Nicholas Rubin, co-founder and Creative Director of Brooklyn-based Dirt Empire, is reshaping public art through immersive tech. In early 2025, he took on one of New York City’s most iconic installations, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates, and gave it new life through augmented reality. In Central Park, Rubin launched “The Gates Augmented Reality,” a 0.6-mile walking experience featuring 250 virtual saffron gates. Visitors explored the work through the Bloomberg Connects app, unlocking interactive elements that brought back the spirit of the 2005 original with a layer of AR magic. Across town at The Shed, Nicholas oversaw the “Gates Interactive Map,” an 18-foot tabletop experience where guests used iPads to navigate archival photos, 360° panoramas, and detailed location data tied to the original project. This dual installation tapped into memory, movement, and collective cultural history, bridging the past and future through technology that felt intuitive, not intrusive. Under Nicholas’s creative direction, Dirt Empire continues to craft large-scale immersive experiences across XR platforms for cultural giants like Beyoncé, the UN, NAACP, and Amazon. His work blends storytelling with innovation in a way that keeps public art feeling urgent, alive, and radically accessible.
