SO FUTURE (RMT x GOGBOT) | a Metaverse exhibition worth visiting

Enschede is a beautiful city in the Netherlands. I think it is one of the most vibrant cities of Twente, and maybe even Overijssel. We've been driving around town and noticed a museum nearby our home, the Rijksmuseum Twenthe. I probably shouldn't be, but I can hardly not compare museums with the bigger ones like Rijksmuseum (the big one in Amsterdam). After paying the one in Enschede a visit, my opinion changed. It was quite an experience in a positive way.

Before corona, I used to visit some museums from time to time. But I can't remember when I have been to one. Before visiting the museum, we did some research online. I cringed while reading about the "doge-meme" and "metaverse" word combinations. The blockchain is full with interesting and valuable developments... why Doge? Is it gonna be any good?

It does make me realize that blockchain technology is being adopted, which is a great thing. But how is this adoption being orchestrated? Are we pushing this adoption towards centralization? That's one of my biggest concerns. Market it as decentralization, but execute it as centralization. Let's find out more about it with a visit to the museum.

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

The museum is perfect for a quick visit since you wouldn't get lost there. And with quick, I mean a +/- 2-hour walk through rooms that will amaze you. The entrance fee was EUR 15.00 each. While we anticipated this, it stated that the entrance was free for this specific exhibition on several websites. Besides art, I thought it would be interesting seeing the SO FUTURE (RMTxGOGBOT) exhibition since it had something to do with my interest in decentralization and blockchain technology.

Artists that were involved with the SO FUTURE (RMTxGOGBOT) exhibition:

Constant Dullaart (the Netherlands)
Jeremy Bailey (Toronto)
Isabelle Arvers (France)
DISNOVATION.ORG
Femke Herregraven (the Netherlands)
Viviane Komati (Los Angeles)
Amor Muñoz (Mexico City)
Sabrina Ratté (Canada)
Jonas Staal (the Netherlands) i.s.m. Jan Fermon (Belgium)
Stanza (United Kingdom)
Ivar Veermaë (Estonia)
ViaOral (Dutch)

Looking at the list of names, I wondered where they originated from. Since this wasn't showing on the website, I had to research (always DYOR ;)) that myself. I was expecting some Dutch artists but didn't expect this many international artists. Awesome! The artwork in this exhibition is very intriguing and gets your mind to think more about how we currently are living our lives.

Of course, before we got to SO FUTURE, we had to walk through other exhibitions. We saw traditional, provoking, and triggering exhibitions. Gotta love the creative minds in this world. It's just what you would've expected from art, right? But, a movement of change is taking place in the world of art and museums. We are slowly drifting away from traditional art as the presentations are more modernized.

Traditional artwork

The whole reason why I used to visit museums was to look at traditional art. Whether it be fine art photography or paintings crafted by the masters centuries ago. There is just something about it that makes me want to relive or connect with these times. I get lost in thoughts and wander around in my brain thinking about the techniques they must have used. Impressive.

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

Tolerance test

One of the exhibitions that Rijksmuseum Twenthe houses, is from a Dutch artist Charlotte Schleiffert. It's quite an interesting one, and o so true. People seem to have less tolerance towards others they know nothing about, and vice versa. This was not the only exhibition that was interactive, but one that indicated that a lot of work was put into this. As you walked into a dark room, lights were turned on so you literally could meet the art. As each artwork has its character and voice-recording, they interacted with each other and had multiple conversations about pre judgemental social topics (stereotypes, etc). At first, you enter a dark room in silence but lit up when the art speaks. The only downside of this exhibition was that the audio wasn't clear. At some point, it was hard to hear and understand what was being told. Nonetheless, a well-thought-out installation.

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Tolerance Test at Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | on the right: Hive account@lackofcolor listening carefully to the Tolerance Test at Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

SO FUTURE (RMTxGOGBOT)

This exhibition had the biggest room, and I must say, it was huge and impressive. The art displayed had 100% metaverse vibes. I can definitely see more of these exhibitions going live around the world. It might be the next big thing. Can you imagine? A museum that owns and trades NFTs to display? I think we should take a better look at Beeple and not only think about the digital part of creating the art, but also the tangible part; the presentation. The framework. We could compare it with one of these installments. Buy the NFT, and get a screen that holds nothing but the artwork.

There was one part of the exhibition that made me think about Hive. Like; people: wake up, there already is a decentralized Facebook. This makes me think about the following: is Hive art? Could Hive be presented as art? Most probably, the answer is "yes, it is", and "yes, we can".

Please enjoy the photographs, and make sure to check out the artists responsible for the exhibition (listed above).

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

Is art for everyone? Yes

Some art isn't just for every one. But art is for everyone. For example, I have nothing with the first two photographs shown below. I'm getting disturbing vibes. The third is impressive (scultping), but the bathtub might be a bit of questionable. The last one is more my kind of thing (LOL), provoking much eh! Kinda funny, even though I'm not sure if I should mark this blogpost as NSFW (let me know in the comments).

_{© Ruben Cress 2022 | Rijksmuseum Twenthe}

The things you can do with light and a rope

One of the installments are just too good. Simple? Maybe. Dynamic? For sure. While our perspective of art is always unique, as we all perceive differently. There was a rope, and an engine that rotated the rope at high speed. In some way, this illustrates the capacities of what we can see, and how we see it. While the human eye is capable of seeing about 25 frames per second, anything that goes "faster", will be perceived as a blurred image. Quite interesting if you shed some light on that.

A bed of lavender, splashes of paint, and equality

Ever smelled lavender a mile away? I am sure a bed of 108 pounds of pure lavender will make sure of it. Simply genius. It expands and triggers our sense of smell. Something quite unexpected, as who would've thought to smell lavender in a museum. This is another example of how things are so personal for us as individuals. People with a strong sense of smell will smell the lavender throughout the entire museum, while people with a lesser sense of smell, will most probably only smell it while standing in the same room. Either way, it added another layer to the experience of visiting a museum.

In the same room, there were multiple splashes of paint on the wall and a sculpture. While nothing is the same, everything should be treated with the same intention as how you treat other things. I bet the artist who created these splashes, made the same or similar movements to apply these splashes. While the splashes are different, we do identify them all as splashes. On the sculpture there were letters. It took me a while to decipher it, but I believe it says "Equality". While a woman was used as a reference for the sculpture, it might make us think about how women are still not treated equally. Hence, the splashes of paint. There is a difference but still treated the same.

The lighting

The lighting in the museum makes it challenging for people to take a decent photograph. My camera settings were high in the ISO values and very slow with the shutter speed. Tricky situation, but I think there is something to say about the lighting in the museum. When we frame art on our wall, there are a few that would put a light on it. They played with blue and orange light in the corridors. This makes perfect sense if you think about the Kelvin temperature values, it starts with blue and ends with deep orange.

Hopefully, I didn't overwhelm you with the length of this blog post, but I just couldn't help myself but to share with you the amazing (yet small) museum of Enschede; Rijksmuseum Twenthe.

Cheers,
Ruben

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