Connected World Art

Unique Collaboration between Art and Business

BT Connected World Art is a unique and ground-breaking collaboration between art and business that builds upon BT's established heritage of arts sponsorship in the UK.

Since 2001, BT has been exclusive sponsor of Tate Online, powering the website with the aim of making art more accessible to a wider audience. BT Connected World Art has taken this work a step further by combining BT's technological expertise with the imagination of internationally renowned artists to create a series of distinctive and interactive exhibitions. The Media Interafaces Group has been principally involved in the utilisation and development of technologies used within 2 of the artworks.

Plunged in a Stream - Langlands & Bell

Langlands & Bell explored a hidden river in Brussels - the Zenne - covered over 150 years ago. Their new media artwork uncovers the river both physically and symbolically using BT technology.

Conceptual elements include: the river and flow of water, people and urban environment, buildings and locales, life on the streets of the city and multiple spoken and written languages.

The artists worked with BT to build a virtual model of the Coudenberg Cellars realised as an interactive animation / data projection which several visitors may navigate simultaneously via multiple interfaces.

The interactive virtual environment developed for Brussels in April 2005 is on permanent exhibition at the BT Global Services Leavesden Customer Centre.

Tracking Madrid - Montserrat Soto

Montserrat explored the relationship between nature and the city-in-growth and how the latter in its growth destroys what now exists as nature. The artist filmed areas on the outskirts of the city of Madrid for several months. A website featured media clips and live images prior to the exhibition.

The final exhibition, at the Reine Sofia in June 2005 included large scale video projections of the monitored sites, with the images re-enacting the city-in-growth at a dizzying speed. Sound and images on these videos were creatively edited in a documentary style.

BT Connected World Arts Website