Decode: Digital Design Sensations
Dates: to 11 April 2010
Times: 10am–5.30pm daily
Ages: 8+
Price: £5.90 adults (£5 online) £4.90 ages 12–17 (£4 online), under 12s free.

Older kids will love this new show at the V&A. A fascinating crossover between digital technology and art, lots of the works on display rely on the participation of the viewer. Blow the seeds off a dandilion clock; watch your reflection appear as a smoky image on 768 motorized planes; chuck multi-coloured paint at a wall. The web looms large. The numbers on a real time digital clock are picked at random from a website where members of the public can upload images of numbers, some figurative, some more abstract. Click on tiny bubbles that fill a screen and each is an extract from a blog posted somewhere in cyberspace any time in the last five years. Techies will relish the skilled use of digital coding; luddites (like me) will be pleasantly suprised that the end results are stimulating, challenging and curiously beautiful.

Save enough time once you have come out to visit the newly opened Renaissance and Medieval Galleries. Vaulting, sparse, light-filled rooms with exposed brickwork provide the perfect setting to a host of treasures. Don't attempt too much (the galleries are free; you can come back another day) but my 11 year old was just as wowed by these as by the 21st century wonders of Decode. Highlights included a fabulous cast of Donatello's St George and the Dragon and one of da Vinci's notebooks. In one glass case the genuine, tiny, article; next to it an easy to use computor fascimile that you can turn each page of, zoom in, read explanatory notes. Awe inspiring.

To book timed tickets for Decode, click here 

 

Venue Details:

Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL
Tel: 020 7942 2000
Website: www.vam.ac.uk

General Information:


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