The Space, a new online platform for digital art, has launched as part of a 24-hour ‘hackathon’ taking place in Tate Modern’s Turnbine Hall this weekend.
A partnership between the BBC and Arts Council England, The Space will commission 50 new works a year and host a season of exhibitions and events that explore new avenues for digital art.
With the aim of ‘bringing together artists whose medium is technology and hackers whose medium is art,’ this weekend’s Hack the Space event will see over 140 creative people participate in what has been labelled ‘the world’s biggest Art Hack’.
The hackers, briefed to ‘take any data and turn it into a work of art’, will have access to a range of unusual data sets provided by Tate, The Open Data Institute, the Guardian and more.
Associate partners of the new creative platform include Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council Wales, British Council, Creative Scotland and Open Data Institute, the latter of which has co-commissioned a new artwork, We Need Us, using open data from the citizen science project, Zooniverse, by artist Julie Freeman.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and co-founder of the Open Data Institute, said: “Artists wake us up to all that happens in the world. The Space can make that happen on the web.”
Aaron Koblin, a digital artist and creative director of the Data Arts Team at Google, added: “I look forward to seeing how The Space will challenge the concept of what ‘digital art’ is, and what art can be. Hopefully it will give a voice and platform to artists and technologists… and foster some amazing collaborations between the worlds to bring them even closer together.”
The hackathon, a private event, launches The Space‘s first Open call for anyone over 18 who wants to submit an original idea. Deadline: 11 July
