Digital Revolution:
An immersive exhibition of art, design, film, music and videogames
Barbican Centre, London, UK
3 July – 14 September 2014
Media View, Wednesday 2 July 2014, 10am –1pm
#digitalrevolution
www.barbican.org.uk/digitalrevolution
The exhibition is sponsored by Bloomberg. Commissioning Partners: Google and Lexus.
Also supported by Technology Strategy Board. Media Partners: Time Out and Wired.
Digital Revolution explores and celebrates the transformation of the arts through
digital technology since the 1970s. The exhibition brings together for the first time a
range of artists, filmmakers, architects, designers, musicians and game developers
pushing the boundaries of their fields using digital media. It also looks to the future
considering the impact of creative coding, DIY culture, digital communities and the
creative possibilities offered by technologies including augmented reality, artificial
intelligence, wearables and 3D printing.
Curated by Conrad Bodman, the exhibition includes new commissions from artists
Umbrellium (Usman Haque and Nitipak 'Dot' Samsen); Universal Everything; will.i.am,
Yuri Suzuki, Pasha Shapiro and Ernst Weber; and a collaboration with Google in the
form of digital art commissions called DevArt, pushing the possibilities of coding as a
creative art form, featuring four new gallery commissions, an online inspiration hub
and a competition for undiscovered creative coders. It also presents work by Oscar®winning Visual Effects (VFX) Supervisor Paul Franklin and his team at Double Negative
for Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking film Inception; artists and performers
including Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Chris Milk, Aaron Koblin, Björk and Amon Tobin.
Digital Revolution comprises immersive and interactive art works alongside exhibitionbased displays. Usman Haque and Dot Samsen from Umbrellium, known for their
large scale mass participatory interactive outdoor events, are producing their first
artwork for an indoor space, Assemblance. This immersive experience takes over the
Pit, creating a three-dimensional light field in which people can shape, manipulate and
interact with luminous forms, blurring the distinction between the physical and the
virtual.
Universal Everything, one of the UK's leading media art studios, is producing a new
multi-screen work called Together for the Barbican’s Silk Street entrance. Taking digital
drawing as its theme, visitors are able to contribute to the work both in the venue and
online. Filmmaker and artist Chris Milk’s major interactive work The Treachery of
Sanctuary is presented for the first time in the UK. This three-screen shadow play
installation explores life, death and rebirth through a moving onscreen narrative which
visitors can interact with.
Neil McConnon, Head of Barbican International Enterprises and project
commissioner, said: Showcasing a new generation of artists, designers, filmmakers and
musicians, Digital Revolution celebrates creatives who are pushing artistic boundaries
across the arts using digital media. Through a series of gallery based work and public
interventions the exhibition works to transform the Barbican into an animated canvas inspiring digital natives, gamers, movie fans, retro geeks, family groups and art
fans alike.
Digital Revolution is the most comprehensive presentation of digital creativity ever to
be staged in the UK. A festival-style exhibition, Digital Revolution takes place across the
Barbican with ticketed and non-ticketed elements. It is accompanied by a talks and
events programme and a dedicated publication.
The exhibition builds on the Barbican’s rich history of championing pioneering artists
across all art forms that use digital technology within their work – including Merce
Cunningham, Robert Lepage, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin and Rain Room by Random
International.
The first section of seven exhibition spaces within the Curve opens by juxtaposing
creative software projects from the 1970s to the present day, shown on their original
hardware platforms. Showcasing work across art, design, games, music and film, the
interactive Digital Archaeology section creates an overview of key creative moments
during this period of rapid change. Pieces range from the classic videogame Pong; the
first website by Tim Berners-Lee; vintage music hardware such as the Linn LM-1 drum
machine (used in the production of The Human League’s Don’t You Want Me); a rarely
seen transparent casing version of the Sinclair ZX80 – one of the first mass market
home computers, net art such as Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War,
as well as early digital graphics experiments by Edwin Catmull – who went on to
become the co-founder of Pixar.
