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Discover Suchi Reddy's New Innovative Smithsonian Installation

The artist and architect looks to the future with this interactive exhibit
sculpture
me + you, Suchi Reddy’s interactive piece (meplusyoufuture.com) for the Smithsonian’s “Futures” exhibition. Olivia Galli

What is one word for your future? This is the probing question posed by me + you, an interactive artwork by Suchi Reddy that will soon debut in the central atrium of the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building (AIB). “I want people to think about what they’re putting out into the world,” says the New York City–based architect and artist of the acrylic-and-washi-paper sculpture. Powered by artificial intelligence, the 20-foot-tall piece translates that word into light and color that shimmer across the structure, which Reddy compares to a mandala. 

The architect at work.

Heather Hazzan

It’s the centerpiece of “Futures,” a vast exhibition celebrating the reopening of the AIB (closed since 2004) as well as the Smithsonian’s 175th anniversary. The building-wide show compiles forward-looking ideas, artworks, and inventions—from a floating city to the Virgin Hyperloop. “This is a place where we’ve always talked about the future,” says AIB director Rachel Goslins. Completed in 1881 by architects Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze as the first national museum, the Renaissance Revival beauty on the National Mall has long charted human discovery—from the invention of the telegraph and the electric light bulb to the recovery of a rock from the moon. But me + you (developed by a team of women in collaboration with Amazon Web Services) will extend far beyond museum walls, with an app that simulates the experience globally. It’s important to remember, Reddy says, “all the ways technology keeps us together, how it can be essential to human connection.” So what word describes her future? Creativity. aib.si.edu