The Frieze London artwork honest and a large-scale exhibition on the Tate Trendy, Electrical Desires: Artwork and Expertise Earlier than the Web, deliver a contemporary London focus this autumn to the burgeoning worldwide digital artwork scene. Frieze this month reveals work by each new and established digital artists. The London-based film-maker Lawrence Lek’s Artist Award fee, Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, mixes worldbuilding and mechanical sculpture in an immersive atmosphere. The British artist John Akomfrah’s five-channel video work Changing into Wind (2023), exploring the connection between nature and expertise, can be offered on high-specification LG OLED screens. The Finnish artist Jenna Sutela reveals neuroactive head-shaped sculptures in glass and programmable LEDs (light-emitting diodes).
In November, the Tate present options greater than 70 artists “working between the Nineteen Fifties and the daybreak of the web age”. From pioneers akin to Harold Cohen and Nam June Paik to the Canadian First Nations artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, whose Inherent Rights, Imaginative and prescient Rights (1992) simulates mystical visions, the present will join digital artwork’s historical past to the current period of AI (synthetic intelligence) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
Randel Bryan, managing director of SXSW London, will deliver the celebrated expertise and music pageant model to London in June 2025 with astrong visible arts and vogue presence Courtesy SXSW London
Frieze London, Electrical Desires, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) first Digital Artwork Season this autumn and the close to prospect of SXSW London—which provides visible arts to the tech and music pageant model’s providing in terms of the UK capital in June 2025—enhance the sense that one thing is altering. A brand new sort of digital artwork ecosystem—given new vigour by what Christiane Paul, curator of digital artwork on the Whitney Museum of American Artwork, describes to The Artwork Newspaper as “the proper storm” of the NFT increase of 2021 and the rising presence of AI artwork—is rising, with London as a world hub; one with a wealthy educational and institutional historical past; a metropolis with a vital position right this moment, and potential nonetheless to unlock.
Digital artwork will not be a single medium however a mixture of varieties which mutate with technological growth. When The Artwork Newspaper lined the Digital Artwork Truthful in Hong Kong in October 2023 it listed a typology of 14 variants, from digital actuality (VR) to illustration, projection to machine studying and AI. These 14 are six greater than the eight listed by Paul in her 2015 survey Digital Artwork.
Nimrod Vardi, artistic director of Arebyte, London’s devoted public gallery for digital artwork, tells The Artwork Newspaper that digital artwork right this moment is a “medium the place the instruments which artists use are not within the realm of the consultants however have grow to be extra accessible and simpler to strategy”. The curiosity that new applied sciences create drives what Paul calls “waves of consideration, which frequently coincided with technological developments, for instance the launch of the World Vast Internet and dot.com increase and bust within the mid- to late Nineties, or the rise of social media within the early 2000s”. Whereas waves of consideration are cyclical, the circumstances of the final 5 years—as NFTs and AI captured consideration, and because the Covid-19 pandemic induced what Vardi calls a “speedy change in the way in which we devour leisure”—have introduced digital artwork to a brand new stage of public consciousness.
Catherine Mason, a number one historian of digital artwork, tells The Artwork Newspaper that when she began learning the historical past of laptop artwork in 2002, “nearly nobody within the artwork world was . Now, with a youthful technology, and the entry of digital artwork into the business artwork market, digital artwork is having a second”.
In 1968, Cybernetic Serendipity: The Laptop and the Arts on the Institute of Modern Artwork (ICA) in London turned the primary nice exhibition of digital artwork, bringing works of cybernetics, robotics and extra collectively, and was described on the time on BBC radio as a present the place, “lights flicker and flash, unusual music gurgles and plops, and radio-controlled automatons … wander about buzzing and buzzing and flapping limbs of steel”. Displaying work by 130 artists, and attended by 60,000 guests, Cybernetic Serendipity nonetheless resonates right this moment. The ICA held a one-day occasion in February that examined the exhibition’s relevance to the age of AI and NFTs, with a gap speech by Jasia Reichardt, the present’s curator practically 56 years in the past.
An outsider medium because the Nineteen Sixties
That span is captured in Digital Artwork: Nineteen Sixties–Now, an essential examine of the medium printed this month, co-written and edited by the digital curatorial workforce of the V&A, Melanie Lenz, Corinna Gardner and Pita Arreola. However the Nineteen Sixties digital artwork world was developed not in London’s burgeoning up to date artwork scene, however within the academy. The story of the beginning of London’s distinct strand of digital artwork is brilliantly advised by Mason in two books, A Laptop within the Artwork Room (2008) and Artistic Simulations (2024). Within the first she tells how artists akin to Edward Ihnatowicz experimented with robotics, algorithms and interactivity after being given sanctuary in locations like the pc science division at College Faculty London (UCL). The Laptop Arts Society, born within the again rooms of UCL in 1968, has for over 50 years promoted “the position of digital and digital media within the arts”.
