Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/07/03/barbican_digital_revolutions_exhibition/
Barbican Digital Revolution exhibition: Techies, arty types get intimate
Should you eye up artful tech in 'London's ugliest' building? Yes
Posted in Legal, 3rd July 2014 16:01 GMT
Pics Opening today at Britain's foremost brutalist building, the Barbican multi-arts centre, Digital Revolution is an exhibition that journeys through creative technology from the 1970s to the present day – with interactivity at its heart.
More multi-floored nightclub than exhibition space, the various themed rooms bring together work from visual artists, musicians, designers, game developers and filmmakers, culminating in a unique spectacle of digital accomplishments from the past and present, with an eye on the future.
Digital Archaeology kicks off the Barbican Digital Revolution exhibition with imagery and music of the times together with early computing platforms
Entering the exhibition, you step into the world of Digital Archaeology, but there’s more to it than the glass cases displaying Fairlight music sampler, Linn Drum machine and Quantel Paintbox graphics workstation.
Fairlight CMI sampling workstation from the early 1980s
Setting the scene, a mass of displays play clips of digital art, early computer graphics and gaming while popular music of the era plays, laced with its own brand of digital effects and synthesis. Even the floor plays host to space invader graphics projected from above.
The first Quantel Paintbox ever sold from 1981 on show.It was used to create television graphics and the company launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against Adobe's Photoshop
Among this feast of creative tech history, I revisited ground-breaking websites including Olia Lialina’s net art site My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, instructed the Subservient Chicken and had my photo taken with an ASCII camera which produced an instant printout. You’ll need to get fairly close and although the result might look unrecognisable at first, from a distance facial features can be made out.
Lucy Orr plays Manic Miner on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Meanwhile El Reg’s PC gaming specialist Lucy Orr had succumbed to the lure of playing Manic Miner on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
As I wandered around the other areas, she was still there 20 minutes later – proving a well-designed game never loses its appeal.
After I dragged her away, the pair of us moved on to We Create, an area focused on projects that allow people to contribute to a moving artwork overseen by birds via mobile phones.
Creative Spaces was a more familiar sight, beginning with a presentation of Framestore’s 3D animation work on the movie Gravity spread across multiple screens, at times simultaneously displaying wireframes, models and fully rendered scenes.
Framestore's Gravity breakdown is spread across multiple panels to show different elements of the workflow
Not to be outdone, visual effects studio Double Negative had its amazing folding Parisian streets sequence featured in Inception on display. Visitors could then manipulate the artwork with the wave of hand, again showing different development stages all on an impressive, folded, three-panel projection booth.
Two separate scenes from the Double Negative Inception interactive layers booth
Sound and Vision featured an array of displays, each playing innovative video works with accompanying headphones numbered to match the works on each panel. Pyramidi, a collaboration between American-turned-Londoner hip-hop music producer will.i.am and Yuri Suzuki, had a room of its own, with robotic instruments housed in octahedral enclosures synchronised to play the song Dreamin’ About the Future as a 3D projection is shown above.
Chris Milk's The Treachery of Sanctuary uses Microsoft's Kinect to control the avatar imagery movements
In State of Play, eye-catching interactive projections filled the room. Divided into three sections within the massive screening area, visitors stand in front of any one of the panels as silhouettes appear. As those on the left appear to disintegrate into a flock of birds, the largest screen plays host to a winged avatar tracking the person’s movements using Microsoft Kinect.
Creative coding
Commissioned by the Barbican Centre and Google, the DevArt area is designed to “challenge what code and art can be” by experimenting with creative possibilities.
Zach Lieberman: Play the World keyboard with global map and illuminating speakers. Note the wish butterfly animations projected in the background
A wall of animated butterflies turns out out more than just a colourful project. You make a wish up close to the microphone and your words then appear handwritten in front of you before transforming into your own butterfly wish and then flying away.
DevArt interactive cartooning in with Mr Kalia
Play the World is a musical installation. The viewing area is encircled with loudspeakers, with keys mapped to areas on the globe. Press the keys, and parts of the world light up and thanks to clever coding, live radio stations from across the planet are blasted from various speakers linked to specific keys. It's not exactly musical but it has its charm.
Likewise, the projected animation that tracks the user standing behind a screen, also known as Les métamorphoses de Mr Kalia (by Béatrice Lartigue and Cyril Diagne) goes through a series of changes as it follows your movements in this short, colourful journey.
On exiting the main exhibition space, you’re confronted by Our Digital Futures, which includes kiosks with brainwave-sensing technology and numerous fashion items including CuteCircuit’s iMiniSkirt, as worn by Katy Perry at last year’s iTune’s Festival for her performance of Roar.
CuteCircuit’s iMiniSkirt
This technoskirt is covered with tiny flexible LEDs and can be programmed to display a variety of images. At the show, the designers were demonstrating how you could tweet patterns to the skirt, which costs around £3,600, uses an ARM processor and has a battery life of about six hours.
Hanging out with the robot snakes: Petting Zoo by Minimaforms
Roam around the main foyer and you’ll find other exhibits such as the curious Petting Zoo by Minimaforms featuring charming robotic snakes. Further on, there’s the Indie Games Space, which includes various puzzles and bizarre gaming environments. During the press showing, a chap was busy in there plumbing in some screens with an Intel NUC on hand. He said they were using about 40 NUCs and they were indispensable for the show, which will be touring when its run at the Barbican ends in September.
Trip the light fantastic: Assemblance by Umbrellium
If you’re not paying attention you might miss out on the fun down in the Pit Theatre on level -2 where you’ll find Assemblance by Umbrellium, yet another interactive experience but with numerous laser light projections that ebb and flow, moving in response to hand movements. The reaction time of so many points of light is impressive and the behaviour modes change, and, if you know how, you can conjure up smoke rings from the installation.
Lose yourself for hours on a journey of digital interactivity and creativity
The two-and-a-half hours spent at Digital Revolution didn’t feel that long at all. Not only was there so much to see, there was so much to engage with. Its appeal is instantaneous, whether you're glancing at the first web page created by Tim Berners-Lee and reminiscing over the early days of creative tech or having your eyes turn to smoke as you stare into the Mirror. ®
Digital Revolution is at the Barbican Centre, London, from 3 July to 14 September 2014 and costs £12.50 for adults with a range of concessions available. Booking advised.