From the birth of op art to the dawn of the internet age, artists found new ways to engage the senses and play with our perception. Electric Dreams celebrates the early innovators of optical, kinetic, programmed and digital art, who pioneered a new era of immersive sensory installations and automatically-generated works.
This major exhibition brings together groundbreaking works by a wide range of international artists who engaged with science, technology and material innovation. Experience the psychedelic environments they created in the 1950s and 60s, built using mathematical principles, motorised components and new industrial processes. See how radical artists embraced the birth of digital technology in the 1970s and 1980s, experimenting with machine-made art and early home computing systems.
One of Tate Modern’s most ambitious exhibitions to date, Electric Dreams offers visitors a rare chance to experience incredible works of vintage tech art in action – a look back at how artists imagined the visual language of the future.
Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet at Tate Modern is presented in the Eyal Ofer Galleries. In partnership with Gucci. Supported by Anthropic, with additional support from The Electric Dreams Exhibition Supporters Circle, Tate Americas Foundation, Tate International Council and Tate Patrons. Research supported by Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational in partnership with Hyundai Motor.
Suzanne Treister Fictional Videogame Stills/Are You Dreaming? 1991-2 © Suzanne Treister
Carlos Cruz-Diez Environnement Chromointerférent, Paris 1974/2017 © Carlos Cruz-Diez / Bridgeman Images, Paris 2024
Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss Liquid Views - Narcissus Mirror 1992
Eduardo Kac Horny 1985 Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation © Eduardo Kac
Heinz Mack during the shoot of the film 'TELE-MACK' in the Sahara desert, east of Oasis Kebili, Tunisia, 1968. Photo: Edwin Braun/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2024, DACS, London, 2024