Within the mid Nineteen Seventies, the Slade College for Artwork at UCL created the pc and experimental division, which in 1995 turned the Slade Centre for Digital Media in High-quality Artwork. The Slade has simply launched its BA in artwork and expertise, “a course for a brand new technology of artists to create artwork linked to rising and disruptive applied sciences”, to start in September 2025–one other thread within the college’s 50 years on the assembly level of artwork and expertise.
The London-based artist and film-maker Lawrence Lek reveals his Artist Award fee, Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, at Frieze London this month Nishant Shukla
Universities play three roles in London’s digital artwork ecosystem right this moment—coaching new artists, endeavor technical analysis and rethinking the medium and its connections to society. Just like the Slade’s BA course, UCL’s MA in digital media builds deep technical expertise primarily based on vital understanding—however the place the Slade appears to be like to provide artists, the digital media course appears to be like to provide tomorrow’s video games and interactive designers. The identical is true of the Royal Faculty of Arts’ MA in digital route —growing digital creativity throughout VR and XR (prolonged actuality). At Goldsmiths Faculty, the BSc in digital arts computing guarantees a profession within the artistic industries.
It isn’t solely establishments which have endured. Artists akin to Ernest Edmonds span the entire of London’s digital artwork historical past. He tells The Artwork Newspaper that “practically all digital artists linked to London” had been members of the Laptop Arts Society. Edmonds labored on the Slade and at lots of the “polytechnics and universities selling and guiding artwork/analysis programmes”. He sees the journey of digital artwork from exterior to the centre as a pure long-form cycle.
The customarily uneasy relationship between digital artwork and the mainstream artwork world has left institutional gaps. Each Tate and the V&A maintain digital artwork collections however they’re comparatively small. Melanie Lenz, the V&A’s curator of digital artwork, tells The Artwork Newspaper that “the V&A primary acquired computer-generated artwork in 1969 but it surely wasn’t till the late 2000s that the digital artwork assortment was considerably enhanced with the acquisition of some 250 artworks”. Tate has tended extra to tactical commissions akin to its 1983 exhibition of the AI artwork pioneer Harold Cohen or 15 works of internet artwork it produced between 2000 and 2011.
There isn’t a definitive digital artwork establishment in London, nowhere like Ars Electronica in Linz. To Mason, that has meant London “typically has been taking part in catch as much as the remainder of Europe”. However as the current wave of curiosity in digital artwork has unfold, the dispersed, cross-institutional range of London’s digital artwork scene has grow to be a superpower.
A various digital arts ecosystem
Vardi says that the variety in London’s digital arts ecosystem is present in its establishments, “that includes quite a lot of venues the place its distinctive expertise pool can produce and exhibit”; in its artist inhabitants that “brings quite a lot of makes use of, concepts and alternatives that are revolutionary not solely of their use of applied sciences but additionally remark and supply a perspective”, and in its audiences, “desperate to expertise and attend digital artwork occasions”.
Paul sees the distinctive character of London’s digital artwork scene within the broad number of its providing—an “interaction of artwork venues that differ in dimension and mission however help the digital medium”. This providing ranges from large-scale reveals at Tate and the V&A, to what she describes because the north London collaborative group Furtherfield’s “experimentation with different techniques for creating and showcasing digital artwork for over 25 years”, to the Serpentine’s deep and extended engagement with digital artists.
Serpentine, as so typically, is on the coronary heart of structured experimentation in digital artwork, led by its inventive director, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Recent from presenting xHairyMutantx (2024) on the Whitney Biennial, the AI artists and musicians Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon open The Name at Serpentine on 4 October, an engagement with vocal information units recorded with group choirs throughout the UK, along side Serpentine’s Future Artwork Ecosystems. Earlier within the 12 months, Serpentine hosted the celebrity media artist Refik Anadol’s first London one-man present, the place he labored with “giant nature mannequin” AI information units.
This autumn the V&A hosts its first digital artwork season, exploring creativity and expertise, constructing on its digital design weekends. A part of this included a latest screening of chosen Lumen Prize 2024 finalists. The Lumen Prize, launched in 2012, covers 5 classes, from nonetheless and transferring picture, via interactive immersive, futures and affect. All 5 are crammed with NFT and AI-based works, from poetry and vogue to reimaginings of the creator Jorge Luis Borges and installations primarily based on a synthetic mangrove swamp—the Lumen Prize is a dwelling index of the number of the medium.
Past museums, galleries and prizes, Arebyte, primarily based in London’s Canning City, has pioneered the exhibition of digital artwork within the final decade. Vardi describes London as their “check mattress, exhibition area and group”.
Collaboration with massive tech
London has previously 15 years emerged as a centre for collaboration between artwork and massive tech. Google’s Arts & Tradition programme was launched in 2011 to unlock the potential of hi-resolution scans of work, and expanded to deal with an Arts & Tradition Lab. The Lab is headed by Freya Salway, who sees London’s range as key to uniting “a robust artistic tech group” with “the vibrancy of the inventive expertise within the metropolis”. London’s artists, she tells The Artwork Newspaper, have a “spirit of curiosity and openness” which has seen Google fee, and collaborate on, dozens of tasks.