We Create explores projects that allow people to become the creators. A highlight of
this section is Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin’s crowd-sourced tribute website, the Johnny
Cash Project, which allows people to contribute a frame to an online filmic tribute to
Cash. It also explores DIY culture through projects such as Adam Ben-Dror and
Shanshan Zhou’s Pinokio and Martin Bircher’s Type Case, developed using the
programmable Arduino. Online communities are featured such as Minecraft (Mojang)
and the Kickstarter project Broken Age (Double Fine), where fans are directly involved
in influencing the game development process.
Creative Spaces examines how digital technology is allowing rapid creative change in
film and online, contrasting blockbuster Hollywood visual effects with the work of a
new generation of independent artists and filmmakers. It explores the innovative visual
effects (VFX) created by Oscar®-winning VFX Supervisor Paul Franklin and his team at
Double Negative for Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking science fiction film
Inception. London’s Double Negative is one of the world’s leading VFX houses with
recent and current projects including Man of Steel, Dark Knight Rises, Rush, Thor 2,
Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Godzilla and Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film
Interstellar. It also features Oscar®-winning visual effects studio Framestore, with a
particular focus on their innovative digital techniques and the work of Tim Webber on
the landmark VFX feature film Gravity which has won an Oscar® and BAFTA award
for best visual effects. Framestore’s recent film work includes 47 Ronin, The Secret Life
of Walter Mitty and Inside Llewyn Davis.
In addition Creative Spaces features the work of young digital filmmakers such as
Kibwe Tavares (Factory Fifteen), who has used his experience as an architecture
graduate to make the innovative short films Robots of Brixton (2011) and Jonah (2013).
This section also explores digital storytelling by artists such as James Bridle’s
Dronestagram (2012-ongiong), FIELD's Energy Flow (2012) and James George and
Jonathan Minard’s documentary Clouds (2013).
Sound and Vision looks at how musicians have experimented with digital technology.
Pieces include Pyramidi, a new commission by global music artist, entrepreneur and
philanthropist will.i.am and artists Yuri Suzuki, Pasha Shapiro and Ernst Weber
exploring the interface between analogue and digital music in a live gallery
experience. will.i.am is well-known as a technology advocate and enthusiast. The
section also features Arcade Fire's interactive video The Wilderness Downtown and a
series of app-based projects in which artists have worked to visualise music, including
the app Biophilia (Björk) by Scott Snibbe Studio and Peter Chilvers and Brian Eno’s app
SCAPE (2012).
The exhibition moves into State of Play, which focuses on the ways in which we are
able to engage and interact with digital projects using camera based systems such as
the Kinect, featuring interactive works by artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Daniel
Rozin.
The next section is dedicated to DevArt. This major project by Google with the
Barbican explores art made with code, by developers using technology as their
canvas, and code as their raw materials to create innovative, interactive digital art
installations. Karsten Schmidt, Zach Lieberman and duo Varvara Guljajeva and Mar
Canet, some of the world’s most progressive interactive artists, have been
commissioned by Google and the Barbican Centre to create three new installations for
Digital Revolution. Alongside these three commissions is a fourth, by Cyril Diagne and
Béatrice Lartigue, who were handpicked as a result of DevArt’s global initiative to
discover the interactive artists of tomorrow. The project is designed to inspire the next
generation of developers and artists by highlighting coding as a creative art form. It
seeks to push the boundaries of what is possible when art and technology come
together. Google have created an online platform where you can follow the creative
process, and watch their journey unfold—from concept and early sketches to the
finished piece at g.co/devart.
Finally, the exhibition delves into what the future might look like in Our Digital Futures
presenting a selection of some of today’s most experimental and future-focused artists,
architects and designers. With particular reference to the body and our environment,
the projects span the worlds of cyborg and wearable technologies, drones and big
data. Highlights include fashion technology with London-based Studio XO for
TechHaus, the technical division of Lady Gaga's Haus of Gaga; and Pauline van
Dongen’s Wearable Solar (2013) a project that explores the possibilities of
photovoltaic fashion. CuteCircuit’s present iMiniskirt (2013), worn by Katy Perry at the
iTunes Festival, a piece of clothing that lets you express yourself and share emotions in
an instant by displaying videos, active animations and live tweets; and THEUNSEEN
exhibit a new work – ÆTHER (2014) – a technical garment that responds to the shifting
weather patterns in outer space.
