Behind the Idea: Recode Decode

St Luke’s Creative Partner Al Young has spotted an innovative approach to promoting a major digital art exhibition.

The V&A launched Decode: Digital Design Sensations in collaboration with contemporary arts organisation onedotzero in December – the first time the museum has staged a digital art exhibition. The challenge was to create a campaign that would appeal not only to regular museumgoers, but also to a highly digitally literate audience. 

‘Karl Marx wanted the means of production to fall into the hands of the proletariat so that revolution could occur,’ says Young.  He believes the V&A matched these principles with its interactive approach to Decode, and it’s advertising campaign has followed similar ‘revolutionary’ principles.

Recode Decode was an open source campaign created by digital agency Saint/Y&R.  Recode not only promoted the exhibition but extended participation to the web.  Digital artist Karsten Schmidt was commissioned to create a piece of work that could sit at the centre of the campaign.

‘Schmidt designed the beautiful animated identity for the show and gave open-source access to the coding.  It allowed the masses to re-form and submit their own new design,’ says Young. 

Work was submitted to an online gallery and the best Recodes were then used to promote the exhibition on and offline. The V&A exhibited the best of them on CBS’ new digital screens on the Underground.

Saint/Y&R Creative Director David Gamble noticed that Recode submissions kept improving as the campaign ran on.  His team even noticed digital artists from the Decode exhibition submitting pieces of their own. ‘The work got better and more ambitious as people got to grips with the application and the code,’ says Gamble. ‘Just look at the piece by Matt Swoboda, it’s fantastic, and has raised the bar even higher.’

Young is impressed that the V&A has taken on this kind of exhibition. ‘This is the sort of collective affair you’d expect at the Hayward Gallery, ICA or Tate Modern – not the V&A,’ says Young.  ‘Karl, it seems you’re alive and well in the 2010 avant-garde digital arts advertising space. And so, Victoria and Albert, are you.’

Decode: Recode from directtovideo on Vimeo.

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Lots of exciting stuff like this has been happening in Museums and Galleries around the world for the past few years, and in fact the concept for this 'advertising' is surely the very exciting exhibition which it promoted.

Perhaps rather then looking at advertising for inspiration, the D&AD should be telling their members to go visit a museum, be interested in what happens in galleries and inspiration like this can be the result.

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