TECHNOLOGY CREATES BUTTERFLY WISHES
A new technology exhibition in London allows visitors to create butterflies from wishes by speaking into microphones, as well as create and 3D print their own artwork that will go on show in the gallery.
The Digital Revolution exhibition, which has opened at the Barbican Centre in London is a mixture of the old and new, taking visitors on a journey through the past 40 years of technology, starting with Pac-Man and the original Apple Macintosh computer, before working up to present technology - including the 'Wishing Wall', where users speak wishes into a microphone before seeing the words projected on the wall, turn into a cocoon and then a virtual butterfly.
A new song by musician Will.i.am is also the subject of one of the instillations.
Conrad Bodman, the curator of the exhibit, said: "Digital Revolution is the biggest exhibition of digital creativity that's ever happened in the UK and we've been working on it for the last 18 months. We wanted to look at the spectrum of digital arts - so art, film, music, video games.
"But also looking at some of the key themes that are present in these areas so the idea of collaboration, sharing, community, interactivity, but the best thing is we've commissioned a lot of new work."
The exhibit not only includes pieces of technological history - including classic gaming, computing and music systems, but also new technology that explores the ideas of augmented reality, artificial intelligence and 3D printing. A light instillation called 'Assemblance' uses the hand motions of participants to create a 3D light field, made of lasers, around you as you walk through it.
The exhibition also has some high profile contributors, including musician Will.i.am and technology giant Google who have a section DevArt, which is promoting the idea of computer code as an art form. It is in this part of the exhibition that the butterflies preside, with code used to recognise the words spoken, and then transform them into text.
Steve Vranakis, executive creative director of Google Creative Lab said: "DevArt is this whole motion of effectively showcasing developers as artists and coding as a creative discipline with technology very much being this canvas for creativity.
"I think from a Google perspective, we want more people to engage with coding, engineering and science so I think it's really lovely to showcase some of these people and some of the incredibly creative pieces of work they've brought to life using technology."
Computer coding will become a part of the school national curriculum in the UK from September in the hope it will improve the digital skills of future generations of workers, while Google is also running a summer programme called Young Creators that will work in a similar vein.
Mr Vranakis said he believed that the exhibition, which runs until September will inspire visitors to engage more with coding due to the unique experience it offers.
He said: "Yes there are the more obvious web-based tablet sort of things but what I love about this is the notion of bringing to life the creativity in a physical space. You see it physically and when you see things that were generally out of the domain of individuals like this. So to have work showcased in a gallery like this among other famous artists is a big, big thing for developers."
"It's a big thing to think of developers as artists and what they're doing is effectively an incredibly creative thing and this is what it can lead to."
