Dazzling digital art experience opens in Las Vegas
It’s a light bulb moment you can touch.
In a mirrored room, strands of illumination dangle from the ceiling, glowing filaments of radiance.
Place a finger on one of the dozens of Tesla coil bulbs hanging before you, and bolts of brightly colored electricity shoot forth like the discharge from some kind of energy gun.
This is hands-on artwork taken to the extreme.
It’s all found in one of five rooms that make up the newly opened digital art experience Museum of Dream Space (MODS) at The Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian.
“You walk in there and your inner child comes out,” notes Gaby Diaz, the assistant manager at MODS. “You just want to touch it.”
“Every room has a different mood and feeling to it,” she adds, noting the reaction she says the rooms tend to elicit from visitors. “As soon as they walk in they’re like, ‘Wow.’ It’s something shocking to them, because they’ve never seen anything like this.”
There’s the Gold Room, awash in the titular color with spectral lighting above; the Tropical Forest Room, appointed with pulsating mushrooms and a giant moon; the lush Pink Room, which disorients with fabrics suspended from the rafters.
The Las Vegas Museum of Dream Space is a California transplant following the original MODS, which opened in Los Angeles in May 2019 and was an immediate hit.
“It took off. It launched really well,” Diaz says. “They’re to the point where they have lines every day. We wanted to bring it to another hot spot.”
The majority of the rooms are inspired by the works of renowned Japanese multi-media artist Yayoi Kusama, known for her mirror room installations.
The fifth room features the work of Las Vegas artist Adam Rellah, a luminous display colored by a gaggle of star-shaped characters, glowing eyes and pulsating lips.
“His work is really creative, spontaneous, abstract,” Diaz says. “It goes with every age group too. Kids love it, adults love it.”
The plan is to feature more local artists in the future.
There’s no time limit for taking it all in, with the idea being to interact with your surroundings for an immersive, full-contact experience that, like the fingerprints on all those Tesla coil bulbs, are unique to each individual.
“It’s nice to see people get intrigued and involved with all the artwork,” Diaz says. “I’ve had people lay on the floor and take pictures, people come in and make music videos off of some of the projections on the wall.”
“Everybody walks out with a different experience,” she continues. “We want people to get creative and unleash themselves in here.”
The Review-Journal is owned by the family of Sheldon Adelson, the late CEO and chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Las Vegas Sands Corp. operates The Venetian.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter and @jbracelin76 on Instagram
