ARTECHOUSE Founder Sandro Kereselidze On Establishing a Canon For Digital Art

When Sandro Kereselidze and Tatiana Pastukhova founded ARTECHOUSE in 2015, their goal was simple but ambitious: to carve out a physical space for digital art where innovation at the intersection of creativity and technology could thrive. Since opening the first venue in a former retail store in Washington, D.C. in 2017, ARTECHOUSE has expanded its reach with locations in Miami (2018), New York (2019) and most recently, Houston (2024). With more than thirty groundbreaking, multi-sensory art exhibits, 150 XR activations and ten live shows under their belt, produced with their in-house studio and in collaboration with over forty artists, ARTECHOUSE has certainly made its mark. Some of today’s most celebrated digital artists—notably, Refik Anadol, Daito Manabe, fuse**, Zach Lieberman, NONOTAK and Adrien M & Claire B—benefited from early collaborations with ARTECHOUSE that helped them build their careers.

From the start, Kereselidze and Pastukhova’s mission was to provide a cutting-edge exhibition platform for technology-driven artists exploring new forms of storytelling and expression made possible by the digital realm. There was a real need, as in those days, immersive digital art was largely relegated to festivals and brand events. “Museums were not interested because it’s very high-tech and hard to maintain. Galleries were not interested because it’s hard to sell,” Kereselidze told Observer. We spoke during the final days of “FLASHBACK 5,” a celebration of five years of ARTECHOUSE in New York. Kereselidze recalled running the “Art Soiree” festival in D.C., an event supporting local artists through multi-sensory experiences—it was through that work that he discovered an entire community of innovative creators in search of a platform.

From its inception, ARTECHOUSE has aimed to be more than just a museum for digital art—it was designed as a comprehensive platform for producing, researching and conserving new media works. Many of the shows are produced in-house, with artists able to draw upon the expertise of a multidisciplinary team to bring complex immersive installations to life. Kereselidze emphasized the collaborative nature of these efforts: “As with a Hollywood studio, it’s not just like one director or a few actors. The whole team is behind it, making those things happen.”

The company’s talent/skill ecosystem came together organically as they began pulling in producers and creative minds under one roof to build something truly collaborative, but another key factor in ARTECHOUSE’s success has been its unwavering investment in the technological infrastructure needed to support digital art. Real-time interactive art requires a sophisticated combination of cutting-edge software and precisely engineered hardware, and ARTECHOUSE’s commitment to providing this support has been crucial in establishing its place as a leading institution in an emerging field.

ARTECHOUSE’s software and hardware needs are complex—powerful custom tools, Python libraries and APIs power 3D cameras, lidar scanners, traditional cameras, custom-built hardware using Arduino or microcontrollers and even audio sensors along with outputs like projectors and high-resolution displays to LEDs, lasers, transparent OLEDs, spatial audio systems and haptic devices. At the heart of it all are high-performance computers with custom-designed signal flows to minimize latency and maximize immersion. And when an artist needs more power to bring their vision to life, the company figures out how to get it.

In some ways, ARTECHOUSE operates more like an incubator or production studio, working closely with creatives to develop new commissions or reimagine previous works in more ambitious ways. “While we were supporting many artists, we also grew our own capabilities,” Kereselidze said.

In the beginning, ARTECHOUSE was the only company exhibiting high-quality, structured digital artworks. But just ten years later, as Kereselidze pointed out, institutions are starting to recognize the value of this type of storytelling. “It’s an exciting time right now to be in this field because people are finally realizing what digital or technology-driven art can be.”

Through it all, the art world has grappled with the challenge of defining what digital art is and what it isn’t. We asked Kereselidze what digital art means to him, and he said that, for him, it’s not just about taking a static image and computerizing it. “For us at ARTECHOUSE, digital art must first be a moving image and create a cinematic experience. It’s about the possibility of full immersion in the content. A static image on a screen feels outdated—it’s not how we experience the world today. Digital art should create a memorable experience, triggering our senses and imagination.”

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Kereselidze also emphasized digital art’s immersiveness—a core element of the ARTECHOUSE experience. Digital art, he added, should push the boundaries of the technologies it employs.

“FLASHBACK 5,” which recently closed, offered a look at how the company’s use of technology has evolved over the years, from the floating, multiplying fractals blending mathematics, geometry, and nature in “Geometric Properties” by Julius Horsthuis to the data-driven audiovisual exploration of the reliability of past and future historical records in “TRUST” by fuse* to the Afro-surrealist cosmogonies of “Ase: Afro Frequencies” by Vince Fraser with poet ursula rucker.

There are also the profoundly moving existential reflections in “Life of a Neuron,” realized in collaboration with the Society for Neuroscience using the first real-life 3D model of a human prefrontal cortex neuron to explore humanity’s life journey at the cellular level. And “Beyond the Light,” produced in collaboration with NASA, which dove into the mysteries of the universe using the latest images from the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes.

Notably, the last two projects are examples of how ARTECHOUSE has collaborated with research centers and laboratories in various scientific disciplines, applying their expertise in digital imagery to create immersive storytelling experiences that make complex scientific data more accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds.

While production help is a crucial aspect of what ARTECHOUSE offers creatives, it also plays a vital role in archiving these works, which, Kereselidze told us, is actually the bigger challenge both because of how rapidly technology changes and how the artworks can be shared and displayed via loans, traveling exhibitions and co-productions. “The fact that these artworks exist first in and because of a file and data raises other possible conceptual and legal questions: What is the actual work? Does it still exist when it’s just a file sitting on a server or in the cloud, or only when it’s activated and presented as an experience that people can see, hear and interact with?”

Technical and legal complications notwithstanding, Kereselidze believes it’s vital to continue actively displaying this art. “As we are living in a semi-digital and semi-physical world, I think the experience of things is most important.”

As our conversation with Kereselidze drew to a close, we asked for his thoughts about the future of the art form. He told us he’s fascinated by how artists will engage with the new possibilities artificial intelligence offers but has no fear that A.I. will replace human artistic genius. He sees it simply as a tool to amplify imagination and creativity. “I like to talk about collaboration. It is an amazing tool for anyone to create what they imagine by collaborating with machine learning. It will stay here, but while we keep teaching the machine, we also need to keep creating new content and art that will nourish its system,” he said.

The ARTECHOUSE studio team confirmed that advancements in hardware—improved pixel density, image quality and scalability—are on the horizon, but groundbreaking hardware innovation takes time, and while incremental improvements will enhance the tools at artists’ disposal, the real evolution lies elsewhere.

According to Kereselidze and his team, it is content, not technology, that will shape the future of this field—how digital art is conceived, crafted and shared with audiences. “The stories we tell and the way we engage consumers will play a far more significant role in shaping the landscape than any single technological advancement. The question isn’t just about what technology can do; it’s about how we use it to create meaningful, resonant experiences.”