April Fools! Liberty Science Center intertwines art, science with perspective-altering installations

There is a new arts program at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, which kicks off on April Fools’ Day. The debut features two perspective-bending, interactive art installations by Dustin Yellen and Leandro Erlich, hoping to inspire the next generation of innovators and challenging the laws of gravity.

The two pieces — “The Politics of Eternity” (Yellen) and “The Building” (Erlich) — aim to break down the boundaries between science and art, which these artists and the Liberty Science Center believe are actually more similar than different.

With “The Politics of Eternity,” Yellin, a Brooklyn native, uses layered-glass sculptures to create enmeshed networks consisting of hundreds of tiny National Geographic Magazines and reference books totaling 10,000 pounds. The chevron-shaped sculpture allows the spectator to contemplate their past, present and future existence with elements such as a fictional community around an ancient totem, a jet-pack and rocket ship techno-metropolis, along with contemporary modernity such as tall ships, supertankers and cascading waterfalls.

In Erlich’s piece, “The Building,” a New York City brownstone, complete with a deli and fire escape, challenges the laws of gravity to create an alternative perspective and unique interaction with “reality” and the physical world, which forces spectators to reevaluate their spatial relationship with the overlooked structures that define “home.”