“Only Human” the first major exhibition of NEW INC’s artists’ collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs researchers

NEW INC, the New Museum’s cultural incubator, presents Only Human, an exhibition at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, New Jersey which opens Sunday, April 29 at 1PM. The exhibition showcases the work of the first cohort of NEW INC artists participating in the artist-in-residence program at Nokia Bell Labs. Three former NEW INC members, Sougwen Chung, Lisa Park, and Hammerstep (Jason Oremus and Garrett Coleman), collaborated with Nokia Bell Labs researchers to produce new artistic projects inspired or enabled by Bell Labs technologies.

This is Bell Labs’ first public-facing event of its kind since the historic "9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering" in 1966, part of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a nonprofit organization originally co-founded by Bell Labs engineers, Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhaumer, and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman. The exhibit also includes two galleries full of audio-visual documents from that seminal event. On Saturday, May 12th, Mana Contemporary will host a very special symposium entitled "Experiments in Art & Technology—Then & Now."

The exhibition brings together three projects created by the artists over the last year during their residencies. The projects are focused on themes of human-computer collaboration and intersubjectivity, the nature of interpersonal relationships in a digitally mediated world, surveillance and power dynamics in a technocratic society, and the inevitable compromises that define our symbiotic relationship with technology. Each work strives to experiment with new artistic forms while also offering a speculative take on our existing social structures and the potential implications of emerging technology.

Learn more about the Only Human projects and artists and information about how to attend and get tickets.

Listen to a special Bonus Episode of our Future Human podcast to get a sneak peek into the “Only Human” exhibition.