Experimental architecture and design practice Minimaforms exhibit Petting Zoo (2012),
an interactive installation featuring three animalistic creatures in the form of robotic
arms which interact and stimulate participation with users through kinetic, sound, touch
and illumination. Gibson/Martelli present Man A (2013) - a ‘dazzle’ camouflage
installation that reveals a hidden animated world through an augmented reality app;
and The Not Impossible Foundation debut their latest project BrainWriter (2014), a
technology that allows people to communicate with the outside world using just their
brainwaves. Visitors are guided by a specially commissioned videogame.
The exhibition continues through the Barbican foyers where visitors can explore Indie
Games Space, devoted to the independent videogames movement. Featuring the work
of a range of contemporary international indie developers, all in fully playable format,
this section also showcases explorations in different games genres, game art and
distribution. Games such as Antichamber by Alexander Bruce; Proteus by Ed Key and
David Kanaga; Journey by Jenova Chen; as well as the BAFTA award winning Thomas
Was Alone by Mike Bithell; and Papers, Please by Lucas Pope look at how an
individual (or independent team) can now arm themselves with the latest creative tools
to take risks and forge innovative experiences.
Artists and Designers in the exhibition include:
Allan Alcorn | Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force | Airside (Fred Deakin, Nat
Hunter & Alex Maclean) | Antirom | Atari | Ólafur Arnalds | Bill Atkinson | Daisuke
“Pixel” Ayama | Backbone Entertainment | Ralph Baer | The Barbarian Group | Richard
Bartle | Ian Bell | Adam Ben-Dror | Daniel Benmergui | Tim Berners-Lee | Martin Bircher
| Mike Bithell | Björk | Marisa Bowe | David Braben | James Bridle | Daniel Brown | Paul
Brown | Alexander Bruce | Nolan Bushnell | Robert Cailliau | John Cale | Andy
Cameron | Mar Canet | Edwin Catmull | Terry Cavanagh | Peter Chilvers | Kenta Cho |
Kerry Conran | John Conway | Vuk Ćosić | Crispin Porter + Bogusky | Will Crowther |
Charles Csuri | Alfonso Cuaron | Larry Cuba | CuteCircuit | Ian Dallas | Delphine
Software (Éric Chahi) | Core Design (Paul Howard Douglas & Toby Gard) | Esteban
Diåcono | Cyril Diagne | Pauline van Dongen | DreamWorks Animation | eBoy |
Julian Edwards | Electronic Arts (Will Wright) | Brian Eno | Matt Essen | Malcolm Evans |
Factory Fifteen | William Fetter | FIELD (Markus Wendt & Vera-Maria Glahn) | Arcade
Fire | Double Fine (Scott Campbell, Peter Chan, Emily Johnstone, Lee Petty, Tim
Schafer, Nathan Stapley) | Phil Fish | Peter Foldès | Framestore (Tim Webber) | Herbert
W. Franke | James Frost | Gaijin Games (Alex Neuse) | James George | Ruth Gibson |
Anthony Goh | Evan Grant | Varvara Guljajeva | Jan Hammer | Herbie Hancock | Neil
Harbisson | Leon Harman | Jonathan Harris | Holly Herndon | Lynn Hershman | Aaron
Hoffman | Sophie Houlden | Andrew Thomas Huang | Id Software | Industrial Light &
