Coventry City of Culture Trust’s major new digital art gallery launches this week and has announced an exciting exhibition that will be returning to the city.
Leading art collective Marshmallow Laser Feast will present a five-screen, real-time interactive installation, The Tides Within Us, as part of the launch programme for The Reel Store.
It is the UK’s first permanent immersive digital art gallery, which opens at the Telegraph Hotel from Friday 13 May 2022, becoming a permanent new visitor attraction in the heart of the city.
The Trust has already announced that the venue will launch with the exhibition Machine Memoirs: Space, by internationally acclaimed artist Rekik Anadol, and the addition of The Tides Within Us will make it an even bigger draw for audiences.
Part of Marshmallow Laser Feast’s ongoing exploration into the world beyond the limits of our senses, The Tides Within Us is an immersive artwork, which investigates the flow of oxygen through the cardiovascular system, painting a picture of a human body as a fluid event, more like a whirlpool than a static object.
This flow questions the boundary of where this living body begins and where it ends, dissolving any sense of separation and connecting us through breath to the rhythms that underpin life on earth.
The multiscreen work originally formed part of Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Observations on Being, commissioned by Mediale and Coventry City of Culture 2021, exhibited at Charterhouse Heritage Park, London Road Cemetery, Coventry, in Summer 2021.
Chenine Bhathena, Creative Director of the Coventry City of Culture Trust, said: “We cannot wait to open The Reel Store to audiences and we are delighted to have a second exhibition to announce.
“The Tides Within Us created by Marshmallow Laser Feast, will return to the city, having been a key installation in Observations on Being last summer. It is great that we can start and end our year with world-class immersive digital art, that will move us forwards into our next creative chapter.
“The Reel Store will be one of only a handful of permanent venues in the world that can offer this unique immersive experience. I love the synergy with the former Coventry Telegraph newspaper building, putting art, wonder, thought, and data at the centre of how we engage people in our futures using state-of-the-art digital media.”
Ersin Han Ersin, of Marshmallow Laser Feast, said: “In this and other works we have created, we are seeking to repair our broken connection with nature through the experience of art. Placing the audience in the centre of a human inner system, we aim to bring them closer to an understanding of our interconnectivity by simply looking at our own bodies and seeing the rivers and tides through the journey of oxygen.”
Barney Steel, of Marshmallow Laser Feast, said: “The installation challenges assumptions of our current “age of distraction,” where technology is accused of disconnecting people from society and the environment. Instead, The Tides Within Us uses sensors, real-time computing and dynamic viewport to catalyse an experience that embeds us in bodily cycles and shared natural rhythms.”
Bianka Hofmann, of Fraunhofer MEVIS, said: “To create awe-inspiring, emotional experiences like The Tides Within Us Fraunhofer MEVIS provides access to highly specialised complex science and tech for artists. The aim is to build bridges for a broad audience and initiate discussions on real-world challenges in medical routine. Artists play a crucial role in sounding out future technologies and positive as well as problematic societal effects. They create reference points to navigate in this fast-paced, complex, changing, and uncertain world with their artworks.”