Driving on US-1 in Dania Beach, you’re bound to notice a colorful building with a fossilized dinosaur skeleton attached to the exterior. But go inside, and you won’t find bones from the past, but art from the future.
Mad Arts is Broward’s first ever museum focusing on new media and digital art. The artworks on display are made not with paint on a canvas or moulded clay, but with screens, code, and computers.
Much of the exhibition space is dedicated to immersive installations that fill entire rooms, some of them pieces are interactive. “Resonances,” an installation by Montreal-based LP Rondeau, features a triangular arch paired with a responsive screen.
As viewers pass through the arch, a tone plays on a nearby speaker system and their likeness gets warped and stretched by software and displayed on the screen, almost like a digital funhouse mirror. Another display called “Luminescent Sylvia,” built by the museum itself under the name MADLabs, uses screens and set dressings to turn a room into a magical forest. Touch one of the screens and fireflies dance in the spot you placed your hands.
How and why does all of this exist in a place like Dania Beach, on a stretch of road populated mostly by beach motels? The building itself has actually gone through several lives as a museum. From 2014 to 2020 it was called the Gallery of Amazing Things, an art and event space; the Wiener Museum of Decorative Arts (WMODA) also occupied the second floor. iT has since moved to Hollywood. Before that, it was the Graves Museum, a natural history museum full of fossils and geological displays that closed in 2004. Some of the large geodes from the old museum have remained on the property and pepper the exhibition space.
In 2020 the building was purchased for $9.75 million by Mad Studios, an advertising and creative agency founded by photographer and artist Marc Aptakin. The company turned part of the building into its offices, but with so much space at their disposal, South Florida-bred Aptakin, who had spent previous years giving out studio space to artists in Fort Lauderdale, saw a chance to “pay it forward” to the community.
Mad Studios started hosting temporary exhibitions and events such as the SPF Small Press Fair and IGNITE Broward in the building, finally opening the museum in April 2023. The museum is one of three locations feature for IGNITE Broward’s 2025 edition, which starts Friday, Feb. 14 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 23.
Beyond using Mad Arts to support new and interesting ideas from artists, Aptakin wants the space to serve as an alternative to traditional museums.
“I’ve got an eight-year-old,” he says, “and when I take them to museums, we never get taught about the art, we just get followed around by security. It’s not a great experience, it makes it uncomfortable, and honestly, it’s not welcoming. So I want to create something that was welcoming, and that’s kind of where we got the idea for the museum.”
As an institution aiming to shake things up in the art industry, exhibits at Mad Arts have also dabbled in tech that some would deem controversial. One recent piece called “Being Borges” by Ana María Caballero utilizes generative AI, feeding the science-fiction writings of Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges directly into a software that instantly creates an image interpretation of the text. Generative AI has been heavily criticized for threatening to replace human workers – including artists and other creatives – and for its damaging effects on the environment. Yet Aptakin says he tries to keep an open mind about the new technological tools.
“Being a photographer, I have had people tell me, ‘Oh, that’s just pressing a button.’ To a degree they’re right, if you want to take it so literal. But understanding composition, finding that right spot, and all these other things, there’s a talent to that.” he says. “I think these are just tools to put in the hands of artists. What they do with them is kind of what matters. I’m not a huge fan of (generative AI programs like) MidJourney. I think most of what’s created with it looks the same and it’s kind of garbage. But I’m sure there’s someone that will use it as a tool and create something immensely beautiful.”
Aptakin says the museum approaches these new ideas cautiously and on a case-by-case basis. They’ve worked previously with the arts funding organization CODAworx on a project involving NFTs, a project the crypto-skeptic Aptakin initially felt suspicious of. “Any number of renderings or stills or anything could become an NFT. (So) the idea was, could you sell that to the public as a way to finance more public art without having a tax burden on the public?” he explains. “The whole NFT bust kind of happened and took a lot of the wind out of the sails, but it was a really interesting experience.”
Still, a few of the displays are more rooted in the physical world – literally in the case of “Digital Archive,” a project by Broward-based CHROLIK (Nika Dotsenko) that opened on Friday, Dec. 13 and will be on display through May 13. Inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, the work involves scanning actual flower arrangements using LIDAR technology and creating 3D “point cloud” replicas. These are contrasted with a pair of actual flower arrangements, using seasonally available flowers, that will be rotated out during the show’s run.
CHROLIK, who wants to be referred to in print by their artist name, says the project came together after Aptakin stopped by her booth at SPF, which the museum hosted this past November. Although some installations stay for longer, the museum constantly rotates and replaces exhibitions every few months.
“I had no idea Marc would come up to me and offer this kind of opportunity,” she says. “This all happened in three weeks. He said, ‘I’ve been looking for someone to fill this gallery up before December. Can you make it happen? And I said yes, of course. Let’s figure it out.”
The artist says the digital bouquets serve as a way to preserve the organic artworks that are doomed to wilt and die eventually. Some of them disintegrate and reform, which CHROLIK considers a depiction of the flower’s spirit.
“You can enjoy the physical flower that’s in front of you that may last you two weeks, or you can enjoy the digital memory that can’t be touched anymore.”
Going beyond the physical world into new realms of experience – that’s what Mad Arts is all about.
IF YOU GO
WHAT:
MAD Arts
WHEN:
Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.
TICKETS:
$24.99 for general admission; $22.16 for children ages 3 to 12, families of four or more, and groups of eight or more; $19.99 for Florida residents.
Admission is free during IGNITE Broward. Check
IGNITEBroward.com
for times and information.
WHERE:
481 S. Federal Hwy, Dania Beach
INFORMATION:
(754) 923-0707 and
yeswearemadarts.com
