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What can this artist be trying to say? Turn on iPod for answer
Mark Prigg, Technology Correspondent15 Aug 2008
The Tate is to run a digital exhibition alongside this year's Turner Prize.
Information, images and video clips from the exhibit can be downloaded for free onto the latest iPods and iPhones. The digital tour will replace traditional audio guides and explain the pieces to people as they walk around the gallery.
It will also allow visitors from anywhere in the world to tour the gallery via a series of pre-recorded videos. "We've come a long way since the first audio tours and we think this is the next step for gallery guides," said Jane Burton of Tate Media, which is developing the guide.
Tate hopes that in future artists will create exclusive multimedia for the tours.
"There is a lot of potential for artists to use these devices," said Miss Burton. "It may be that in future artists choose to create art on these devices. We certainly won't be asking artists to stick to standard documentary interview formats if they want to take part.
"There will be a whole range of content, from interviews with artists and curators to video of its installation - or in the case of period pieces, footage of the era it came from."
The downloads are compatible with the iPod Touch and the iPhone, which will also be available to rent for £3.50 per visit for people who don't own their own.
"We've found that people find these tours very easy to use," said Miss Burton.
The gallery is currently conducting a trial of an iPod video guide at the Gustav Klimt exhibition at Tate Liverpool, which runs until 31 August.
The tour provides information about Klimt's art, life and times, featuring photographs of the artist and his peers as well as music of the period, archive film recordings and behind-the-scenes video footage explaining how the exhibition came together.
The trial has proved very popular. People spend up to three hours in the gallery with the devices, compared to an average 45-minute visit without them. "We were actually a bit surprised by demand in Liverpool and had to get more devices in," said Miss Burton.
Last year's winner of the £25,000 Turner
Prize was Mark Wallinger, whose display at the Turner show was Sleeper, a film of him dressed in a bear costume wandering around an empty museum in Berlin. However, Wallinger was officially awarded the prize for State
Britain, which recreated all the objects in Brian Haw's anti-war display in Parliament Square.
