Billed as a “dreamscape of machines, movement, and captivating installations that play with your perception,” Electric Dreams is on display at the Tate Modern until the 1st June 2025.
Their website tells the story of the exhibition:
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.
You know you’re getting old when you see the output of computers you used at home being showcased as a tech retrospective!
My first computer was the wonderful Amiga A1200 which used to run so hot that I had to drill a hole in the deck to fit a cooling fan.
To today’s over-saturated, tech-blitzed eyes, some of the earlier works look incredibly primitive and – to be honest – a little dull.
Video preview
More info
Electric Dreams – art and technology before the internet
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
28 November 2024 – 1 June 2025
Tickets £22