We are back at the Tate Exchange with me, Charlotte Abraham. It has been just over a year since we were last at the Tate Modern, London, where we had primary schools and Reading Scholars for our 2018 event (head over to ‘Tate Exchange with Reading Scholars‘ to see how that went). This year, our theme was Movement where ArtLab and University of Reading School or Arts and Communication Design departments created a series of participatory workshops that enabled visitors to explore the theme. There were several stations on the 5th floor of the Blavatnik Building in Tate Modern that lead people through different types of movement and motion.
The first of these was ‘listen + draw’, which invited people to react on paper with pens and pencils to what they heard on headphones, in a silent disco. The sound recordings were made by first year student in the Department of Art at the University of Reading. Both schools and members of the public found this a very fun activity with lots of freedom around the giant piece of paper!
The second station was the ‘360 Selfie Sphere’, arguably one of the most enticing pieces on the floor. Participants were invited to draw a self portrait in the sphere and take a 360 image with a GoPro with the self portraits on their head. Many just wanted the photo rather than the drawing, but some of the results were just brilliant!
The last station was, ‘Making Moves’, which ArtLab worked on using Augmented Reality (AR) on an iPad. This was originally intended for people to re-create sculptures, imitating what we had on screen. There was more interaction and movement from participant by using animated animals and objects on the TV screen. This interaction created more enjoyment than we could have anticipated, as well as plenty of confusion when people realised there was something on the screen, but not on the floor next to them! Our favourites were a fruit bat made from an orange and the point cloud AR files.
For a more detailed account of the Tate Exchange 2019 event, head over to my blog. Here, you can see what the students of the University of Reading get up to with ArtLab and the art portion of my course. Don’t forget to take a look at the interactive 360 image of the Tate Exchange event with ArtLab!
readingartlab.com 
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