Remote controlled robots are to invade Tate Britain after dark, as part of a competition for the first IK Prize. The Winning teem Tommaso Lanza, Ross Cairns and David Di Duca, AKA The Workers – will receive the £70,000 prize to realise their project. A £10,000 prize with £60,000 towards development was offered by Tate Britain to create a digital public experience.
The IK Prize, first awarded in 2014, celebrates creative talent in the digital industry. The prize finances a production budget to realise a digitally innovative project that enhances public enjoyment of art. The winner’s work, along with presentations from those shortlisted, were showcased at Tate Britain. Candidates for the prize needed to have prior experience of using digital technologies to engage the public, whether in marketing, advertising, education, media or the arts, and will have previously been recognised for an outstanding digital project. To enter, candidates had to submit information about a past achievement along with a brief outline of their new proposal for Tate Britain.
The winning project engages users with an aspect of Tate Britain’s collection displays and could be an interactive website, an online program or game, an app to use inside Tate Britain or beyond the gallery, an installation or immersive audio-visual experience, or some other digital form.
An expert jury chose the shortlisted four ideas, ranging from robots roaming the galleries, to an interactive video, stories told via social media, and an art experience in the online world of Minecraft. Alongside the six jurors. The public were also invited to cast the seventh vote.
The Workers (Tommaso Lanza, Ross Cairns and David Di Duca)
Ther Workers proposed an online experience that allow people all over the world to explore Tate Britain at night. Connecting to a website, users will be able to control robots situated in the galleries, steering them around as they gaze up-close at the art on display, and broadcasting their adventure and live commentary to the world. The Workers is a digital product design studio founded in 2011 by Tommaso Lanza and Ross Cairns after leaving the Royal College of Art.
The studio has since produced work for leading creative agencies (Bibliothéque Design, Jason Bruges, APFEL), public institutions like the London Olympics, Tate Modern and the Berlin Natural History Museum and private clients on a growing number of projects.
Their work spans across a multitude of disciplines, from product design to web through native applications for iOS as well as bespoke visual applications for exhibitions and interactive installations.
Judge Jimmy Wales founder of Wikipedia called the winner “exciting and original”. The Workers called the initiative “a dream project”. “During one of our recent projects we were lucky enough to find ourselves in a famous gallery ‘after dark’. “It was an amazing experience and we really hope After Dark will enable us to share some of those emotions with as many people as we can “We can’t wait to get started on realising the project and hope that people will enjoy it as much as we will,” they also stated.
The robot project will be on view online for late summer 2014