Digital Studio Remix!

The Taylor Digital Studio is a multi-use space at Tate Britain for creative, hands-on making and learning about art and digital technology. This website is an open, collaborative archive of the workshops, events and users who have helped bring the studio to life. This site was built by @codekat at the University of Sussex Humanities Lab in partnership with the Digital Learning Team at Tate, who are based in the Taylor Digital Studio. Want to feature an event you've run? Use the "Submit" option above.

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<Off-Grid> with Compiler

Part of the Late at Tate Britain: Solstice (6 December 2019),  responding to this year’s Winter Commission from Anne Hardy.

Digital collective Compiler brought The Wrong - New Digital Art Biennale to Tate Britain. They presented Off-Grid <On Tour> WiFi router exhibition consisting of 26 new and existing works from artists and practitioners across the globe that engage with, or demystify, the protocols and particularities of digital networks.

Compiler also ran a drop-in workshop to help re-imagine digital communication after an ecological disaster.

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Sounds, and Sweet Airs with the Bartlett’s Masters in Design for Performance and Interaction

Part of the Late at Tate Britain: Bauhaus Recoded (1 November 2019)

Responding to the Bauhaus and Britain display, Late at Tate Britain teamed up with University College London’s Interactive Architecture Lab for an evening of performances, robotics, interactive installations, and participatory workshops.

Featuring work by students of Masters in Design for Performance and Interaction and the Tate Collective Producers, we celebrated the centenary of the Bauhaus and our digital landscape and showcased coding and technology influence across the gallery.

WeiChen Tang, Kornbongkoch Harnpinijsak and Nong Hua Lim (three students from the Design for Performance and Interaction course) presented Sounds, and Sweet Airs workshop in our Digital Studio. The audience were invited to recall their memory of natural soundscape and to reflect on the relationship between human and environment through exploration of different sound materials. 

See more information about this event here.

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Movement and Data Embodiment with Friendred

This Late at Tate Britain: Mark Leckey (4 October 2019), inspired by the Mark Leckey exhibition, was a night exploring youth, class and nostalgia through spoken word, performance and experimental music.

We welcomed Friendred in our Studio, a digital artist who has been researching the relationship between technology and performance arts. Friendred and his team developed a workshop which aimed to emphasise the conversation between body movements and data.

Workshop participants could explore the combination of body and technology through data, light and wind, as well as learn how wearable technology could assist dancers in embodying the idea of transformation.

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Art+Techivist with Alex Fefegha

Part of Late at Tate Britain: Social Justice (6 September 2019), a night inspired by the 1819: The Year’s Art display focusing on work from the year of the Peterloo Massacre.

For this Late, we invited a computational artist and creative technologist Alex Fefegha to run an interactive session where participants could examine and challenge art and technology's role in personal and community expressions of social justice, activism, inclusivity and design responsibility.

Through a number of interactive group games, this workshop sessions aimed to foster creativity, build collective knowledge and stimulates awareness of social justice issues.

Workshop participants also had a change to chat with a number of Feminist Voice AI bots developed by Alex in collaboration with the Feminist Internet.

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Coders of Colour 2.0

In August 2019 we hosted another Coders of Colour course for young underrepresented people of colour in the Taylor Digital Studio (TDS), following the course’s success last year.

Led by a young computer scientist Tolulope Ogunremi, with support from industry-based tutors and creative practitioners, this year’s course covered basic coding in html, css, javascript and python, and provided an excellent opportunity for young people aged 11-18 to try out coding and create their own apps, as well as to explore how digital skills can be employed in the museum and gallery sector.

Amongst many other things, participants had a chance to meet with Tate Digital Product Design team, who gave a presentation on the importance of User Experience Design (UXD); code their own colourful geometric shapes and sounds with digital artist Antonio Roberts and learn about how to build a product and survive in the tech industry with Abi Mohamed.

