Technology and art can be something that is not only entertaining, but also brings forth some of the things that we've forgotten from the past.

You can bring the past into the present and into the future in a way that influence on the human that enhances who you are.

That you have this.

It's this experience that fires the synapsis and fires the imagination.

How blessed we are to be able to use our senses to interact with the world, because that's how people see each other through our senses.

My real hope is that people find a way to dream together a little bit.

The Dream Machine Experience is a kind of culmination of all the things that I've been exploring from music to art, but really it's an exploration of Afrofuturism using AR, VR, and AI.

The experience itself is really three very different experiences that have similar through lines and narratives woven in, in between.

The first experience is at the atrium, the David Rubenstein Atrium, where Michaeleen Thomas and other creators have totally transformed this space.

It is really unrecognizable to anyone who's been here before into what is being a garden.

So Bina 48, is a black female AI, and this is the garden that Bina speaks about.

You get to engage with Bina 48 avatar, just in front of the Calder.

And Bina 48 welcomes you Dream Machine and tells you a bit about herself, and that she is also performing in the atrium as well as in VR.

It invites you into a different kind of conversation, and within that space, Nona has curated a series of educational events of conversations, bringing truly kids from as young as three, I saw here doing a parade the other day, into our elder community, teaching them about what it means to hold on to your legacy in the form of an AI, and how to grapple with the idea that we, our thoughts and ideas, can live beyond our physical bodies in this world.

And then you leave the atrium and you begin an AR tour around campus, which is through this app, the Dream Machine app.

And you begin with a cyber oracle of Nona Hendryx kind of welcoming you into this world through your phone.

You get to learn about the history of the land that Lincoln Center is situated on, San Juan Hill.

You see the native community represented in a dance.

You see black ballerinas dancing in front of our City Ballet Theater.

The third experience is a VR experience where you put on these headsets and you sort of game your way through the histories or imagined histories of some different artist, Nona amongst them.

And you're in this very immersive world where you can kind of collect tokens, but you're also learning about their journeys as artists.

It's been important to us that when we really think about immersive work, of course, all of our work is immersive because we're in live performance.

So when we think of technology, we want to make sure that the technology is something that's enhancing live performance, not something that's separate from live performance or not something that makes you think, oh, I never need to go to live performance again, but is actually showing you how much value there is in being together, even in virtual space, and how we can still continue to be surprised by one another and come together in new ways.

The thing that's most moving to me is I see people experience all of these different pieces is just the joy that comes from imagining a future and imagining a future that is colorful and beautiful and surprising and centers a human experience.

What's really important to me as a part of this is reaching and setting as an example for young women of color to come into technology in the fields of art, but it could be in other fields as well, you know, whether they want to be astronauts or whether they want to be astrophysicists or whether they want to be doctors or lawyers.

I think that Nona's piece in all of these different iterations offers us a chance to think about life.

What is a life beyond our bodies?

What do our memories mean?

So I hope that it really brings people into the dream together, that it allows them to feel like they have a place and that there's more possibility than perhaps they imagined before they were part of the dream machine.

I've been painting since I was a little kid, got inspired for my father.

Remember seeing him painting from a white canvas, creating life, bringing life on the canvas.

That was something that was, mind blowing to me.

How can you mix a few paints and create something that feels so alive?

And so when I came to study in New York and I said to myself, I need to blindfold myself for a whole week to experience and to reborn.

It's a new city to a new country.

And I did an experiment on me to really feel how is it to just start over again?

Almost like to open a white page.

As a kid growing up in Jerusalem, my grandma lost vision in one eye and then I remember as a child that was so devastating to the family, and the emotions around that and those memories and those stories was always in my mind.

So when I blindfold myself, I connect it with my grandma, connect it with my roots, connect it with how I grew up.

And that leads me to create work for those who are in visually impaired.

When I took this mask, I knew immediately that that's what I want to do.

And the museum doesn't let you obviously touch the work you're coming in.

You have the whole area.

But that was my line.

That was like always that limit that I had to move forward and try to break that.

