IK Prize 2014 winner: The Workers (Tommaso Lanza, Ross Cairnsand David Di Duca)
The winner of IK Prize 2014, a new annual prize presented by Tate celebrating creative talent in the digital industry, was announced today by Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales. The winner is The Workers (Tommaso Lanza, Ross Cairns and David Di Duca) for After Dark, a project involving robots roaming Tate Britain’s galleries at night. After Dark was chosen by a panel of industry experts from a shortlist of four proposals.
The Workers will receive £10,000, and a £60,000 production budget to turn their idea into a reality. The winning project, After Dark, will go on show at Tate Britain later in the summer.
Jimmy Wales said:
The Workers proposal is truly exciting and original. Combining behind-the-scenes intrigue with a sense of exploration, the project will give people all over the world a unique experience of 500 years of British art. Brilliant! Widening access to art through the application of digital technology is a mission I share. I am delighted to be part of a jury that supports creative minds in this way. The shortlist demonstrated the potential of digital to offer diverse and radical new was of enjoying culture.’
To view Jimmy Wales’s announcement online, visit the IK Prize pages.
The Workers’ After Dark project is an online experience that will allow people all over the world to explore Tate Britain at night. Users will be able to control robots situated in the galleries, steering them around as they gaze up-close at the art on display, broadcasting their adventure and live commentary.
The Workers is a digital product design studio founded in 2011 by Tommaso Lanza and Ross Cairns after leaving the Royal College of Art. The studio has produced work for, among others, Bibliothéque Design, Jason Bruges, APFEL, the London Olympics and the Berlin Natural History Museum. Their work spans multiple disciplines, from product design to web through native applications for iOS as well as bespoke visual applications for exhibitions and interactive installations.
The Workers said:
Since we first heard of it, the IK Prize was clearly a very ambitious and open initiative. Being supported by one of the largest cultural institutions in the world, for us this is a dream project. During one of our recent projects we were lucky enough to find ourselves in a famous gallery ‘after dark’ – it was an amazing experience and we really hope After Dark will enable us to share some of those emotions with as many people as we can. We can’t wait to get started on realising the project and hope that people will enjoy it as much as we will.
The IK Prize, named in memory of the philanthropist Irene Kreitman, celebrates creative talent in the digital industry. Supported by the Porter Foundation, the Prize is presented by Tate to a team, company or individual for an original idea that uses the power of digital technology to connect Tate’s collection of 500 years of British Art to a wider audience.