Magic | Steve Jobs | JODI | Curt Johnson | Alexandra Jugovic | Sep Kamvar | David
Kanaga | Susan Kare | Yoichiro Kawaguchi | Ed Key | Kenneth Knowlton | Aaron Koblin
| Béatrice Lartigue | William Latham | Olia Lialina | Zach Lieberman | Light Light | Roger
Linn | Andrew Lippman | Jasper van Loenen | Rafael Lozano-Hemmer | Lucasfilm | John
Maeda | Daito Manabe | Manex Visual Effects | Bruno Martelli | Massaya Matsuura |
Neil Mendoza | Davor & Denis Mikan | Chris Milk | Jonathan Minard | Mind Candy |
Minimaforms (Theo and Stephen Spyropoulos) |
Jeff Minter | Mojang (Markus Persson) | Moniker | Yugo Nakamura | Namco (Toru
Iwatani) | Double Negative (Paul Franklin) | Nintendo (Shigeru Miyamoto & Gunpei
Yokoi) | Christopher Nolan | The Not Impossible Foundation | Alexey Pajitnov | Fred
Parke | Chuck Peddle | Lucas Pope | Matt Pyke | Quantel | Radiohead | Tabor Robak |
Robert Abel and Associates | Ed Roberts | Rockstar Games (Sam & Dan Houser) |
Rovio Entertainment | Daniel Rozin | Kim Ryrie | Adam Saltsman | Karsten Schmidt |
Florian Schmitt | Lillian Schwartz | Science of Cambridge Ltd | Rob Seward | Pasha
Shapiro | Alexei Shulgin | Matthew Smith | Scott Snibbe | Soda Creative (Ed Burton) |
Yoshi Sodeoka | Square Pictures | Squarepusher × Z-MACHINES | Mr Stock | Angel
Studios | Yuri Suzuki | Fatima Al Qadiri | Quinten Swagerman | TAITO (Tomohiro
Nishikado) | Ko Tanaka | Akihiko Taniguchi | Texas Instruments (Paul Breedlove) |
Thatgamecompany (Jenova Chen) | THEUNSEEN | Matt Thorson | Amon Tobin |
Stephen Todd | Leonard Tramiel | Roy Trubshaw | Tubatomic (Aaron Hoffman & Alex
Ogle) | Umbrellium | Universal Everything (Matt Pyke) | Katia Canepa Vega | Richard
Vijgen | Peter Vogel | Andy Warhol | Ernst Weber | Weta Digital | John Whitney Jnr |
João Wilbert | will.i.am | Don Woods | Steve Wozniak | Studio XO | Liam Young | Derek
Yu | Shanshan Zhou
ENDS
Press Information
For further information, images or to arrange interviews, please contact:
Ann Berni, Media Relations Manager for Visual Arts
+44 (0) 207 382 7169 / [email protected]
Jessica Dare, Communications Coordinator
+44 (0) 207 382 7321 / [email protected]
Press images available online from Thursday 3 July from the Barbican
Newsroom
Installation images are available online from the Barbican Newsroom at
www.barbican.org.uk/digitalrevolutionnews. A link to the image sheet can be found in
the ‘Downloads’ box on the top right-hand side of the page.
Public information
Open 11am-8pm daily (last admission 90mins before close)
11am-10pm on Thursdays
#digitalrevolution
www.barbican.org.uk/digitalrevolution
Tickets
Advance booking is recommended. Timed admission is in operation.
Standard £12.50, Concessions £10.50,
Young Person (12-17) & Students £8.50
Children (5-12s) £5, Under 5’s – FREE
School Groups £6.25 (primary groups will use the £5 price above)
Yellow Member 30% off for you and a guest
Orange Member Unlimited free entry
Red Member Unlimited free entry and a guest
Booking fee £1.50 online /£2.50 telephone.
Last admission 90 mins before close.
