GoKawiilClimbing up flights of stairs in a bank building full of rooms draped in surrealist art, tunnels with lurking beasts called "skin horses" and exhibits of keepsakes imaginary and real, I find myself looking at an art mural across a domed ceiling that I can explore with instruments next to me. Speaking into a microphone, I see my words scroll across the edges. My hands, thrust into a small chamber, are projected across the ceiling, highlighting parts of the mural. Suddenly, AI-generated descriptions emerge where I'd put my hands.
This is the Ministry of Awe, a new installation experience in Philadelphia that I was lucky enough to visit ahead of its opening, and it's a welcome East Coast dose of strangeness. Created by Meg Saligman and over 100 other artists, it's a six-story space that makes me think of Meow Wolf or long-time LA oddity the Museum of Jurassic Technology -- or even London's very real Sir John Soane's Museum.
This "skin horse" lurks in the basement, if you look hard enough. Scott Stein/CNET
The former bank building's now an immersive art gallery full of hands-on experiences to unravel and a storyline too: messages in drawers, phones that can be dialed or answered, bathrooms that record your "deposits" with audio messages. Everything at the Ministry is an exploration of the meaning of banks and their associated power. But what drew me here just as much was the idea of how tech would fold into a space like this.
Watch this: I Saw the Future of Tech Art in Philly 03:58
Much like Meow Wolf's explorations of layers of tech into artist installations, something I talked about at SXSW recently, Ministry of Awe is playing with tiny doses of AI -- nothing that generates or replaces the work of artists but rather in a way that highlights and possibly enhances. The Ministry of Awe's signature fifth-floor artwork, The Heavens, is a giant mural work by Saligman that's projected across the segments of the ceiling. Angled seats let visitors hang around and gaze up, but several "instruments" in the room let you play with the space, too, created by the tech company Spatial Pixel.
A full look at the projector-filled room where the Heavens mural exists, along with interaction instruments. This is just one room of many in the Ministry. Scott Stein/CNET
Spatial Pixel is focused on "spatial computing for spaces, not faces," and was founded by Violet Whitney, former director of product and associate director of design at Google Sidewalk Labs, and William Martin, an architect and designer. Both also teach a course in spatial AI at Columbia University.
Exploring AI through art
The Heavens' interaction tools and how they're designed to feel integrated and somewhat invisible are part of Whitney and Martin's explorations of where AI could work in subtler space-aware ways. This fascinates me because AI, smart glasses in particular, are already trying to solve for this with very mixed success. What I've found is that art and entertainment can often be better places to explore ideas of AI in contained ways, with rules deliberately made to respect the work and art.
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