UK’s first permanent immersive digital art gallery to open in Coventry

The Reel Store, will open at the former Coventry Telegraph newspaper building in Spring 2022, as a permanent new visitor attraction in the heart of the city.

It will create a cutting-edge space featuring innovative experiential art commissions and will be a prominent feature of the Coventry’s UK City of Culture programme in spring/summer 2022.

The Reel Store is a distinctive post-war building in the heart of the city and redevelopment works are currently underway to transform the old reel store, which was once home to the rolls of paper, onto which the city’s stories would be printed.

Machine Memoirs: Space

It will feature Refik Anadol’s, Machine Memoirs: Space exhibition the product of a long-term collaboration with NASA, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to reimagine two million publicly available images of space taken by NASA satellites and telescopes, and the International Space Station, capturing the deepest regions of outer space.

Last month MuseumNext reported how the Turkish artist had launched Machine Hallucinations at Berlin’s König Galerie and created the city’s first public art offered as NFTs.

Machine Memoirs: Space uses machine learning to sort and categorise the space photographs ultimately developing an understanding of them. It then creates stunning new digital interpretations of space that exist only in the mind of the machine.

The exhibition also provides a 360-degree cinematic experience of rich and futuristic visuals accompanied by 3D audio, allowing audiences to encounter the beauty and spectacle of space science, created entirely through AI.

Magical immersive art

Chenine Bhathena, creative director of the Coventry City of Culture Trust, said: “Having experienced some truly magical immersive art shows in Tokyo, Paris and London, I am delighted that Coventry, a youthful and pioneering city is launching The Reel Store with Machine Memoirs – a new way to experience the wonder of art.

“Right now, Refik Anadol is leading the way in this field and we are proud and excited to be collaborating to deliver his first long running UK show.”

Anadol’s work intersects at the crossroads of art, science, and technology. He uses cutting-edge technology and big data advancements to creatively speak to the most pressing challenges of our time, and what it means to be a human in the age of machines.

Tickets go on sale in early 2022.