Tactical Play Exchange is an ongoing collaboration between artists Robert Gero and Michael Rees.

Tactical Play Exchange Statement

Artists Gero & Rees have developed a Tactical Play Exchange strategy to co-create a series of artworks over the past year. These works are forms that generally begin with contextual architectural elements derived from the site of exhibition, for example, the floor plan of the gallery, or other localized features. These become the core structures or null objects that will be added to, morphed and modified in multiple iterations using 3D modeling software. The digital files are passed back and forth between Gero & Rees creating a networked 'ground of play' that will extend itself, as adaptive potentiation, finally resulting in objects that are extensive transitive structures.

Developed by combining Play theory with Systems theory, Gero & Rees utilize the concept of operativity; in other words, the operation is the significant systemic constituent. They are play in the sense of a to- and-fro movement that becomes a transformation into structure. The structures or objects are infinitely malleable, produceable and "playable-with", they cannot be attributed to an originator, so no one artist is privileged as author. Instead they can be seen as a series of actions, and in this case an action is always a system, because it is not a final, irreducible entity, but a complex emergence presupposed from plural exchanges or plays.

For this exhibition Gero & Rees will use the gallery floor plan to begin a series that will leading to hundreds of iterations, they will then select a number of the forms to physically produce by using a combination of 3D printing (rapid prototype), CNC milling and hand working the structures. In the radical multiplication of objects an energetically unique ecosystem will be created.

-Robert Gero, 2011

Robert Gero is a philosopher and artist working in New York.
Michael Rees is an artist working in New York.

Interview with Venessa Saraceno 

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Intervening Phenomena, 2012 - 2013
Robert Gero and Michael Rees
Out of Hand: Materializing the Post Digital
The Museum of Arts and Design, New York

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Intervening Phenomena, 2012 - 2013
Robert Gero and Michael Rees
Out of Hand: Materializing the Post Digital
The Museum of Arts and Design, New York

New Yorker Magazine Review of Out of Hand, October 2013



The Museum of Arts and Design, New York
Out of Hand, Materializing the Postdigital

October 16, 2013 to June 1, 2014


About the Exhibition

Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital will explore the many areas of 21st-century creativity made possible by advanced methods of computer-assisted production known as digital fabrication. In today’s postdigital world, artists are using these means to achieve levels of expression never before possible – an explosive, unprecedented scope of artistic expression that extends from sculptural fantasy to functional beauty. Out of Hand will be the first major museum exhibition to examine this interdisciplinary trend through the pioneering works of more than 80 international artists, architects, and designers, including Ron Arad, Barry X Ball, Zaha Hadid, Stephen Jones, Anish Kapoor, Allan McCollum, Marc Newson, and Roxy Paine. Represented are some of the most compelling creations from the past decade ranging from sculpture and furniture to fashion and transport.

Organized by MAD curator Ron Labaco, Out of Hand will be on view at MAD beginning fall 2013 (October 16, 2013 to June 1, 2014). It will be the first museum show to consider the impact of these new, revolutionary methods of computer-assisted manufacture on fine art, design, and architecture, and will introduce the public to the imaginative expression that these emerging processes enable. Through this exhibition, MAD will explore a monumental transition in the way human beings understand creation, from the earliest objects conceived and produced by individual makers through the tools of technological innovation. Today’s digital fabrication methods such as 3D printing, CNC (computer-numerically-controlled) machining, and digital knitting unite divergent artistic approaches, offering new opportunities for individual artists, architects, and designers to integrate these skills as vital part of their personal creative processes, representing the fruits of a new movement.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an active roster of public and educational programs, from workshops and lectures to curriculum-based programs serving K-12 students, as well as in-gallery interactive stations. A series of master classes featuring the designers and technology including in the exhibition will be scheduled, programs designed to engage visitors in the creative processes of artists at work and to reveal the far-reaching potential of many of these new technologies.