Throughout the two-week course young people learnt from industry experts and created their own app prototypes which they then presented during the Showcase Night at the Google for Startups Campus in Shoreditch. 

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Prototypes in Public

14 August 2019 

This display of three student projects shared ongoing, experimental research projects in development at the Bartlett's Masters in Design for Performance & Interaction programme at University College London:

Venus Smiles by Tabita Cargnel Interpolate by Angelina Papachatzaki QUANTUMminus by Qiuyan Da & Jingcheng Xie

Members of the public had a chance to drop in and explore how new technologies would change the way we dance, play music, and interact with robots.

Barlett's Interactive Architecture Lab and Tate Collective Producers are collaborating on Late at Tate Britain in November 2019.

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Paint Your Face Away with Shinji Toya

Late at Tate Britain: Passage (2 August 2019) was a night inspired by one of the great British abstract expressionists, Frank Bowling.

We invited digital artist Shinji Toya to run Paint Your Face Away, a drop-in digital face painting session. Workshop participants had a chance to learn about facial recognition, the data economy of faces and the limitations of computer vision and AI. 

Using the specially designed digital painting tool inspired by Frank Bowling’s painting style, participants created their own profile pictures and explored how the painting process could obfuscate face detection technologies.

Read more about this event on Shinji’s website. 

The face detection algorithm used for the workshop is Runway.

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Extended Realities with Digital Maker Collective

Part of Late at Tate Britain: Time (5 July 2019), a night exploring the meaning of time.

Artists have imagined realities using various mediums, throughout history. If you could imagine or experience a time in history, when and where would that be? 

We welcomed the Digital Maker Collective (DMC) in the Studio who invited audience to explore the concept of imagined histories and how we experience time, absence & empathy through immersive art, emergent technologies and virtual reality.

The DMC displayed a number of projects and activities including Pentagon No 6 (an immersive walk through the Millbank Prison re-imagining the notorious Victorian London prison which once occupied the location of Tate Britain), 3D Assets - Virtual Reality Making Workshop and an artists-led debate on Art and Technology.

The DMC are a group of University of the Arts London staff, students, alumni who share common goals of exploring digital & emerging technologies in the context of arts, education, society and the creative industries.

See more information about this event on their website.

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Face-Up face filters with Hervisions

This Late at Tate Britain: Waves (7 June 2019) was a night exploring the past, present and future of women and non-binary artists inspired by the 60 Years display that highlighted women's contribution to British art.

Face-Up was a display of moving image works and digital portraits (presented here in the Digital Studio) curated by Zaiba Jabbar, an artist and founder of Hervisions, a multidisciplinary femme-focused digital encounters platform. 

Together with new media artist Chloe Feinberg, they also ran a Spark AR drop-in workshop on the night, inviting audience to make their own face filters for Instagram and Snapchat exploring visual bias, role-play, pixel portraits and new beauty.

See these Instagram stories with highlights of the night!

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Make Your Own Throwback Sticker Pack! with The Body Recovery Unit

What makes you feel nostalgic? Looking at old photos? Thinking about your childhood? Hearing a long lost song? What kind of things trigger your most deepest memories?

Late at Tate: Nostalgia (3 May 2019) was a night exploring nostalgia, domestic spaces and childhood inspired by the Art Now: Joanna Piotrowska: All Our False Devices display.

We welcomed the Body Recovery Unit, an art-based feminist research group,  who ran a digital GIF and sticker pack workshop. Using a freshly scraped collection of #backintheday #nostalgia #childhood images from social media, audiences had the chance to create their own throwback GIFs and sticker packs for WhatsApp and Telegram.  

See this Google Doc with a collection of stickers and GIFs made on the night!

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LDN City Takeover, Wired4Music Presents Safe and Sound

This Late at Tate Britain: Strife (5 April 2019) was a night exploring film making, photography and social documentary in response to the powerful Don McCullin exhibition.