Alongside Google, the Taiwanese electronics firm HTC has made London the bottom for its VR programme with artists, initiated in 2017 via a sequence of collaborations with main London cultural establishments, together with Tate and the Royal Academy. Samantha King, head of programme at HTC’s Vive Arts, sees the town as “a pure draw for corporations eager to have interaction in interdisciplinary, cross-sector collaboration”.
Past these world giants, the London-based VR platform Vortic has set a benchmark since 2020 for digital artwork reveals. In the meantime, corporations within the web3 universe are supporting digital artwork, most notably the blockchain platform Tezos, whose basis helps the Serpentine’s Future Artwork Ecosystems artistic analysis and innovation programme.
Digital artwork’s affect on the business artwork market stays advanced. Checked out from a monetary stage, the increase and bust of NFTs in 2021-22 noticed an enormous market construct then collapse—then depart a smaller residual market behind of actual scale and worth. In the meantime the bottom-up market-shaping work of London galleries integrates digital artwork pioneers with {the marketplace} of right this moment. The Mayor Gallery, based in 1925, confirmed the work of the pc artwork pioneer Vera Molnár within the lead-up to Frieze. Mason highlights galleries together with Unit London and Hofa Gallery as gamers on this area. Each she and Paul determine Gazelli Artwork Home as a key innovator.
Gazelli started its exploration of digital artwork in 2015 with a digital residency programme. From the start it regarded, as Mila Askarova, its chief govt and founder, says, to ask “how the gallery can help artists who’re working in mediums that don’t but have a sustainable market” and likewise to “assist construct the ecosystem round digital artwork total”.
Gazelli operates as a bridge between the ultra-contemporary in digital artwork and its pioneers, notably with their illustration of Harold Cohen. Working along with his property since 2022, Gazelli has helped put Cohen on the centre of the worldwide dialogue of AI in artwork, with a survey on the Whitney this 12 months and his work that includes in Electrical Desires at Tate.
A brand new imaginative and prescient of what galleries could be is being developed by Hackney Wick’s ArtSect. ArtSect’s founder Miki Elson says digital artwork “touches many topics which can be suppressed worldwide and lots of … artists come right here to additional their observe with unbounded freedom”.
Central London has seen the emergence of immersive establishments—giant scale digital artwork galleries. Outernet, W1 Curates, Frameless, 180 Studios and extra have introduced digital artists to giant audiences. Each Outernet and Frameless help rising expertise, Outernet via the Sysco Artistic AI Problem staged with UCL and Goldsmiths college students in summer time 2023, and Frameless via its artist residencies programme, partnering with the Royal Faculty of Artwork
New places, new festivals
The expansion of Peckham Digital pageant, now in its third 12 months, reveals London’s bottom-up, dispersed digital creativity at its greatest. The artistic expertise pageant big South by South West (SXSW) involves Shoreditch in June, with a particular deal with artwork and vogue. Patrick Moore, SXSW London’s adviser on visible arts, tells The Artwork Newspaper that the pageant will deal with a “distinction between rising artists thinking about cross-disciplinary work and extra established artists who’re significantly thinking about expertise”. Being cross-disciplinary, Moore says, “will blow via all the way in which to the tasks we’re growing with Alex Poots [creative adviser to the festival]. These are centered on artists who’re additional alongside of their profession, however they’ll have the identical focus, both closely built-in with expertise or cross-disciplinary on a major stage.”
For artists, Edmonds says, a lot accessible funding is “skewed in direction of digital distribution and outreach as towards using digital media in making new types of artwork”. A brand new package deal from the Arts and Humanities Analysis Council and Arts Council England confirms this. Immersive Arts, a £3.6m a part of a wider £6m programme, XRtists, launched in Could 2023, helps UK artists in testing and prototyping immersive applied sciences, “to growing sustainable enterprise fashions for incorporating XR into manufacturing, observe and viewers providing”. It reveals a spotlight—for higher or worse—past inventive expertise innovation.
As at all times, funding stays a vital problem, a difficulty Claudel Goy, managing director of Arebyte, sees as an enormous hole in London’s ecosystem. She says, “Capital infrastructure funding streams for digital artwork, each private and non-private, are restricted. Growing these alternatives is crucial to empower artists to push artistic boundaries.” May new funding result in a everlasting public museum of digital artwork—an Ars Electronica for London—or a pageant that does for digital artwork what Siggraph has performed for laptop graphics?
The highlight placed on digital artwork by AI and NFTs, by the pandemic and by the rise of the immersive establishment has seen it, says Paul, develop “a lot it has grow to be much less unified and operates extra in native scenes”. That leaves digital arts literacy, and what Paul calls an “understanding of the digital medium’s aesthetic language” because the vital concern which can preserve digital artwork entrance and centre as consideration on the most recent expertise hype cycle dims and fades.