Mercer Labs is the beginning of a movement to give a chance to artists, people.

Kind of like the chance that I got to give it back and to create incredible shows, things that are talking about things that are relevant right now.

I designed this entire place as a white canvas that we can transform and change it to anything we want in any given time.

Personally, I'm a big believer in unlimited things and limitless things, which is the name of Royce for a show here.

Being able to disconnect from physicality and to go into more of abstract and bringing art to life.

That's what was done here.

We really created this museum conceptually, first on a piece of paper.

That's how Mercer Labs was kind of born.

One day we got a phone call from a close friend of mine, and they said, listen, there's a location at the base of the World Trade Center.

And they said, what do you think about this location for a retail?

And I said, retail would be amazing, but I have a much better idea in concept.

Maybe we can do something of real art and real technology and fuze the two pieces together.

I think we can bring something really interesting and work with the energy of the space downtown.

So how do you take a space that is legendary and timeless?

It's like a stamp in New York, Century 21, and transform it into something completely different.

We literally transformed the space 30 to 40 times, and I'm not joking to the maximum.

And then not started again.

Again and again.

It's all about the experience of how you walk through the space and what you feel in each space that you're entering, where you begin.

What's the middle?

What do you want people to feel when they leave the museum?

So it was really trying to create the perfect calibration and balance of spaces to give the experience that I think people are feeling as they walk through the space.

We try to separate the energy coming from outside, and the hectic world in New York is very hectic.

You moving around, there's a lot of energy going.

You're coming in the earth around the room, then you walking into the main hall.

The main hall is a massive space.

We have, around 26 projectors.

We use it as a light source, so it can be a video mapping and can be just lighting up a beautiful sculpture in the middle of the room.

It can be a space for massive installations, space that I don't think there is a room like that.

In New York, that scale, that height.

And then you go in upstairs to the second floor and you experience, for the sound installation, a sound experience.

It's a memory of me blindfolding myself and listening, closing your eyes, and actually creating your own landscape with the energy that you get from the sound system.

And in the cave room, we try to create like, like a little fantasy, surreal kind of feel, tactile.

You can touch, you can smell, you can feel the flowers, feel the energy in the room, the floor, the floor, everything changed, it's a different moment.

If I had to pick one moment that I think takes my breath away, I would say that the Dragon Room is one of the most amazing, technologies ever created.

I think this is really the first time they put it into a into an immersive, you know, art museum.

And I think that that that moment, that technology, the limitless capability of what that LED Pulse Room can do to me is the most exciting room in the space.

What I tried to achieve there is to create a new landscape, a new world.

Breaking it into pixels.

And the limitation - there's no limitation, you can do anything you want.

It's alive, you know, the energy that you get from the lights and the reflection is insane.

So the sand is a memory of like me with my parents writing sketches and trying to paint on the sand and let the air and let the water comes and erase it.

That, for me, was the perfect sketchbook.

It just doing something was so good.

Boom!

You don't have a chance.

And disappeared.

I like to use every tool.

When I create art.

I literally use every tool.

And it's interesting because you can take a little stick like I said, and draw something on the sand, and that's something that you kind of like feel related to.

And then you can sculpture that, but then you have the fun.

You can take a photo of that sculpture.

Then you can transform that, then you can do a video.

There's so many ways to create art.

I always try to find solutions of how to make our life easier, communicating and showing a stage for artists, because that's what we need is an artist.

You need a stage.

You need to show your work and the world, because of Instagram, because of technology, the world becomes so open.

It's so large.

How can you connect everybody together?

So that was my vision to connect people together, connect the community, create a community and let people come and interact and create things.

Because the physicality is so important, interacting with people and having this energy, that's a very important moment in art.

And we wanted to bring hope and bring some incredible message, especially in that specific location, with the history of the location, everything that's going on in the past and bring that amazing energy, energy of hope, the limitless moment of creating spaces that are when you come in and try to navigate, how do you tell a story and how it's almost like directing a film or like a beautiful soundtrack, right?

There is a beginning, there's a middle, there's an end.

