PETRAS at the Tate Modern

We are delighted to announce that the Tate and PETRAS have joined forces to create a public event at Tate Exchange at Tate Modern on 8-9 February 12.00-18.00.

Join the PETRAS team to explore how the Internet of Things is changing our lives now, and how it may influence our futures – at home, at work and in our environment.

We are all now living with the Internet of Things: this means that any objects and things (like watches, sensors, TVs – anything really!) that can be interconnected via the internet, making them readable, recognizable, locatable, addressable and controllable by computers.

This programme offers everyone the opportunity to begin to experience and understand how the IoT is transforming everyday life, but also to see where it may disrupt and cause us to ask questions about our privacy, how we share our data, and where it goes.

Step into the Living Room of the Future  and experience how everyday objects, like your TV, central heating, lights and curtains, might work together to provide a new, immersive experience which is personalised for you based on your collected data.  The Living Room of the Future lets us explore the fascinating potential future, but it will also ask you to think about how your personal data is used and shared and whether you will be happy to let this happen in your homes.  Developed at Lancaster University by Prof Paul Coulton, Dr Joe Lindley and Dr Adrian Gradinar with BBC R&D, the Living Room of the Future is an immersive experience that can be enjoyed by all.

Join Dr Larissa Pschetz and Prof Chris Speed (Edinburgh University) and play the Karma Kettles game which looks at how we might store and trade energy in the future. The Karma Kettles show the state of the grid in terms of produced and stored energy and the teams receive karma points according to their decisions of storing, using or giving energy back to the grid. However, all is not straightforward! Giving energy back when the grid has peaked can result in a negative karma.

If you have heard about Blockchain, but aren’t sure what it is and don’t know who to ask, come and experience the GeoPact project. GeoPact is a demonstration of the fusion between location based IoT and blockchain technology.  Using a city centre transport system as a scenario, it is designed to make sure that smart objects are where they say they are, and doing this in such a way that location tracking doesn’t become invasive of privacy. Dave Murray-Rust and Ella Tallyn from Edinburgh University tell the story and explain how it all works.

Take a stroll through Hampstead Heath, reproduced in the gallery by Leah Lovett, Prof Andy Hudson-Smith, and Martin de Jode from UCL. This demonstration reproduces two recent projects Tales of the Park and The Listening Wood. This demonstration lets us interact with the Gnomes from the park and the trees from the heath using chatbot technology to uncover the history, geography and fragments of poetry.

We welcome everyone to this event and look forward to seeing you there. Tate Exchange is  located on Level 5 of the Blavatnik Building at Tate Modern.

For more information on the programme, including a number of talks by the PETRAS team, and the content curated by the Tate Collection Care Research and Tate Digital Learning, please visit the Tate’s website here.

Photo Gallery

Photographs by Dan Weill