Testing a New Reality for Museum VR
Noah Kim, Media & Technology intern for summer 2018, describes his experiences helping with the virtual reality project, "Beyond the Walls."
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Blog Category: Technology
How SAAM staff uses media and technology to communicate to a wider audience in reality and virtual reality.
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More Pepper, Please!
Scanning... Scanning... Pepper the robot has a few surprising special skills to share at Technology Family Day.Categories -
Sites Unseen: Trevor Paglen’s Retrospective at SAAM
"Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen," is as sanguine as it is surreptitious, inviting viewers to question the very essence of surveillance and to ask themselves whether a surreal sky or landscape can ever be just that.Categories -
Picture This: SAAM Arcade 2017
This past weekend, SAAM celebrated all that is good about video games when it hosted its annual SAAM Arcade. Almost 20,000 attended the two-day event held in the museum's Kogod Courtyard and throughout the museum. This is the third year SAAM has held this event as part of an ongoing initiative to showcase video games as an important part of our visual culture as well as study at the museum.Categories -
Throwback Thursday, Nam June Paik: Because Almost All of the Audience is Uninvited
To celebrate Nam June Paik's birthday today, we're reposting former associate curator of film and media art, Michael Mansfield's post about our 2012 exhibition Nam June Paik: Global Visionary. Tonight, to share in the festivities, Barbara London, Yale University's media arts critic and MoMA's former associate curator in the department of media and performance art, will give a talk, "What's Technology Got to Do With It?" The talk starts at 5:30 p.m. in SAAM's MacMillan Education Center and is free.Categories -
SAAM Arcade: Let the Video Games Begin
SAAM is turning into a video game arcade! On Saturday, August 5 and Sunday, August 6, anyone can participate in game building workshops, hear musicians performing music inspired by classic Nintendo and Sega themes, and play more than 100 games.Categories -
District of Play: DC’s Vibrant Video Game Scene
Time's running out to submit your game to the Smithsonian American Art Museum's SAAM Arcade. The deadline for submission is April 15, 2017. Below, Dorothy Ann Phoenix of the International Game Developers Association's DC Chapter discusses the great opportunities available to gamers and game developers in DC.Categories -
![Splash Image - Yes We Can [Edit Wikipedia]!](https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.saam.media/files/styles/max_325x325/s3/eyelevel/images/womens_editathon.jpg?itok=qztZTopL)
Yes We Can [Edit Wikipedia]!
Join SAAM for a very special Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon on Saturday, March 25, 2017.Categories -
Submit Your Game to the 2017 SAAM Arcade!
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is inviting independent video game developers to show their work at the museum's annual SAAM Arcade this August 5-6, 2017.Categories -
A Pocket-Sized WONDER in Virtual Reality
We've launched "Renwick Gallery WONDER 360" as our first major experiment with producing immersive VR experiences. I hope you'll download it, and please let us know what you think by rating it in the app store!Categories -
Some Strings Attached: the willful marionette at SAAM
SAAM's annual birthday celebration honoring the legacy of media pioneer Nam June Paik—an artist known for his interest in robotics and humanizing technology—featured artists Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault. Their work, the three-foot tall the willful marionette was built from 3-D scanned images of a human figure. It addresses what the artists refer to as "the frailty of the human body."Categories -
Pokémon Go: Games, Art, and Open Spaces at the Museum
Shortly after its release, colleagues began playing Pokémon Go —an augmented reality game that has captured the imagination of the entire internet. Museum visitors were doing the same. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, new games are often received with more enthusiasm than might be expected of an art museum. Perhaps you've heard, SAAM has a long history with games. Creating, collecting, exhibiting, and, of course, playing them. They're fun, they're often beautiful, and best of all, they connect people.Categories -
Meet Dan Finn, SAAM's Media Conservator
As SAAM continues to add time-based media to its collection, conservation of these artforms is becoming an important aspect in our museum. In August 2015 Dan Finn was hired to retrofit an office space and acquire equipment for SAAM's Media Conservation Lab. Dan has a Master's Degree from the New York University's Moving Image and Archiving Program. And we got a chance to talk with him about his work here.Categories -
Painting with LED Light at the Renwick
"Years ago when we started looking at LEDs they just weren't ready for use in museums," says Scott Rosenfeld, lighting director at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery. In 2010, Rosenfeld set out to see what he could learn about LED lighting and apply it to the museum. All lighting within the galleries and public spaces in the recently renovated Renwick was converted to LED after extensive research, testing, and prototype development.Categories -
Video Games: SAAM's Indie Arcade
Chris Totten, a professor at American University's Game Lab, coordinator for January 16th's Indie Coast to Coast Competition as part of SAAM's Indie Arcade, and head of the Independent Game Developer's Association (IGDA's) D.C. chapter, recently wrote about the intersection of video games and art.Categories -
Picture This: A 360 Degree Wonder
After a two year renovation, the opening of the Renwick Gallery and its inaugural exhibition, WONDER, have been a major success. The building has been updated to a 21st century elegance allowing the art within to shine.
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