Timeline of Modern Art: digital and interactive system to experience art at the Tate Modern

A great multi-touch video wall, called Timeline of Modern Art, allows visitors to London's Tate Modern museum to view and consult in a timeline near 3.500 works of art 750 artists to create a cultural and interactive experience that brings modern art closer to all audiences.

The British National Museum of Modern Art in London, better known as Tate Modern and which is part of the Tate museum group, is one of the most visited in this city and in the world, with about five million visitors a year.

In order to further encourage his exhibitions and the approach to his extensive collection of contemporary works of art, their managers have renewed for three more years the contract with Bloomberg Philanthropies, through the Bloomberg Connects digital initiative, that has become a global industry standard in the interpretation of art.

Precisely Tate Modern was the first gallery to offer digital tours, who won a Bafta Award for technical innovation. As Nicholas Serota explains, director of this center, "since the Tate Modern opened fifteen years ago, we've worked with Bloomberg to help our visitors understand, enjoy and participate with modern and contemporary art. This new partnership leverages this success to meet the growing demand for digital engagement and interaction, and visitors of all ages have new ways to explore the collection".

In this line, Michael R. Bloomberg says "Tate Modern is one of the most dynamic museums in the world, and we're excited to expand public access to your collections with exciting new ways to experience all that the museum has to offer. These innovative digital tools will make visits more rewarding than ever".

One of the latest developments in this partnership has been an interactive timeline – Timeline of Modern Art-, covering the works of contemporary artists since 1900 to this day, displayed with all kinds of information and links to other works of the Tate Modern in a large tactile video wall, of 6,5 meters long, designed by creative and production studio Framestore, Oscar winner for visual effects and his work on well-known films such as 'Gravity' or 'Guardians of the Galaxy'.

After two years of development, Framestore and his company VFX have worked on software and hardware design for the digital timeline at Tate Modern. One of the challenges of this project was to gather, organize and digitize the huge amount of data from more than 3.500 works of art 750 artists who are part of their permanent collection of modern art and who encompass 125 years of history.

Precisely link each of the pieces, at the time and in all sorts of details, many of them in turn connected around a selection of seventy key movements in the international history of contemporary art and connections between artists over time, had to be displayed in a visual way, interactive and engaging for all types of audiences in a large viewing system, that also offered different videos and images for several users simultaneously.

That's why, the video wall consists of sixty screens with equal number of rear microprojectors that incorporate infrared sensors to create a touch-sensitive display, through which multiple users can explore at the same time in an intuitive and fluid way, in a cascade of texts and images, the artistic works chosen.

As Jonny Dixon explains, Framestore executive producer, "The development of the timeline has been a very interesting and creative activity for our team. We knew that the installation would have to captivate both visually and almost innately to adapt to the needs of the ever-expanding Tate Modern and showcase the collection to visitors in a whole new way".

Tate Modern's Bloomberg Connects initiative and Bloomberg Philanthropies will continue to grow in content, with new artists and movement, as well as digital tools over the next three years and in the new museum space that will open to the public in the middle of 2016, so that visitors understand, interact and discuss the ideas raised in the exhibitions.

Added to this is the new mobile app to help visitors on their tour of this space, with access to in-depth information about artists and movements from all museums encompassed by the group: Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives.

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