Lia and Jasmine, the Wired4Music Members, curated a drop-in Music Tech workshop led by women and non-binary musicians. Participants were invited to join a taste of all things music tech from playing around with production tools, seeing an artist breaking down their beats to sharing their songs on the Internal Radio station.

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Liquid Reflections with Annie Tådne

Part of Late at Tate: Liquid Reflections (1 March 2019), a thought-provoking night inspired by the work of pioneering artist, Liliane Lijn.

For this Late at Tate we invited Annie Tådne, an artist who works within the intersection of art and technology, to respond to work of Liliane Lijn.

Annie presented a talk about computer vision and introduced ways to create music through visual means. This was followed by a workshop leading to the creation of a collective sound piece for the night. Participants were invited to make a soundscape out of physical objects, while learning how different materials and forms can be translated into sound.

Combining visual and sound influences is an integral part of Lijn’s practice and the this workshop applied these ideas in an interactive, innovative and dynamic way.

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Alt Experiences: The Sensorial with Natasha Trotman

Late at Tate: Don’t Worry (1 Feb 2019) was a night exploring art and well-being, inspired by the work of Turner Prize winning artist Martin Creed.

Designer, maker and researcher Natasha Trotman led a sensorial workshop in the Taylor Digital Studio on the emerging concept of neurodiversity and alternative ways of experiencing spaces and artefacts.

Using Tate Collection Online, participants explored neurodivergent and non-typical ways of experiencing artefacts through a series of playful multi-modal investigations that remix the senses.

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Creating Facts from Fiction using Twitter Bots with Arora Ashani

This Late at Tate: Truth (7 Dec 2018) was inspired by Turner Prize and probed the question of what ‘truth’ might mean in a post-truth world.

As social bots flood the internet with fake news, we invited the participants to learn about Twitter bots and make their own in a hands on workshop led by Arora Ashani. 

Follow Arora’s instructions online to learn how to make computers produce content from sets of rules, and how to turn it into a Twitter bot.

Arora Ashani are a Programmer, Game Developer and Event Organiser who run the Non Binary in Tech network.

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Digital Design and Poetry Workshop with Black in the Day

Part of Late at Tate: Kabocha, 3 Aug 2018

Black in the Day is a London-based duo who host photo-scanning parties to collect personal photography.

For this Late at Tate, Tate Collective Producers invited them to run a digital design and poetry workshop to explore their amazing archive of family photographs documenting the black British experience in the UK.

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Coders of Colour

Tolulope Ogunremi is a young computer scientist who runs Coders of Colour, a coding course to empower and enable young underrepresented people of colour to pursue a career in tech by providing a safe space for them to learn, explore and grow​.

In the summer of 2018 we hosted the Coders of Colour course for five weeks, in the Taylor Digital Studio (TDS) at Tate Britain. Led by Tolulope, with support from industry-based volunteer tutors, the course covered basic coding in html, css, javascript and python along with creative software such as Atom, Visual Studio Code, PyCharm and Blippar. Participants also got a sense of Tate, what we do here and how digital skills can be employed in the museum and gallery sector, through staff talks and gallery tours.

For Digital Learning, this was a chance to open-up access to Tate and the TDS to new audiences and participants, prioritising those with least access to cultural institutions and technology, and to take positive action, working with new technologists and networks.

Following this course, Tolulope ran a drop-in coding session at Late at Tate in October 2018 and then spoke at the Routes In Alternative Careers Fair at Tate Modern in March 2019.

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pyka_hack at Tate Britain

From September 2017 to July 2018 we worked with Pyka on the Pyka Tate Hack project. This enabled Tate Digital Learning to act at the ‘client’ for a year-long schools project run by Pyka with 100 Year 6 children in 6 primary schools in Wales.

The project explored digital literacy and design-thinking methodology, ending with the children producing a collaging app, MishMosh Museum, using Tate collection art works (now available in the app store).