Exhibition
The exhibition is created and produced by Barbican International Enterprises with
guest Curator Conrad Bodman and Assistant Curators Dani Admiss and Sunny
Cheung. The advisors are Jim Boulton (Digital Archaeology), Iain Simons (Director,
GameCity, Nottingham Trent University), Caroline Roux (design writer), Julia Kaganskiy
(Editor at Large – The Creator’s Project), Mike Stubbs (Director, FACT), Li Zhenhua
(Curator) and Yukiko Shikata (Media Art Curator). Digital Revolution will tour to
museums and galleries internationally for a period of 3 years. The exhibition design is
a collaboration between Ab Rogers (ARD) and 59 Productions. ARD lead on the spatial
design and 59 Productions lead on the media design of the exhibition.
Events programme
The exhibition is complemented by talks and events series which include In
Conversations that focus on at the latest ideas including developments in special effects
and gaming and offline activities aimed at children and young people from east
London. Full events press release available from the Barbican Newsroom:
www.barbican.org.uk/digitalrevolutionnews
Exhibition Publication
An illustrated exhibition publication accompanies the exhibition with essays by leading
authors in the digital field. The publication explores the preservation of hardware and
software, creative coding, DIY culture, digital architecture and design, the future of
gaming and the new developments in creative technology. Content includes essays by
exhibition advisors. Price £24.99. ISBN 978-0-946372-99-7
Digital Revolution Shop
Level G Foyer
The Digital Revolution Shop offers a wide range of digital themed products. Discover
books; DIY techno kits; 3D printed jewellery; and retro geek gadgets, plus Raspberry Pi
kits and accessories for any budding computer programmers who feel inspired to
learn more about digital technology and programming. Postcards featuring images
from the show are available as well as the exhibition publication.
Related Events
Marshmallow Laser Feast, Forest
4 July–13 September
Monday – Saturday 11:00 – 18:00
Bloomberg Space
50 Finsbury Square, London, EC2A 1HD
Forest is a unique and playful installation being premiered in the UK at Bloomberg
Space. Each laser tree is tuned to a specific tone, allowing visitors to create
experimental music as they explore the interactive light sculpture.
For more information please visit http://www.bloombergspace.com/
Music
THEO PARRISH: TEDDY’S GET DOWN
Sat 12 July 2014, Hall, 19:30
Detroit-based musician, producer and selector Theo Parrish, whose organic-sounding
machine-based dance music incorporates live instruments, human voices and looped
recordings, plays a live set with full band for the first time in 10 years. Featuring Parrish
on beats and keys, the band includes Amp Fiddler (keys), Akwasi
Mensah (bass), Dumini DePorres (electric guitar) and Myele Manzaza (drums). They will
be revisiting Sound Signature classics old and new. Produced by the Barbican in
association with Soundcrash. For more information please visit: http://bit.ly/1lgMf7f
Robert Henke’s Lumière
19 July 2014, Hall, 20:00
Hailing from Berlin, sound artist and producer Robert Henke, co-developer of Ableton
Live music software and founding member of groundbreaking techno music project
Monolake, brings his latest live audiovisual performance to the Barbican.
Using a software especially developed by Henke, Lumière features three powerful
white lasers drawing rapid successions of objects, seemingly floating in space. The
data used to produce these shapes is transformed into audible frequencies. Henke
interacts live with the software and manipulates laser patterns and sonic treatments in
real time, creating an improvised dialogue between the artist and the audiovisual
machine.
LOOP>>60Hz: Transmissions From The Drone Orchestra
The Barbican Theatre is transformed by a brand new audio-visual collaboration
between fearless innovators John Cale and Liam Young, who will present the world
premiere performance of LOOP>>60Hz: Transmissions From The Drone Orchestra on
12 & 13 September 2014. For more information please visit: http://bit.ly/1lRSgLU
Film programme
5 July – 26 July 2014
Complementing the exhibition, a film season is held in the Barbican cinemas
celebrating the game-changing visual effects in both Framestore and Double
Negative’s catalogues – including screenings of Alfonso Cuaron’s chilling adaptation
of PD James’ dystopian Children of Men and Christopher Nolan’s dazzling
dreamscape Inception – both must-sees on the big screen. The Barbican’s Framed Film
Club also plays host to pioneering visual effects in July, and families are able to see
some of Framestore and Double Negative’s best work on Saturday mornings,
including Tim Burton’s Roald Dahl adaptation, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Barbican projects celebrating artists using digital media in spring-summer 2014
include:
Wikimania
Coming to London for the first time, the tenth annual international Wikimedia
conference, produced in association with the Barbican, brings together experts and
enthusiasts from the worlds of academia, culture, technology and education, and
includes a multi-track programme of lectures, discussions, workshops and hackathons
over the course of five days. Keynotes include Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia,
Lawrence Lessig, author of “Free Culture”, and Clay Shirky, author of “Cognitive
Surplus”.