To see people coming into the space and literally crying from enjoyment, and feel connected with themselves, and really touching people, that's exactly what we try to do.

Feel that they have a chance, that they have a moment of inspiration.

From 1977 to 2003, Stockhausen composied Licht, seven operas for the seven weekdays.

And each opera deals with a different theme of human life.

So [for] Inside Light, we have chosen five works which are part of Licht, but usually not performed separately.

Through this music, you can't just dream, fly away.

And this music awakens in every person a different fantasy.

So there's nothing you have to understand or I have to be prepared about.

Just close your eyes or watch these beautiful, slowly transforming visuals which are here Inside Light.

I see what the music does within.

So Stockhausen always said to profoundly experience this music, you have to be in a dark room and close your eyes, because then you are not distracted by anything visual.

But I know the first time I heard this electronic music as a student, it was pitch dark and I was sitting next to a person who got really paranoid, and he was, at a certain moment, he was hitting me.

So I told this to Stockhausen, I said it wasn't a nice experience to all the people.

And from that moment he started to project with a follow spot one moon on one of the walls of the concert halls, so that people would a focus in case they got a little bit, a scare perhaps.

While the lighting design.

I'm trying to create a space that facilitates the listening of these electronic pieces, I try not to illustrate them.

And then there's always this.

It's a thin red line where you then becomes a light show.

So it's much more of a meditative approach.

Basically what I'm doing is I'm trying to create a moving sculpture or a changing sculpture that is, of course, immaterial, because it's of light, to create different perceptions of space that correlate to the music with the music.

Sometimes it goes against it, sometimes it goes with it, sometimes it's really on the point.

But I was trying to be as, vigilant as possible to not go take every musical input to create something, because then it becomes an incomplete, illustrative thing.

And also, I think if the lighting gets too much in the foreground, then you are visually too engaged to be able to listen.

I'm always not so interested in these rectangular shapes because they look like TV screens.

And then again, I try to arrange these video panels, these pixels in a way that they are.

For me, it's more like a, one is more like spaceship.

I call it a supernova.

It's just nice.

It's becomes a spatial element.

So it becomes also more a... I wouldn't say sacred site, but something like this.

There is a certain architecture that engulfs the spectator or the listener.

Well, I hope that everyone, because everyone is forced almost to sit here for five hours, to come to a level of peace, stillness within to find the experience of what's going on here?

When we are just outside now, I'm just walking here around with earplugs because the city is so loud.

I was frantically looking yesterday for silence!

So that people come to just forget about everyday life, about the problems... and just enjoy the moment.

And see what the sounds do to you.

If if sounds go, go up, you go up.

Or if the sounds get soft, you get soft Stockhausen said, you become the tones ideally, so you fly with the layers, try to see where the sounds are going to, how they move in space, and just forget about all the daily stuff and just awake in the fantasy.

This InsideLight, is a title, that has a lot of meanings.

Also, you can hear also go into this visible, touchable light and see what the light does with you.

Or find the inner light.

Go inside the light, which is inside of all of us, but we lose it in our daily noise.

I hope they take this as a moment where you you lose a bit of the sense of time, also of space, because it is, quite mesmerizing.

It can really center yourself.

And, I hope, people find their own story and, and in that and that music.

There's so much new technology.

There's so much isolation in the world.

We all know what's happening in terms of everybody kind of retreating into themselves.

And that happens in every sector of our life, from politics to our work from home environments, to everything in between.

And so to really incentivize people to think about their community differently, think about the future differently, and get out of their home and be with people in new ways and surprising ways and in ways that really build a different kind of bridge.

The sound waves penetrate into our atomic molecular levels and they transform us.

It awakens a universe of fantasy, in each person it's different.

We wanted to create an exhibition, a museum, a movement where people would come in and really get in touch with their senses and feel how blessed they are to be able to see what's been created on the walls, how they can interact and touch things, how they could hear certain sounds in the 4D room, how they could smell some of the flavors and scents that we have going on.

So really, it was a museum of the five senses, if you will, and a realization of how blessed we are to be part of this movement.