As much as we love visiting art galleries, we won’t cheerlead underwhelming places. Artechouse is one of the disappointments – an underwhelming American alternative to Japan’s teamLab or South Korea’s d’strict (Arte Museum) digital art spaces. We visited the Washington DC location during its “Isekai: Blooming Parallel Worlds” exhibit, which featured a collection of manga- and anime-inspired interactive exhibits, asking visitors to move their bodies in front of large monitors or use game controllers to fly through comic book-styled spaces, “talk” with on screen characters, and make sounds to activate mech-style robots. As you can see from the photos, it looks very unique and compelling.
Between the high ambient volume levels, crowded hallways, and large groups of kids running around the exhibits, very little seemed to be working properly, and the space was much smaller than similar experiences we’ve had elsewhere. By the time we reached an “AR Bar” with drinks that were supposed to conjure up holographic objects when viewed through a smartphone, and the bar was still closed after we’d been waiting around a while, we gave up. We didn’t feel like either our time or money had been used wisely here, and wouldn’t return to this location. hopefully, any future Artechouse installations will do a better job of taking real-world visitor needs and physical space factors into consideration.