Charleroi Danses: Kiss & Cry
The Barbican, in association with London International Mime Festival, presents Kiss &
Cry, an interdisciplinary performance where live cinematography, digital technology
and dance collide. Alone on a station platform, a woman recalls her great, lost loves.
Her memories take shape in a miniature world where toys, figurines and scaled-down
sets provide the backdrop for a duo of dancing hands that flirt and intertwine,
becoming tender characters in their own right.
This sensual ballet of hands is caught on camera by a bustling film crew with sound
effects created by onstage foley artists. Even the most minimalist expressions of
emotion and intimacy are captured as the action is projected on a panoramic screen.
Kiss & Cry is conceived by choreographer Michèle Anne De Mey and prizewinning
filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael. On Thursday 26 June there is a post-show talk with
Michèle Anne De Mey. To complement the run of Kiss & Cry there is a screening of Van
Dormael’s film Toto The Hero at the Barbican on Tuesday 24 June.
History pin
1914-2014: Barking Then and Now
The Barbican and Create London are collaborating on a major new project bringing
together residents of the London Borough of Barking, four acclaimed artists, behaviour
change company We Are What We Do, and online history-makers History Pin to
understand how the events of World War One have impacted on communities today.
This new commission looks at how the social, physical and demographic landscape of
east London was transformed by the war and its aftermath, with particular focus on the
pioneering social housing development the Becontree Estate in Barking. The project
involves thousands of people who have lived, worked or passed through Barking,
collecting memories, conversations and images to develop a rich living archive
capturing the legacy of 1914-1918. This online and physical archive ranging from
century old photos to YouTube clips, telling stories of movement and migration,
industry and employment and architecture and regeneration over the past 100 years.
Four internationally acclaimed artists are working with residents of the Estate to
produce four new murals for the neighbourhood to give the legacy of 1914-18 a
permanent public presence.
About Barbican International Enterprises
BIE produces and tours a dynamic mix of ground-breaking contemporary art and
popular culture, architecture, design, fashion and photography exhibitions. The team
develops and tours a broad range of major international art exhibitions.
Internationally touring exhibitions include Designing 007: 50 Years of Bond Style,
Watch Me Move: The Animation Show, Game On, and many more.
BIE are committed to bringing challenging and accessible exhibitions to as wide an
audience as possible, touring to some of the world's leading venues.
About the Barbican
A world-class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican pushes the boundaries of
all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and visual arts. Its creative
learning programme further underpins everything it does. Over 1.5 million people pass
through the Barbican’s doors annually, hundreds of artists and performers are
featured and more than 300 staff work onsite. The architecturally renowned centre
opened in 1982 and comprises the Barbican Art Gallery, a second gallery The Curve,
Barbican Hall, the Barbican Theatre, the Pit, Cinemas One, Two and Three, foyers and
public spaces, a library, Lakeside Terrace, a glasshouse conservatory, conference
facilities and three restaurants.
The City of London Corporation is the founder and principal funder of the Barbican
Centre. The Barbican is home to Resident Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra;
Associate Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra; Associate Ensembles the Academy of
Ancient Music and Britten Sinfonia, and Associate Producer Serious. Our Artistic
Associates include Boy Blue Entertainment, Cheek by Jowl and Michael Clark
Company. International Associates are Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of
Amsterdam, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gewandhaus
Orchestra Leipzig and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
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