From the Series Transcoding the Museum, Transcoding, dimensions variable, exhibition view, February 19th - March 16th, 2025, University of Miami Gallery, Wynwood Building. Photo © Alian Rives' Studio
Transcoding the Museum explores the role of New Media Art in critically examining the intersection of cultural representation, institutional power, and technological mediation in museum contexts. By combining historical data, anthropological insight, and digital art techniques, this project interrogates how ritual artifacts lose their original functionality and take on polysemic meanings within a Western exhibition setting. Through the exhibition Transcoding the Museum, the use of digital and physical interventions, including generative video, sculpture, and augmented reality, reveal the ideological frameworks that influence the display and interpretation of cultural artifacts from the Lowe Museum. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Jean Baudrillard, Lev Manovich, and referencing the historical evolution of institutional critique from early Conceptual Art to New Media Art, this exhibition challenges the power dynamic of the Lowe Museum over tribal and pre-Columbian artifacts. The exhibit exposes how these objects are recontextualized from cult artifacts to exhibition items. Lev Manovich’s five principles of new media provide a framework for reimagining artifact representation. Through these perspectives, Transcoding the Museum uses new media tools to expose how digital methods can reveal and disclose institutional hierarchies.