designer Danny van der Lugt have been commissioned to create explanatory materials that use a combination of projections, moving-images and text to delve further into the rigorous research and collaborative creative process behind each of the art installations. The ‘transition rooms’, situated between the art installations, also offer visitors a place to relax, reflect and re-set as they move through the exhibition.
Shifting Proximities takes over the entirety of Nxt Museum’s 1,400 square metre exhibition space, including Nxt Lab – a dynamic space for education, research and development, and home to the artist residency programme – and Nxt Stage, a platform for innovative performances and audiovisual art. These two regularlyrotating spaces allow Nxt Museum to stay relevant and respond to urgent socio-political concerns.
Check out the video about Nxt Museum:
Website: Nxt Museum
